Northwest Tarot Symposium 2015: Part 1
The weekend of March 6th through March 8th saw the inaugural event for the Northwest Tarot Symposium (NWTS), in Portland, OR. The symposium, founded by Devera Publishing (Jay and Jadzia DeForest) was an outstanding success – so much so that I am going to do a three part blog on this – a general overall impression (Part 1), a synopsis of the presenters (Part 2), and a synopsis of the vendors (Part 3).
Note: The symbol for NWTS became the delightful little newt. The west coast now rocks with BATS and NWTS!
A tremendous amount of work went into this event, beginning with Jay and Jadzia themselves. The location of the venue (The Monarch Hotel) was a very good one. The rooms were nice, the staff very courteous (they held my luggage for me behind the desk when I checked out on Sunday, as there were still presentations to see, as well as a final walk through the vending area), and it was quite easy to get to both the presentations (which were in one area), and the vendors area (which included a showing of art for the silent auction), which was completely separate.
A special note of thanks to Pamela Steele, who vetted the art auction, and to Jadzia and December for the time and effort they put into making this part of the symposium go off without a hitch. It was awesome to see this much art in one place.
Totally not connected with the Art Auction, but of interest anyway, was the fact that Theresa Pridemore (The Portland Tarot), and Courtney Weber (Tarot of the Boroughs) were both present. Each lady has a deck out representing her own unique city – to me this was incredible!
Registration was in an area directly off the lobby, which was very handy. I was very lucky when I registered, as Katrina Wynne was doing the registering, and she is someone that I very much wanted to meet. Katrina did more than her fair share throughout the event, making sure that everyone got where they needed to go, and had what they needed to have. And she did so in a very unobtrusive manner.
A full color programme covered everything that participants needed to know about the symposium: presenters (with bios and topics), presentation times and rooms, a map so it would be easy to move around, the story behind the little newt logo, and a list of vendors. Several of the presenters and vendors carried ads in the programme – thank you for helping support NWTS! I have another big shout out to make to the publishing community – Devera Publishing, U.S. Games Systems Inc., and Schiffer Publishing all carried full page ads! Kudos to The Fool’s Dog, The Tarot School, and the San Francisco Bay Area Tarot Symposium for supporting NWTS with ads.
Both Jay and Jadzia were all over the place, making things happen. What a gracious, professional couple! They also had a booth to maintain for Devera Publishing, but they managed to get everything done, with the help of Jay’s sister Pat, Tom McConnell, December, Lizzie, Sierra, Pascale, and Tracie.
The Friday night Meet & Greet in the Monarch Hall was a tremendous success. The vending and art auction areas were open, there was a bar set-up, and wonderful finger food. What a treat to have a chance to meet some of the lovely people from the Tarot world that I have only interacted with online!
A cold cut, cheese and salad lunch was available both Saturday and Sunday. A nice break to sit down and have a longer chat with new friends! And there were also raffle drawings!
Saturday night saw us back in the Monarch Room with a bar set-up, finger food (which was very good!), raffle drawings, a great talk from the incredible Mark Ryan, and an awesome lineup of belly dancers, followed by music from Three For Silver.
I had a fabulous time, considering that I arrived sans Tarot deck (when I usually bring three or four!), and had to stop at Safeway and pick up a notebook to take notes on the presentations! (NWTS will be presented again next year, so I am going to make best use of this notebook and save it for all coming NWTS events. What a history that will be!)
Hope to see you all here next year!
Northwest Tarot Symposium Part 2
Northwest Tarot Symposium Part 3
© 2015 Bonnie Cehovet
Reproduction prohibited without written permission from the author.
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