Last Ever QED

 

See here for essential background: https://hpanwo-tv.blogspot.com/2024/10/qed-conference-2024.html.
QED- Question Explore Discover have announced their 2025 event with a bit of a sad surprise. This year will be the last ever conference. This news came without warning and the Merseyside Skeptics Society and Manchester Skeptics Society, the duo who organize them, have provided no explanation for this. They simply included the statement: "All good things must come to an end, and after fifteen years of running the UK's largest celebration of science, reason and critical thinking, 2025 will see the final QED conference." They add that they want to go down in a blaze of glory by making this last conference the best ever. Source: https://qedcon.org. There has been much discussion in the Skeptisphere about the demise of QED. People are shocked and disappointed, but there is a lot of gratitude and nostalgia too. It seems the decision was made privately among the organizers for reasons spoken about only among them. I've known many conferences that go into decline, both skepper and woo-woo; but usually there is some gossip and hinting beforehand of problems such as financial obstacles, organizational challenges, personal disputes among the crew, Covid recovery issues or simple loss of energy. This means that when the axe falls few people feel surprised. This is different; it came out of the blue. Last year's conference was the first one I've ever been too, but I could tell there was a lot of passion and popularity there, and there is an entire culture and community associated with QED. Possibly more information will come to light at the event itself. Will I go again? Maybe. I enjoyed the 2024 one, see link above. Whether I do or not will probably depend on money. I'm returning to Contact in the Desert this year, see: https://hpanwo-tv.blogspot.com/2024/06/ben-in-desert.html, and that is not cheap; especially if, like me, you have to travel a long way to get there. I will know more where I stand when I get home from that. The fact that this has happened so suddenly means the QED community still exists and therefore there is a vacuum that will probably be filled with a new replacement conference. The burgeoning of Contact was partly fuelled by the mothballing of the "Laughlin conference", the International UFO Congress. If a "QED 2.0" emerges it will probably do so quickly, within a year or so. I'm curious to wait and see what develops.
See here for background: https://hpanwo.blogspot.com/2021/08/skeptics-portal.html.