Ep #119 - CBA 2018 Spring Conference Crew

This week I’ve got the CBA Spring Conference organizers, the crew that has dedicated countless volunteer hours of their time planning and scheduling the CBA 40th Anniversary Spring Conference coming up April 12 – 14 in Placerville, CA.  The crew consists of Dennis Dusek, the conference chair, aka the big cheese, Dan Perkins, who is the CBA Education director, Victoria Ritter who is in charge of the volunteers and vendors, and Paul Boulay, the Vice President of the CBA.  We talk about what it takes to host an event of this size and what to expect during the conference.

And they happen to be the sponsor for today’s episode. There is still time to get the early bird discount of $165 for all 3 days if you register before March 22nd.  The demonstrator line-up is:

Zeevik Gottlieb, Lynda Metcalfe, Ellen Durkan, Haley Woodword, Colby Brinkman, David Lisch, Mark Aspery, Darryl Nelson and Paul Boulay.

To register, head over to www.calsmith.org and click on the events tab for the online registration button.

What We Talked About

• Dennis tells us about his past conferences that he has organized, the last one was in 2013 with an attendance of around 400 people.
• The core group of 4, Dennis, Paul, Dan and Victoria, meet weekly to go through a list of things that need attention. This happens for eight months ahead of the conference.
• Each person has a role; Paul Boulay works with the budget and the big picture ideas with Dennis, Victoria Ritter works with organizing the groups of vendors, volunteers and registration people, and Dan Perkins is the education site manager, helping with the layout of the venue and gathering/installing all of the equipment for the demonstrators and teaching tents.
• CBA will be purchasing 10 anvils, so they can have 10 forging stations at the conference for the attendees to use.
• We talk about the forging contests that will be held each night of the conference; forging a cube, forge anything from a railroad spike and a wearable art forged piece.

Guest Links

• Register for the conference - calsmith.org