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We’re hard at work this month planning the 2010 Woodworking in America conference, which is scheduled for Oct. 1-3 in the Cincinnati, Ohio, area.
Because this conference will be in our backyard, we’re excited to show off the Queen City a bit, and we know we can make this the best conference yet. There are lots of events we’re toying with now: tours of the unrestored White Water Shaker Village, bourbon tastings, an evening at the magazine’s shop and the list goes on and on.
However, our first goal is to get the program lined up and the speakers invited. And that’s where we can use your help. If you’ve been to any of our Woodworking in America conferences, you know that we always seek your feedback about what you like and don’t like about the conference. And after putting on three of these programs, we think we’re now dialing into the best way to deliver a huge fire hose of woodworking information in a short three-day weekend.
Thanks to our careful selection of a facility (more details on that soon), we’re going to be merging the hands-on sessions with the lecture sessions. And we’re going to be offering more and varied topics than in years past. What will this look like? For example, we’re planning a room that will be devoted to handsaws. During all three days, that room will be staffed with instructors and volunteers who will be giving short lectures on a variety of topics (selection, sharpening, use, etc.), and there will be workstations set up for attendees to work on these skills at their own pace. And there will be a similar room for handplanes and edge tools. And so on.
The net result is that you will be able to go from room to room to gather the specific skills you want. There will be more time with the instructors. And more time for you to get your hands on the tools.
To this end, we’ve assembled a short survey to find out what sort of skills we should ask the instructors to cover during the three days. The list covers a wide swath of material, and it’s not just oriented toward hand tools , we’re considering adding a power-tool component (at the request of some attendees).
If you could please take this five-minute survey, it would help us immensely. And one of the respondents will receive a $100 shopping spree in the WoodworkersBookshop.com. We’ll draw the winner on Feb. 8.
Thanks in advance.
Start the Woodworking in America survey.
– Christopher Schwarz
