The Skepticism Conventions Guide is an online database I have created and continue to maintain with the help of many other skeptics. It is a guide to the larger skepticism-related events hosted on the site Lanyrd. It includes multi-speaker conferences, unconferences, conventions, symposia and workshops. It not only acts as a schedule of upcoming events, but a permanent record of events past including speakers, talk topics with a place to record coverage such as blog posts, podcasts, videos and so on. Here’s a recent screen shot of the top of the guide:
The site provides a suite of valuable free services for event organizers, and thus I’ve recommended it for some time for the skeptic community. Events including The Amazing Meeting, Skepticamp and the Secular Student Alliance have adopted it as their official online schedules. Among the benefits provided are synchronizable calendars, a free smartphone app for attendees (both iOS and Android) and schedule and speaker widgets you can embed in a blog. For instance, the upcoming event lists here on Skeptools, at Virtual Skeptics, and at the Skepticamp home page are automatically generated from this data.
Lanyrd is also a great way to promote your event, as the site can offer suggestions to users based on what speakers they already follow on social media, the topics they are interested in and their physical location. I’ve written about it’s value on the blog, including the new speakers listing feature they recently added. This can be used to browse speakers based on topics, location and more.
Lanyrd acts like Wikipedia in that anyone logged into the site can add information. We encourage interested skeptics to help out by adding information about your favorite events – you can create an account on Lanyrd or simply log in using your existing Twitter or Linked In account. (Don’t worry, Lanyrd never spams your followers). Even if you just see a small detail missing from a listing, pitch in and help make the guide better.
You can get updates on what has been added to the guide on customized feeds for it on Twitter, Facebook and Google Plus. Please follow, like and plus those feeds as appropriate to help us promote the guide.
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