This summer Birmingham, UK will play host to Enquiry 2010 Conference a national conference for atheists, humanists and sceptics on the topic of “atheism in the 21st century.” With three days of events, a dazzling array of speakers and all profits going to charity this is not an event to be missed!

Guest speakers include Professor A C Grayling, Professor Chris French, Andrew Copson, Maryam Namazie and many others plus more guests still to be confirmed. There will also be evening entertainment and plenty of opportunities to get to know other conference attendees throughout the weekend too.

Enquiry aims to to bring a greater level of understanding on contemporary issues but in addition to that all profits are going to the Foundation to support the work we do including the Humanist Action Group, Humanist Communities and our work to support student groups. We’ll also be presenting some brand new initiatives which will be unveiled at the conference!

The event will take place on the first weekend of June – Friday 4th to Sunday 6th at the Crowne Plaza Hotel in Birmingham. We very much hope you can join us there! Find out full details on the Enquiry 2010 Conference website.

Where to begin, where to begin?

There is so much to talk about. We’ve just come out of a whirlwind conference for the AHS. I guess the logical place to begin would be at the start. But I’m not going to start there. I’m going to start in the middle and work my way round in some kind of circular motion.

First of all, we now have an AHS. While I am a firm believer the AHS began at our June conference, because that is when it actually began, was named and became “something” but as of Saturday we now have a ratified constitution and so are even more “official.”

Secondly we now have elected representatives. Congratulations to Norman, Jenna and Tom who have been elected president, secretary and treasurer respectively. Myself, Alex, Chloe and Andrew have also been appointed as trustees. Hmm, thinking about it, we should probably let Andrew know about that .

All in all it’s been a busy, busy weekend. We started on Friday with One Life (which I will blog about later) then had some drinks in The Terrace and then headed down to the German Christmas market. Saturday consisted of looking at the constitution and society presentations followed by dinner at L’oranise, drinks in The Old Bar and then Wendy House and then we finished up on Sunday with breakfast at Wetherspoon’s and some roundtable discussions. Still once it was all done I could go home and relax while I tried to catch up on all the freelance work I still had to get completed for Monday .

It was great to see everyone again and meet a new few faces too. If I thought I packed a lot into the weekend it was nothing compared to the amount of jokes and puns that Stuart and Greg from Edinburgh managed to fit in. Even if they did start to grate on certain other conference delegates by the end of the weekend .

We also recorded a “live from the AHS conference” edition of the podcast which will be available from Friday, providing I get it edited together in time lol. All in all, a very productive weekend and I look forward to seeing everyone again next year.

Having cleared up some unfair slander of my character in recent times and eaten a rather enjoyable sausage casserole courtesy of Michelle, the final preparations began for this weekend’s AHS conference.

The delegate packs are looking reasonably flash if I do say so myself and everything is now in place for tonight’s One Life which should produce some interesting discussions. I think this weekend is going to be very exciting given we are watching history in the making with the ratification of the constitution.

I am also very much looking forward to getting some events planning done and the live from the AHS conference podcast should be fantastic also.

With the long awaited conference for atheist, Humanist, secular and generally free thinking student societies finally having arrived, myself and Norm headed up to Edinburgh for the conference that would form the foundation of our national federation for such societies.

I feel I was lied to. I was told Scotland had a road network. It really doesn’t. It’s barely motorway up to Newcastle due to roadworks currently going on and after that it just runs out entirely – some of the A1, the legendary A1, is basically just a country lane.

Still we made it up there in one piece and kicked off the Friday night with introductions, a meal and some late night drinking. It was nice to have some fun as basically what followed was two days of talks, debates and lots of Humanism.

Never the less we have all come away from the event with a new national oranisation – the national federation of atheist, Humanist and secular student studies or A.H.S. for short. So all in all a rather successful weekend.