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Many thanks to all who have made kind comments about Inkshed 22, and thanks
for all the suggestions about future conferences. I just want to clarify one
aspect of the graduate students’ participation this year. We did not
identify grad students on the participants list in an effort at
equalization. We had eight (or nine?) grad students presenting, at least
four of whom presented in the regular sessions on Friday and Saturday. Four
more presented in the “Research Works in Progress” sessions late on
Saturday, along with four non-student presenters. These sessions were
scheduled late in the program mainly because the previous sessions seemed to
have a coherence that we didn’t want to disrupt. This was the first year
that a “research in progress” session was added to the program. By its
nature, this category may be more difficult to connect to any conference
theme. (Those who were at Inkshed 21 may recall that this category came
about after some participants said they wanted to know what other
Inkshedders were working on). Having said that, I agree that being last on
the agenda is tough, and this should be a consideration. We certainly want
to continue to encourage graduate students to come to Inkshed.

I’d also like to respond to the “more inkshedding/more discussion” requests,
which I heartily support. To do this will mean restricting the number of
presenters. Many people cannot get funding to attend unless they appear on
the program, so there may be an effect on the number of participants in
doing this. In keeping with the past practices of inclusion, we refused only
a few proposals that were too late or were unrelated to the theme. In our
committee, I argued in favour of inclusion because I was not clear that we
had the mandate to change the practice without broader discussion, but I
think it is time to reconsider this as a group. We did try to encourage more
proposers to switch to poster presentations, but were not successful for a
variety of reasons. Perhaps there is a way to make alternate modes of
presentation more attractive.

The comments on these two issues have hit on the two most difficult aspects
of the conference preparation for us – well, those and the shuttle bus
details. Best wishes and many thanks to the Manitoba Bisons for taking on
Inkshed 23.

Jane Milton



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