It’s the end of July, and I have not been really diligent about communicating with our various mailing lists. I feel a little bad about that, so I got Helen and Jennifer to let me extend the “early bird” 10% discount until August 15th. That way, when I do get around to emailing everyone this weekend, they will have at least a couple of weeks to decide before the price goes up.
Tag: news
Ready for September 2022!
I guess that I am getting better with practice, because this time it only took me two days to get the website updated with the September 2022 workshop info. We had to update the WooCommerce PayPal gateway, which now has more options; but unfortunately, it still at first appears as though you need a PayPal account to check-out and pay. (Which is not the case — you can pay by credit card / debit card; but you have to click on “PayPal” to see the credit / debit card option.)
I still am not a huge fan of WordPress, but I have to admit that the “blocks” editor now has most of the functionality I want, and it is a lot faster than it used to be. (Some of that may be that we have faster internet at the house now, though.) I still am strongly tempted to just redo everything from the ground up in Elm. But that is not gonna happen this month; and tbh, I have no idea how to approach handling payments in a safe and sane manner. (Thanks for making that possible, WooCommerce and PayPal, even for dingbats like moi! Sorry I talk so much smack about you.)
ANYway — registration for the online (thank you, Zoom and Vimeo, for making that easy) September workshop events is now open! I still want to update some of the graphics. But the main thing is, the dates are now correct, and people can sign up. Yay!!
Postponement
Well, it’s official – the workshop events we had scheduled for October 2021 have now been pushed back to dates in springtime 2022 that are yet to be determined. Too much going on. To save myself work, I’ve basically mothballed the events boilerplate. When we know dates (and whether we’ll be in-person, online, or some hybrid combination of the two), I just have to add that in, and switch it from “draft” to “published”.
Hm – I see that I missed putting up a blog post back in July, when the workshop formerly known as October 2021 was switched from in-person to online-via-Zoom. Whoopsy-daisy. I’ll need to be better at keeping this updated, or else what’s the point.
Lecture videos up; early bird snafu; next steps
The Friday Research Lecture, pt. 1 (July 31) and pt. 2 (Aug. 7), went smoothly. I’m honestly impressed with Zoom — there was very little of the lag and freezing I expected, considering we had 30+ people connecting in coast-to-coast in the U.S. and Canada, and a few in Eurpope.
The Zoom recording feature worked nicely and rendered cleanly, with perfectly acceptable audio. I got my recording in “speaker view”, and edited it with Jennifer’s recording in “gallery view”, to produce a reasonably o.k. video of the lectures. We uploaded to Vimeo for embedding here at BMNW until Oct. 31.
Someone (two someones, actually) pointed out that I had the “Early Bird” discount coupon expiring a week earlier than I claimed — ouch! Careless of me. So I fixed that, and extended it to Aug. 22. If you tried to use the coupon and got an error message, I apologize sincerely.
We’re pretty much ready for the Two Day Workshop, in about a month. Just some sprucing up to do:
- Edit the Lecture videos down to a few minutes, that people can watch without registration;
- Post pics of our intrepid organizers, Helen and Jennifer;
- Actually update the FAQ, instead of just saying I’m gonna update.
(Well, hey now, that’s new — WordPress now has the ability to insert internal anchors! That’s actually … exciting. I’m still considering switching to Elm, but maybe I don’t actively revile WordPress quite as much as I did 30 seconds ago.)
See you on Zoom!
Website updated (FAQ next)
Hello everyone! I got the dates on the website updated, and I got the “early bird’ discount working (pay before Aug. 15 for 10% off!) I refunded the 10% to everyone who had already paid, and I processed refunds for the two people who didn’t wish to attend the workshop now that it’s moved online. All in all, not bad progress.
Next is to update the FAQ with all the new frequently asked questions. I expect to have time for that before the weekend. After that, I’m adding some kind of Turing test to the Friday Lectures registration page — since it’s free, I’m a little worried about spambots signing up; and I surely don’t want to leave an avenue for Zoom-bombers to abuse. And somewhere in there, I’ve got to do something about the graphics — so tacky-looking, it causes Helen physical pain. But it was quick, so that was the trade-off.
Also as the workshop draws nigh, I’m making a commitment to check the BengstonMethodNW.com email and comments daily. In the past, I figured once a week was good enough (and I didn’t always hit that target). But now, once a day is the minimum. Cheers!
2020 Workshop is now Online!
As you’ll be aware, unless you’ve recently emerged from a long hibernative state, the covid-19 problem is dissuading people from traveling and gathering face to face. We have had several folks express interest in attending the workshop virtually. So it pleases me to say that Dr. Bill Bengston and the Seattle September workshop organizers (Helen and Jennifer) have agreed to hold the workshop online using a teleconference platform — Zoom.com, most likely.
The conference room at SeaTac Community Center, and its setting in the Highline Botanical Garden, are beautiful; and we expect to return there when this stupid virus is under control. Meanwhile, we forge forward online — and don’t have to worry about airfare and lodging!
As the resident tech guy, this means I have some things to get accomplished in the next few weeks. Most pressingly, I need to update this website with the new dates and times. Oh, and I need to code in the “Early Bird Discount”. (Pay in full by August 15, get 10% off!)
The “Friday Evening Research Lecture” is getting split over two Fridays. It will be live, with a Q&A session at the end. It will be free to all, and it’s strongly recommended for all Two-Day Workshop participants, because it explains the foundation of Dr. Bengston’s method, and this material will not be covered during the weekend workshop proper.
The dates for the “Weekend Workshop” (a.k.a. “Two Day Workshop”, a.k.a. “Basic Course”) are unchanged, but it will begin an hour earlier, because Bill is on the east coast. The “Advanced Practice Monday” is getting moved to the following Saturday (and will begin an hour earlier). Overall, the new schedule looks like this:
- Fri., 2020-JUL-31 – 5pm-6pm – Research Lecture Day 1
- Fri., 2020-AUG-07 – 5pm-6pm – Research Lecture Day 2
- Sat., 2020-SEP-26 – 9am-4pm – Weekend Workshop Day 1
- Sun., 2020-SEP-27 – 9am-4pm – Weekend Workshop Day 2
- Sat., 2020-OCT-03 – 9am-3pm – Advanced Practice Day
So, that’s what I’ll be working on this weekend.