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+--- Thread: [Other] Sad news about Stephen Bax (/thread-2212.html)
RE: Sad news about Stephen Bax - Ruby Novacna - 23-11-2018
A virtual conference can not suffice? Less expensif, accessible to all, not requiring travel?
RE: Sad news about Stephen Bax - Koen G - 23-11-2018
The practical considerations are only a second stage. The first step would be to actually get specialists interested in the project. You would need financial incentive, ideally backed by a reputable institution. And ideally someone with a name in academic circles to convince them.
RE: Sad news about Stephen Bax - VViews - 23-11-2018
Wow, one year already...
Of course, a conference would be nice.
I wonder if those who organized the Voynich 100 symposium might be helpful in achieving this?
How about Beinecke/ Clemens? Would they support such an initiative? It would be a huge boost to have their backing.
RE: Sad news about Stephen Bax - -JKP- - 23-11-2018
To get support for something like that, it's helpful to have a focus. The idea around which it revolves is usually what determines whether people want to be involved or not.
[rest of post moved to a separate thread]
RE: Sad news about Stephen Bax - ReneZ - 24-11-2018
What Stephen tried to do was to interest people with an academic background in some relevant areas into the MS, and get them to contribute to a set of papers or presentations. I am not sure how successful he was with that.
I know it is a very challenging thing.
There is a very large 'disconnect' between academic and amateur interest in the Voynich MS. This is related to the relative importance that the MS has in these two circles, which is very different indeed. Given that the Beinecke already held a workshop dedicated to this single MS in 2014, it seems very unlikely that this will happen again soon, unless there is any kind of significant news. Any academic paper about the MS can appear in any number of existing journals, periodicals and symposia/workshops.
There is an almost complete lack of understanding between these two 'groups'.
If anything Voynich-dedicated is likely to happen in the not too distant future, I see this coming from the area of NLP (Natural Language Processing). It is still only happening in very incidental cases right now, but this is an area where significant, relevant progress is possible, that is not already covered by history and book academia.
There is nothing to stop the active bloggers and forum participants to meet up in some form or other. Nick has organised more or less regular informal meet-ups in London. A slightly larger event was held in 1998, without much need for large-scale preparation. Something like the 2012 Mondragone event takes a great deal of preparation, and an attempt to repeat it in 2014 failed for that reason.
Anyone thinking of doing something similar is welcome to go ahead, and I will be happy to provide advice.
Making it a proper symposium or workshop requires to set up an organising committee, invitations for contributions and criteria for accepting or rejecting such contributions. I think one can easily see how difficult that is going to be ...
RE: Sad news about Stephen Bax - davidjackson - 24-11-2018
Right, so a piss-up in London it is then. The Europeans can fly or train in, we'll skype JKP onto a large TV and afterwards we can all crash out at NickPelling's.
Unless Anton is going to write us all letters of invitation for a Moscow trip?
RE: Sad news about Stephen Bax - VViews - 24-11-2018
London... Or the Voynich Café in Burgos?
RE: Sad news about Stephen Bax - ReneZ - 24-11-2018
Now there's an idea
RE: Sad news about Stephen Bax - Emma May Smith - 24-11-2018
It's important to look at the objectives of holding a conference. I've heard two different ideas: one is to interest academic researchers, the other to provide a forum for discussion of existing research. I don't think either of those objectives will be fulfilled by a conference at this stage.
A conference would only be of interest to academics if they were already interested in the Voynich manuscript. The conference would give them the chance to present and discuss their research. Even though a formal conference might make academics more willing to come forward if they are researching, the issue is really getting them over that initial hurdle of beginning research.
A conference to discuss existing amateur research (us, basically) would be potentially worthwhile as research is currently not good enough (I'm to blame as much as anybody). But I feel that a conference would be expensive and time-consuming to arrange, and for a group of amateurs it could only ever be a very irregular meeting.
The Voynich 100 Conference is a good example of these two points: yes, some academics are interested in the Voynich manuscript, but there's still not a great deal of engagement with the amateur research community; and, as Rene has remarked, a repeat conference hasn't been possible.
I feel that the two objectives could be better met in another way: a 'soft' journal for amateur research. It would allow the community to filter the best of the existing amateur research, presenting our 'best face' to academics/professionals. It would further build a repository for amateur research, allowing more orderly referencing and discussion of that research. There would be no need for the journal to be regularly nor physically published, just an 'as and when' publication released as a PDF. Researchers could submit themselves or be approached by the journal.
I would be willing to put a journal together (setting and layout) if there were 3 or 4 other people willing to select articles/papers.
RE: Sad news about Stephen Bax - Anton - 24-11-2018
We have a prototype of that with our "Drafts for peer-review" section, but it does not prove to be popular for submissions, and neither, in particular, for reviews. My own two pieces have been hanging unreviewed for 2+ years, the second part having already become obsolete (its approach has been shown by Wladimir to be wrong).