The Rogers center, home to the Blue Jays and one of the many tourist attractions in Toronto where the 27th ICDE conference took place last week 

We just arrived home from the 27th International Council of Distance and online Education (ICDE) conference that was held in Toronto Canada. More than 1500 delegates from 59 countries gathered in the Central Sheraton hotel for the exciting and stimulating conference. 

Make a note  on your planners as the 28th ICDE conference will take place in 2019 in Dublin, with the open and inviting theme of "Transforming lives and societies", of cause through online and distance education. Although this conference is only in two years' time, there will be several other conferences linked to ICDE in a variety of venues coming up, so do check them out.

Totally exhausted and not able to think straight after the flights from Toronto to Dubai and back to Johannesburg, I will not even try to elaborate on the conference today. What I do hope though is that the organizing committee of the next ICDE will include in the program a conference dinner (yes really, we want a conference dinner where we can have fun and network. We do not need two alcoholic drinks - a large number of people did not even finished the first drink - at the welcoming function.

Also, we hope that the wonderful program that we enjoyed in Sun City at the 26 ICDE conference would inspire some entertainment besides the academic menu. So how about a show or a themed dinner or a really creative welcoming function? And another suggestion, how about showing the pictures taken during the conference on the screens during tea and lunch breaks? Lastly, do rank the speakers before the program is set and allocate large enough rooms for well-known speakers (they can all be given priority slots and arrange in such a way that we, the normal  and unknown speakers do not have to compete with these very popular speakers in the same time slots.

Looking forward to the next ICDE conference in Dublin!

Conference on the Impact of Religion: Challenges for Society, Law, Democracy 2018

Stockholm, Sweden. Uppsala will be the venue for the second conference on the impact of religion in April 2018

Do not miss out on the second international conference on The Impact of Religion: Challenges for society, law and democracy at Uppsala University, Sweden from 24 to 26 April 2018. There will also be a workshop for doctoral students on 23 and 24 April. This conference offers an interdisciplinary focus on the role that religion plays in both the public and private sphere of life, including local, national and international issues.

The call for abstracts is open on the following themes:
Religion and migration
Religion in the public sphere, media and politics
Religious diversity, non-religion, secularism
Religious freedom versus other human rights
Religion and youth, family, gender, sexuality
Religion and racism, discrimination, segregation
Religion and violence, terror and the security state
Faith based organisations as welfare providers, civil society, social capital
Existential health and well-being
Science and religion, relativism and absolutism

Comparative papers are particularly welcome. Theoretical, methodological and substantive issues will be given equal consideration. Thematic sessions will be organised out of the accepted abstracts. The conference language is English. 200 word abstracts must be submitted online before the 31st of October 2017.

If the themes are not enough to get you to start working on an abstract, the impressive list of keynote speakers might:

• José Casanova, Professor of Sociology of Religion, Department of Sociology, head of the Berkley Center's Program on Globalization, Religion and the Secular, Georgetown University, USA
• Grace Chang, Professor of Psychiatry, Harvard Medical School, USA
• Adam Dinham, Professor of Faith & Public Policy, and Director of the Faiths and Civil Society Unit, Goldsmiths, University of London, UK
• Elaine Howard Ecklund, Professor of Sociology and Director of Religion and Public Life Program in the Social Sciences Research Institute, Cornell University, USA
• Marie-Claire Foblets, Professor of Law and of Anthropology, Managing Director of Max Planck Institute for Social Anthropology, Halle, Germany
• Hans Joas, Professor of Sociology of Religion, Humboldt University, Berlin
• Maarit Jänterä-Jareborg, Professor of Private International Law, Uppsala University, Sweden
• Solange Lefebvre, Professor of Theology and Anthropology, University of Montreal, Canada
• Pamela Slotte, Associate professor in Minority Studies, Åbo Akademi University, Research Fellow of Academy of Finland
• Michaela Potancokova and Marcin Stonawski, Demographers, European Commission, Joint Research Centre, Centre for Advanced Studies, Ispra, Italy.

We will soon be off to the ICDE conference in Toronto, Canada after two long years of waiting since the absolute awesome ICDE conference in 2015 at Sun City in South Africa. 

Make the most of conference travel

What will you do besides attending the next conference? How about a day trip to the beautiful Niagara falls before or after the Toronto ICDE conference?

Good planning is the key to awesome conference travels. It is essential to note the key conferences that you want to attend as soon as their dates and venues are available. Then you need to work on the abstract and paper, submit with the first call for papers and start to work around the conference towards those things that will make a good trip awesome, wonderful and memorable. These activities include an eye on world events like sport calendars - some of which you can include in your itinerary if you are a fan, or would like to avoid by looking for alternative flight routes to save money on ticket and avoids crowds at airport security. Keep in mind that some conference venues are selected to coincide with large events such as the Olympic games and that attending such conferences could potentially cost much more due to the higher demands in travel and accommodation needs.  

Also, if you have the time to do so, consider including a stopover or two. This adds the feel of vacation to the conference trip and grands you the opportunity to visit places on your bucket list or simply a chance to coupe with jet-lag, before stepping right back into work when arriving home. We have loyalty membership to a few airlines and normally use their home airports for stopovers. More often than not, we are also able to plan our stopovers over weekends (when flights are more expensive and more crowed) and fly home late on a Monday night or early Tuesday morning. Stopovers also provide opportunities to visit foreign libraries and archives to do some research or including a business meeting with colleagues at a distant university, or simply a chance to visit friends or family. Remember that stopovers usually (for South Africans at least) also include extra visas. 

The ICDE conference is coming up this month - hope to see you all in Toronto!