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I want to apologize to the forum members. I had high hopes that UTD could host the seminar, but I had to inform Charles today that it will not be possible. I tried very hard to find a willing sponsor but was rebuffed each time. I hope that by next year I will have found a willing sponsor should Charles choose to hold a similar event in the DFW area.

For those of you in the DFW area that have the ability to line up a possible location, I pray you can find one as soon as possible. This process has taken much longer than I had hoped it would, and October is now half gone. I know that many folks have been looking forward to this for quite some time now. Hopefully something can happen fairly soon.

Charles L. Cotton wrote:The first one will be in October at UT Dallas. The final date hasn't been set. Others will be set shortly.

Chas.

I am still working on sponsorship. Both the Comet Conservatives and the Students For Concealed Campus Carry student organizations are defunct. Their leaders have moved on, and no one has taken up the challenge. I'm in contact with another student organization, and I'm hopeful that they will decide to sponsor the event. Until sponsorship is in place we can't set a date, but we're still shooting for October.

Charles, the last two weeks of August would be very busy. Students will be dropping and adding classes and trying to settle in to their schedules. So I think it would be better to do it in September or October. By that time students have settled in to a routine and are more likely to take the time to attend. There's been a lively debate about campus carry for a few years now, so I'm pretty certain there will be strong interest from the campus. I'm going on vacation the week of September 13, so I would ask that you not schedule it between September 10 and 22. Other than that, I would assume almost any day of the week would work. If you can give me a range, I'll start working on finding a date that will work. I assume we want an auditorium that will seat at least 180?

I am assuming this seminar will be open to the public. I'm sure that some staff, faculty and students at UTD will be interesting in attending as well. So if you would need a count of those, let me know. We'd have to setup some sort of RSVP. If I get this approved, it would also be "advertised" on our website as a scheduled event on the calendar. http://www.utdallas.edu/calendar/" onclick="window.open(this.href);return false; (That's one day.) It would probably also be on our news center. http://www.utdallas.edu/news/index.php" onclick="window.open(this.href);return false; This is all assuming I can get approval. I've begun the preliminary process of that today.

EDIT: Turns out we have a chapter of Students for Concealed Campus Carry, so I've contacted them to see if they would be interested in sponsoring the seminar. (I'd be shocked if they weren't.) Once you can provide tentative dates and the length of the seminar, we can begin the process of reserving the auditorium. In discussing this with Brian, he feels we would have at least 200 in attendance, if you include students, staff, faculty and folks from this forum who would attend. We have auditoriums that seat 180, 196, 289, 300 and 312 that would all be appropriate for such an event.

Charles L. Cotton wrote:By all means, please check it out. It would be great if we could get a large auditorium-style classroom, but anything you can arrange will work. We'll set the limit based upon the classroom capacity.

Thanks,
Chas.

How many seats do you estimate you would need? We have numerous auditoriums with seating for 10 to 500 and anything in between. I'm certain that, with enough advance notice, I can reserve an auditorium of appropriate size. All you need is a sponsoring organization, and I'm pretty sure my office would be happy to do that. We have three people with CHLs and four more that say they will apply. (Computer security folks aren't all geeks.)

Charles L. Cotton wrote:

baldeagle wrote:Charles, have you figured out how much you plan to charge for the seminar?

The seminars have always been free and will continue that way as long as we don't have to pay for a conference room or travel by air. Even then I hope to have funding for this effort.

Chas.

You, sir, are a prince. To give such a gift to the community is above and beyond the call.

What do you think about doing one at UTD? If you think it makes sense (even though we can't carry there), I will work on getting it set up.

Charles, have you figured out how much you plan to charge for the seminar?

Hmm...wouldn't it be delicious if I could get a room at UTD for the seminar. I'll poke around and see if that's possible. UTD does seminars all the time.