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Atlas Summit Preparation Guide (PDF)
Manchester Country Club, Bedford, NH
Sessions: June 19 – June 22, 2014
The Atlas Summit will begin on Thursday, June 19, with the Objectivist Education program starting at 9:30 a.m. Main Atlas Summit registration will take place from 5 p.m. to 9 p.m. and our opening reception will begin at 5:15 p.m. followed by the opening cookout at 6:30 p.m. (Students and some others are invited to a student reception and barbecue, Wednesday, June 18, 6:15 p.m., at Aaron Day’s home in Bedford, NH.)
The conference will end with a closing luncheon panel on “The Objectivist Movement Today,” on Sunday, June 22, from noon to 1:30 p.m. You can expect to be free to depart on trips or spend your day as you like from 2 p.m. on June 22.
Sessions: Manchester Country Club, 180 South River Road, Bedford, NH 03110. Tel: 603-624-4096.
Preferred Hotel and Common Room: Holiday Inn Express, 1298 South Porter Street, Manchester, NH 03103. Tel: 603-669-6800.
Secondary Hotel: Hampton Inn and Suites Manchester-Bedford, 8 Hawthorne Drive, Bedford, NH 03110. Tel: 603-623-2040
Conference Director Will Thomas wthomas@atlassociety.org (202) 370-6880
Asst. Conference Manager Rhonda Lambert rholambert@gmail.com (603) 305-7396
Asst. Conference Manager Aaron Rainwater arainwater@atlassoiciety.org (706) 476-9797
Contact us if you have any question or problem.
The daily schedule runs from 9:30 a.m. until the final event is complete (between 9 p.m. and 10:30 p.m. depending on the day on June 19-21, and around 1:30 p.m. on June 22). See the full schedule at http://www.atlassociety.org/as/atlas-summit-2014-schedule .
There will be coffee and tea available in the morning and juices, water, and soft drinks will be available in the main afternoon break. The Manchester Country Club will run its own bar throughout the conference. Participants may purchase additional refreshments and alcoholic beverages there.
The Atlas Summit’s central socializing place will be the Common Room located in our hospitality suite, Room 122, at the Holiday Inn Express. Inquire at the front desk for the room number. All variety of drinks and snacks will be available at the cost of an affordable donation and generous tips. Common Room hours are from 9 p.m. until the wee hours June 18, 19, 21, and 22, and starting after the movie ends on Friday, June 20 and staying open later that night, too.
All lunches and dinners from lunch on June 19 to lunch on June 22 are being catered buffet-style at the Manchester Country Club. If you have any special dietary requirements, check with the conference director. We have tried to accommodate most special requirements in our planning.
All Atlas Summit full-conference registrants may partake of any of the conference meals. The only exception concerns commuter-price registrants. While welcome at all program sessions for the day(s) for which they are registered (including meal-time programs), commuter-price registrants are not allowed to partake of conference meals unless they have purchased meal tickets for the meal in question. Last-minute Atlas Summit registration and meal tickets will be available for purchase during the conference.
If you are staying at the Holiday Inn Express or the Hampton Inn, breakfast is included with your hotel room.
There is free parking at all Atlas Summit venues.
If you are arriving at Manchester Airport (MHT) the Holiday Inn Express and Hampton Inn both offer free shuttle service to and from the airport. If flying into Boston’s Logan airport, consider the Boston Express Bus service http://www.bostonexpressbus.com/ and also consider Greyhound bus or private car services. If you prefer trains, consider taking Amtrak to Boston South Station and Greyhound, booked separately, from there.
If you are arriving in Manchester by bus, will need to take a taxi to your hotel (around $10). Try Queen City Taxi 603-662-0008 or West Side Taxi (603) 669-1212.
[Revised June 11]Throughout the conference, there will be reliable free bus service to get you to and from the Manchester Country Club.
Each morning and at the end of each conference day two 48-seat school buses will be available to transport the group in large numbers. The primary morning school bus departure times from the Holiday Inn Express will be 8:50 a.m. and 9:00 a.m. Thursday, Friday, and Saturday evening, and Sunday afternoon, the primary school bus departure times from the Country Club will be 15 minutes after sessions end. There will also be a school bus departure from the Holiday Inn Express at 5:00 p.m. on Thursday, June 19, for those heading over for registration and the cookout.
There will also be a regular circulating shuttle throughout the day and evening. There will usually be no more than 30 minutes between shuttle departures at either the hotel or the country club. The shuttle seats 22: there may not be room for everyone on the shuttle at one time, so you may need to wait while it completes a shuttle cycle.
Note that although the Hampton Inn is less than a mile from the Country Club, the route is not convenient or safe for walking. If you are staying at the Hampton Inn or the nearby Country Inn and Suites and need or can offer a ride, please contact the conference director (William Thomas).
At conference registration, you will receive a name tag that will be your primary participant identification. You will also receive a 3-ring binder containing abstracts and outlines of the Atlas Summit sessions, a program schedule, faculty biographies, bookstore hours, shuttle times, and other useful information.
Registration for the conference will take place from 9:00 a.m. to 9:20 and from 5 p.m. to 9 p.m. on Thursday, June 19, at the registration table in the Country Club foyer. If we aren’t there, look for us at the opening reception and cookout in the Great Room immediately adjacent. Students attending the student-welcoming barbecue on Wednesday, June 18, can register there.
If you cannot make it to registration at those times, track down the TAS conference staff at the conference sessions or the Holiday Inn Express, by phone, or at the late-night Common Room in the Holiday Inn Express, and we will register you for the conference.
