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I’ve been invited to be a speaker at the 58th Annual Conference on World Affairs in April. Sean, a good friend I met on the IT conference circuit when I used to give a lot of talks, introduced me to the organizers of the conference and after speaking with them, they apparently think I’m a good fit. CWA isn’t like most conferences. You don’t prepare one or more a 60-90 minute talks. You suggest several potential issues to discuss which can touch on just about anything. A week or so before the conference, the organizers let you know which sessions you’ve been assigned to (which may or may not be the ones you suggested). Each session has four or more panelists that are suppose to talk for ~10 minutes on the topic. Then there is Q/A with the audience. It sounds pretty interesting and with the diverse set of speakers, including filmmakers, filmcritics (Roger Ebert), journalists, senators, writers, professors, musicians, and corporate exectutives, I couldn’t turn it down.

From the CWA website:

“The University of Colorado’s Conference on World Affairs was founded in 1948, originally as a forum on international affairs. CWA expanded rapidly to become a forum on Everything Conceivable encompassing music, literature, environmental activism, science, journalism, visual arts, diplomacy, technology, spirituality, the film industry, politics, business, medicine, human rights and so on.

Every year in April approximately 100 participants representing a wide range of backgrounds gather in Boulder a beautiful college town at the foot of the Rocky Mountains for what the New York Times calls a week-long extravaganza of discussion and debate on over 200 non-academic, cross-disciplinary panels, plenary sessions and performances.

The Conference challenges its participants to discuss a wide-range of issues on an impromptu basis offering a refreshing alternative to the specialized gatherings of academia and the business world. According to columnist Molly Ivins, CWA panels offer “…astonishing, cross-disciplinary insights, whole new ways of looking at old questions, and…information that can transform the way you look at things.”