Well, firstly we have Howard Dean coming to talk to us in Harrogate next month, at 12.15 on the Saturday.  We’ve already covered this here, and Lynne Featherstone got excited too. Expect the hall to be packed – so take your seat early and listen to the adult education policy debate we’re having immediately before it.

Don’t miss Lib Dem Voice’s first fringe meeting!

Secondly, Lib Dem Voice have organised our own fringe meeting at 8pm on Saturday evening in the main conference centre. We’ll take as our theme “Learning the Lessons from the Obama Campaign” and will be discussing what we can take from the successful Democrat campaign last year and implement in Lib Dem organisations across the country.  
Speaking on the topic will be the party’s chair of the Campaigns and Communications Committee Ed Davey MP; our own co-editor and Head of Innovations Mark Pack; and Chris Huhne staffer and speechwriter for Obama Jake Rigg.  And a latecomer to the event, coming forward after the agenda was published, but by no means less welcome, Karin Robinson, Americans Abroad for Obama’s Regional Field Director for UK, Ireland and Scandinavia. We’ll of course leave time for audience questions, and I plan on recording the entire session and podcasting it for our listeners at home.

Lib Dem conference in 2010/11

More exciting news reaches the LDV team via this article in the Birmingham Post. The Conference Committee have, it appears, signed a two conference deal with the International Conference Centre in Birmingham that takes us there for Spring conference next year and Autumn conference the year after.

Birmingham’s certainly a welcome break from the South coast after at least four years in Brightmouth; the city is no stranger to party conferences having hosted both Labour and the Conservatives in the recent past; and the venue is clearly world class, as anyone who attended last year’s ALDC conference there can attest.

The Birmingham Post makes it very clear just what a boost to the local economy a visit from the Lib Dems can bring:

Marketing Birmingham, with Birmingham City Council, The NEC Group and West Midlands Police, have secured a two-year deal with the Liberal Democrats to bring them to the ICC as well, generating an estimated £11million for the regional economy.

The party’s annual conference in September 2011 is expected to attract 6,000 visitors, providing a boost to hotels, restaurants, bars, shops, transport providers and other businesses in the event supply chain, as well as acting as a showcase for the city.

Harrogate 2009 starts here!

Both party conferences are a big part of our year here on Lib Dem Voice, and it’s certainly our aim to be your one-stop shop for conference news in advance of the event, during it, and for post-match analysis. We know that not everyone can afford the time, travel or hotel bills of conference, so our website is a crucial link between those who can be there and those who are cheering us on from home.

Our team meeting tomorrow will of course be covering our conference plans in some detail, but the rough outline in previous years has been: the team will cover as many as the main hall events as we can, and we welcome all submissions from bloggers and freelance writers present at the event. Since we can’t be everywhere at once, we are definitely keen to receive submissions of reviews of fringe events, gossip from the Glee Club and alternative perspectives to our own of the events of the weekend.

And our coverage of the conference is not confined to conference weekend itself. We’d like to encourage all those who are tabling motions or planning to table amendments to kick start the debate here on the Voice (as we did very successfully before Autumn conference last year with Danny Alexander and Paul Holmes debating Make it Happen.)

We’d be equally happy to hear from exhibitors at conference who’d like to reach a larger audience through this blog than will be present at the conference itself – if you want to reach a Lib Dem audience at conference, you’ll want to write us an article too! Our non-partisan strand of writing is available to you at no cost in The Independent View; or you could pay for some advertising using MessageSpace (make sure you tell them we sent you!).

Finally, we’re actively looking for sponsors to help us bring even more Fringe events to conference in the Autumn, so if you could help us with the costs of an event, in return for good publicity and a podcast – please get in touch with me: [email protected]

See you in Harrogate!