Students arriving Wednesday, June 18, are invited to a friendly barbecue with Atlas Summit faculty and staff at the home of Atlas Society CEO Aaron Day. Plan to meet in the lobby of the Holiday Inn Express at 5:30 p.m. (for late arrivals, we should have transport at 6:00 and 6:30, too, and there is always taxi service). We will return from the barbecue around 9:00 p.m. Students, please confirm your arrival plans with William Thomas ( wthomas@atlassociety.org ).
To open the main program of the Atlas Summit, TAS will host an opening reception and cookout dinner from 5:15 p.m. to 6:30 p.m. in the Great Room of the Manchester Country Club. From 6:30 to 8:30 a cookout dinner will be served. There will be free soft drinks, and alcohol will be available for purchase at the bar. Come meet everyone, get to know the speakers and staff, enjoy some honest cook-out food, and get into the swing of things. After the reception, shuttle over to the Holiday Inn Express where the Common Room will keep the conviviality going.
We suggest a “dress casual” clothing style: not stuffy, not sloppy. Ties and nice dresses are acceptable, but not required. Summer weather in New Hampshire is unpredictable far in advance: check before you come to see what the Atlas Summit weather pattern is likely to be. It may be hot and moderately humid, or it may be cool and spring-like. It may rain or it may not.
If you want to take notes on the Atlas Summit sessions, a pen or pencil and some loose-leaf notebook paper might serve you well, though your conference binder will have at least a page for each session that you can use to take notes.
The most common format at the Atlas Summit is a lecture to a large group. Some sessions are small group seminars or workshops. Sessions will start and end at the posted times: arrive at least 5 minutes before the start to have time to get comfortable. There will be an M.C. at each session to introduce the speaker and moderate the session.
Speakers will try to leave time for questions from the audience: we will have microphones placed in the aisles of the lecture halls where participants should line up to ask questions (this is necessary for the recording). Keep your questions brief and to-the-point: your views are very welcome, but others may have questions, too.
At speakers’ discretion, the format for some sessions (such as seminars and workshops) may differ from that described above. Workshops and seminars are mostly not recorded and do not use microphones.
There will be free WiFi Internet access at the Manchester Country Club and, for guests and for people in public areas, in the Holiday Inn Express and Suites.
The Atlas Summit website is www.atlassociety.org/as . Go there or to http://atlassummit2014.sched.org to see the conference schedule, see who else is attending, and create your personalized program. (Social networking via Sched.org and on the Atlas Summit 2014 Facebook page replaces our traditional print Participant Directory.) You can download the program onto your mobile device, too. After the conference, the Atlas Summit website will be your source for follow-up information and for online recordings. Check out the 2013 Atlas Summit sessions that are online there now: www.atlassociety.org/as/atlas-summit-2013-videos .
We depend on your feedback to improve the Atlas Summit. This year, all our surveys will be online.
Rate individual sessions: (log in as often as you need to): https://www.surveymonkey.com/s/AS14-sessions .
Rate the Atlas Summit as whole (no repeated log-ins, so don’t take this survey until you are leaving the Summit):
https://www.surveymonkey.com/s/AS14-Overall .
Please complete your surveys by July 7.
These sessions 5:15-6:15 pm Friday, June 20, and Saturday, June 21, are for sponsored events, lectures, meetings, and other participant-run activities. You could give a talk you have prepared, or simply host a discussion of a favorite topic or of one of the Summit’s presentations. You might even persuade a faculty member to join in or field questions.
To guarantee a PSS slot, purchase a Participant/Sponsored Session ticket on the Atlas Summit 2014 EventBrite registration page ($500). Any remaining spaces not taken by sponsors are allocated at no cost, first-come, first served. If you book a session, provide the conference director (William Thomas) with a description of your talk and any time or room preferences. We will keep an up-to-date list of PSSs in the online schedule. We try to accommodate all reasonable proposals, but note that only a limited number of rooms are available.
Although the rooms available may be equipped with audiovisual equipment, they also may not. Any audiovisual arrangements are ultimately the responsibility of the participant, as are any special costs for the session. If you will need A/V equipment, check with the conference director to see if your room will automatically come with A/V support.
The Atlas Summit exemplifies The Atlas Society’s two-decade tradition of open, rational, benevolent conversation about philosophy, politics, the arts, and the art of living. We encourage you to take every opportunity to engage with the people and ideas we have gathered. We trust and expect that you will do so in a civil, courteous, and even friendly manner, so that you and your fellow participants can have an enjoyable, educational experience.
All participants are responsible for complying with the policies of the Manchester Country Club and any hotels they enter. Please note that the Manchester Country Club forbids firearms on club grounds.
Moderators and conference assistants are responsible for the orderly conduct of sessions; we ask that participants comply with their requests and exercise respect for speakers.
During Seminar sessions, audio and video recording is not permitted, except with permission of TAS. There will be official recordings of most sessions. Speakers on the program speak for themselves: their views are not necessarily those of The Atlas Society.
The Atlas Society reserves the right to limit or deny further participation in the Atlas Summit to anyone who violates these policies. On this and on all other matters that may arise during the Atlas Summit, the decision of the conference director shall be final.
Finally, it is our policy to try to make this conference as excellent an experience as it can be! We hope you will have an enriching and delightful time at the Atlas Summit.
The Atlas Society
Email: ConferenceDirector@atlassociety.org
Telephone: 202-AYN-RAND (202-296-7263) Ext. 8
www.atlassociety.org
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