TAM2013 – big announcement!

For some time, I’ve been promising that I had some big announcements to start rolling out.  So often with these things, deals take a while from when they are first in the offing to when they are finalised. And even then there are sometimes reasons to sit on them for a while. I’m still sitting on one or two.

One big announcement that I’ve been sitting on for some time now, since it was finalised, is that I’ll be speaking at The Amazing Meeting 2013 in July. I’m very excited about this. TAM is one of the premier events in the world for the broad secularist/atheist/skeptic movement, and perhaps the premier event related specifically to scientific skepticism. To be invited to speak there is a wonderful honour and privilege, and I couldn’t be more delighted about it.

Check out the fantastic list of speakers. I feel quite humble being on that list, but I’m going to do my thing to the best of my ability and hope to deserve my place there! Among the speakers are friends whom I’ve already met and will be very pleased to catch up with – I’m thinking especially of DJ Grothe and Jerry Coyne, but no offence to anyone else. Others are people whom I consider friends but have never met. Others I have met briefly, but I look forward to getting to know them better. Still others are just people that I admire. Really, I am very, very happy at the list of names. One who is (maybe) not that well known in skeptic circles in the US, but who is a brilliant choice, is Susan Blackmore – a major public intellectual in the UK and a dynamic speaker.

(As a side note, we have a number of people there who are associated with 50 Voices of Disbelief, as editors, contributors, or blurb writers. Off the top of my head – hope I don’t miss anyone – there’s me, James Randi, Michael Shermer, Susan Blackmore, and Jerry Coyne.)

The convention theme this year is “Fighting the Fakers” – which raises a question about what I, a humble philosopher, can best say. I am not an expert in investigating/debunking paranormal and pseudoscientific claims. Still, I do have some ideas (possibly even insights) that are relevant to the topic and may be of general interest to the sorts of folks who’d be likely to attend.

I’ll be blogging more about this as the time approaches, and possibly even from the convention. I hope to see y’all there! I do know that there is likely to be a strong presence from the Skeptic Ink Network.

Good times!