source file: m1568.txt
Date: Fri, 30 Oct 1998 11:28:34 +0800

Subject: Re: international microtonal conference

From: Lydia Ayers <layers@cs.ust.hk>

If we were voting about the conference site, my vote would be
for the first conference to be at Harvey Mudd with Bill Alves
planning it with anybody else in the area who wants to help
out.  There is no reason why the folks in San Diego couldn't
come up and help, since it's not so far away.

Then I would vote to have another conference, a year or two
later, somewhere else, even San Diego (it wouldn't bother
me if it was in California twice in a row).  Materials from
a conference that had already met once would give
the people in San Diego more to show the universities there
to convince them how worthwhile it would be to host a 

microtonal conference, as it appears that none of them are
currently on the faculty of any of those universities.  Well,
unless someone like Jon Fonville (UCSD) is on board.

I can say from experience that it's much easier with the
resources of a well-equipped university, and easier if one 

of the organizers is on the faculty there.  (For example, 

when we did ICMC we had to bus people to another venue for 

most of the concerts because we don't have a real concert 

hall at HKUST, and then we had to deal with the government 

sponsor of the other venue.  And to make it worse, I wasn't 

on the faculty of HKUST at the time, though the co-chair
was.)

Frankly, for people coming from farther away (for example, 

from Hong Kong and Europe), LA might be slightly 

more convenient than San Jose, since it's an international
airport.  It also has more direct routes to other places
in the US.

Well, that's my .02 cents.

Best,

Lydia Ayers