EFTA00678099.pdf

From: Gino Yu 4 > To: "Jeffrey E." Subject: Fwd: TSC 2017 CONFERENCE MOVED TO SAN DIEGO, CA - FOLLOW UP EMAIL Date: Fri, 31 Mar 2017 03:41:34 +0000 Just another heads up... James Tagg was working with me toward getting Wendy and Stuart to talk to each other... Kinda ugly what he did. Just wanted to give you a heads up as I introduced both James and Stuart to you. Knowing them, they will probably ask you to fund their Penrose Institute. gino Begin forwarded message: From: Center for Consciousness Studies <[email protected]> Subject: TSC 2017 CONFERENCE MOVED TO SAN DIEGO, CA - FOLLOW UP EMAIL Date: 30 March 2017 at 3:11:23 PM HKT To: <[email protected]> Resent-From: <[email protected]> Reply-To: Center for Consciousness Studies <[email protected]> The Science of Consciousness ('TSC') 2017 will be held in San Diego, California, June 5-10 Dear TSC 2017 Speakers and Participants, The Center for Consciousness Studies (CCS) at the University of Arizona is pleased to announce we will convene TSC 2017 June 5-10, 2017 in San Diego, California, home to our new affiliates, The Penrose Institute for Creativity, Consciousness, and Physics of the Universe; and the University of California, San Diego ('UCSD'). At the moment we have several excellent venue options in La Jolla and San Diego for those dates, will announce very soon the final selection, and provide further information. Please read on below, and we'll catch you up on the details of why we were compelled to move the annual TSC Conference from Shanghai, China to southern California, and how the move can work out for the better. Meanwhile... Please consider receipt of this email as our 're-invitation' for you to speak and participate at TSC 2017 San Diego. We hope to keep the previous Shanghai TSC program as intact as possible. If you were invited by CCS as a Plenary speaker to the Shanghai TSC conference , the invitation stands, as do offers regarding travel and lodging support. Please let us know ASAP. EFTA00678099 If you submitted an abstract which was accepted for Concurrent talk, Poster or Demo session, your acceptance still stands and we will schedule your presentation accordingly in San Diego when you confirm participation in San Diego. Abi is straightening out details now; please contact her at [email protected] and she'll assist you with changes to your itinerary and registration. We're hoping to address travel changes 'in bulk' with each airline, so please get your information to us right away, to assist in that regard. As much as possible, we're hoping to keep our original TSC 2017 program intact, and hope you're as excited by the changes as we are. That said, if you're unable to come to San Diego, we understand completely, and apologize for any inconvenience or undue stress this venue change has caused. Please confirm your participation ASAP. As we said above, if you are a registrant and have submitted an abstract which was accepted for Concurrent talk, Poster or Demo, we will also honor those decisions and include you in the Program accordingly. Please confirm your participation ASAP. If you registered without an abstract submission, also please confirm your participation. If you have paid money or provided credit card information to the Crystal Globe website or PayPal, please let us know as soon as possible. In some cases, Crystal Globe has refunded money, but in other cases they haven't, and have continued to take more. CCS will reimburse our registrants, and apologize for this problem. Please see specific instructions below. What happened? Our proposed co-host for TSC Shanghai, Crystal Globe, misrepresented their capacity and/or willingness to support the TSC Conference, reneged on funding speaker costs and other expenses while collecting sponsorships and registration fees, failed to provide adequate information to process Visas, and is now attempting to put on their own 'TSC', re-named 'Technology, Science and Consciousness' (now changed again to 'CST' after we lodged formal complaints). When we considered other venues in Shanghai, Crystal Globe threatened to interfere with our getting necessary permits. Nonetheless they continue to use our logos and material on their website in the promotion of their own conference. In the interest of protecting the intellectual property of Conference participants (not just for tech exhibitors and speakers, but also our TSC Conference, proper), compounded by Crystal Globe's request for participants to submit personal and financial information through unsecured channels (completely out of line, and done without our approval), CCS/TSC has terminated its association with Crystal Globe China. The TSC/CST conference that Crystal Globe is promoting on their website IS NOT the TSC conference produced by the University of Arizona's Center for Consciousness Studies. Registering through their site DID NOT register you to attend our annual TSC conference. Directions on how to re-register are provided below. Please contact us immediately and well assist you with your new registration and travel-related changes (don't worry, we'll honor our original agreements and assist you with getting a refund from Crystal Globe or otherwise reimburse you if necessary). Onward: We, the Center for Consciousness Studies, did not make this decision lightly. A conference relocation of this magnitude, at this late date, is a logistical nightmare (to say nothing of inconvenience to our guests). Yet TSC participants have all seen Abi work miracles over the years, and we believe moving a major conference to a new country in two months time is feasible with your cooperation and understanding. She has a great team supporting her. Every cloud has a silver lining, and we believe the move of TSC 2017 to San Diego will attract additional participants and technology to, help launch the new Penrose Institute, and enable collaboration with it, UCSD EFTA00678100 and other southern California organizations. What To Do Now: If you registered to attend the conference through the Crystal Globe website and/or paid any money to Crystal Globe you have registered for their TSC/CST conference not ours. Please let us know ASAP so we can assist you. CCS can no longer endorse Crystal Globe, and urges extreme care going forward if you choose to continue dealing with them. Also please note that the invitation Crystal Globe sent to speakers did not commit to reimbursement for travel or lodging, and asked speakers to guarantee hotel costs at their own personal risk. We hope you didn't send them anything, but if you did, please contact us at [email protected] immediately, and we'll help straighten things out. Once again, we apologize for any inconvenience this change has caused, and hope you'll be joining us in San Diego, California for TSC 2017. Please let us know your intentions soon. We expect it to be a fantastic conference. With kind regards, Stuart Hameroff, Founding Director Abi Behar-Montefiore, Assistant Director Betsy Bigbee, Advisor Center for Consciousness Studies, The University of Arizona EFTA00678101