Dear potential Open Engagement attendee.

We are very excited about the upcoming coming conference, as we know many of you are. We have been receiving emails daily from people who plan on attending.

When planning this event a difficult decision had to be made—do we have the conference be completely open to the public, or do we close the event to presenters only?

With over 140 presenters and many students from our sponsoring institutions it would have been a completely sensible move to not have this event be public.

However in the spirit of access and the inclusion we decided to allow this event to be open to all (with priority access being given to presenters, students and volunteers), first come first serve.

As we get closer to the conference we want to stress the reasons for this structure. We know that some of you might be disappointed that there will not be room for you in all of the sessions, but we felt that this disappointment was better than complete exclusion from the conference.

We hope that all of you will be patient and understanding during Open Engagement if you experience high attendance levels.

For complete information on how to attend the conference please read the HOW TO ATTEND section of the openengagement.info website. This section will clearly list the events that we anticipate will be at maximum capacity as well as which sessions we think would be most accessible.

Thank you for understanding, and your excitement. We are truly looking forward to have you here in Portland with us for Open Engagement.

All my very best,

Jen Delos Reyes and the Open Engagement Planning Committee