General information

Code of Conduct

We have adopted a code of conduct, and really liked the code that was posted here. We ask that all conference participants read the code. Thank you!

Ombud

We will have an "ombud" at this conference. This is someone you can speak to about any issues that arise, if you prefer not to speak directly to the conference organizers. The ombud will help develop a plan to address the issues.

Weather and temperature

Late June still has spring-like weather, sometimes cool and wet, with temperatures that tend to warm toward the end of the month. Expect temperatures between 50 and 80, likely with some rain and wind. Check the week's weather before you pack, but be aware that the weather forecast here is sometimes inaccurate more than 12 hours into the future.

For the evening cruise on Friday, we will be on the ocean, and it WILL BE COLD! Dress accordingly – warm coat, hat, gloves, and scarf are appropriate.

It can be cold in the dorms at night. Consider bringing an extra blanket or sleeping bag, if you can fit it into your luggage.

Shuttle van pick up

We are arranging shuttle vans for everyone who is arriving at Bangor International Airport, the Trailways station nearby on Union Street, and the Bar Harbor Airport. It is a 3 hour round trip from Bangor so you might have to wait a bit. (We do have two shuttles and are trying to minimize wait times. Apologies in advance for delays.)

For those who have not yet visited Bangor International Airport, it's a regional airport. Head out the main front door of the building, and you should see a tall GMC van sitting there, with a sign saying "FFPER" in the front window on the dashboard.

Call Michael at 207-951-0129 if something goes awry. Cell phone coverage on the way to Bar Harbor can be spotty (it's a pretty rural area), but you should be able to reach him and he will connect you to the drivers.

Registration

Registration is simple. When you make it to Davis Village, either by yourself or because the van shuttle is dropping you off there, you will be in a little circle right next to an industrial looking building (the boiler building). If you look at the map, it's the top of the map. A short walk down hill takes you to some dorms. From the intersection of walkways, turn left. The red arrow in the map below is pointing to a building that's barely on the map, the Davis Commons.

Someone will greet you there. The registration bag will include information about your housing, your name tag (which is also your meal ticket), and a brief description of campus. If nobody is there (because of airport pickups or it's meal time), please be patient.

Once you've unpacked, feel free to explore the campus, especially with someone who has been there before, or head to Bar Harbor, or come back to the Deering Hall Commons and join those of us hanging out there.

Locations:

Housing is in Davis Village. The dorms are labeled by the front doors on the porch.

Plenaries and discussions will be in the Lecture Hall.

Meals: Breakfast, coffee, and lunch will all be in the Cafeteria, adjacent to the Auditorium. This is part of Kaelber Hall. Dinners are self-organized and offsite. Bar Harbor has excellent dining.

Break out sessions: Locations will be determined ad hoc and announced during the morning sessions in the lecture hall.

Lobster bake: At Bar Harbor Lobster Bakes. Transportation will be provided. If you have a car, please share space! See note below on directions due to construction.

Contributed posters will be in Gates Auditorium.

Sunset Cruise: meet in the assigned location (near the harbor) at the assigned time (depends on tide...). This will be announced during the morning discussion section.

Schedule

The schedule (for now) is online at

https://calendar.google.com/calendar/embed?src=ffperbarharbor%40gmail.com&ctz=America/New_York

You can subscribe to the calendar using this link:

https://calendar.google.com/calendar/ical/ffperbarharbor%40gmail.com/public/basic.ics

Details are subject to change. For example, if Friday night's weather is bad, we may move the sunset cruise to an evening earlier in the week.

Details of breakout sessions will be added to the calendar in a timely fashion. Stay tuned!

Food

Breakfast and lunch are in the College of the Atlantic cafeteria. The food is excellent. Breakfast really does start at 7.30 and they want to have served everyone by 8 am. (The first plenary is at 8.30.) Lunch is at 12, and they ask that we return plates by 1, though we can use the room all afternoon.

Dinner is on your own (except Monday, when there is an arranged dinner). Bar Harbor is a pleasant 20-minute walk from campus. We recommend dinner groups of 6 or less – larger groups are hard to seat at the town’s charming (small) restaurants. Typically, people meet at the Seafox Courtyard (between the dorms – see map below) before heading out.

Some of you have special requests for meals. The cafeteria is happy to help out here (they love cooking interesting meals - you should talk to them about this, they're really friendly). We ask that folks who do not have special requests NOT eat the food of those who are vegetarian, vegan, gluten-intolerant, lactose-intolerant, allergic to nuts, or anything else. Thank you!

Daily events, in general

Mornings in the lecture hall

We occupy every single seat in our morning plenaries. The room only holds 60 people, and that's only if we add seats. (In case you were wondering why the conference is the size it is, this is the reason...) As you enter the lecture hall in the morning, move all the way to the wall - there won't be any empty space around you.

We've been asked not to sit on the steps (fire hazard and all), so please do sit in the seats. Thank you!

Afternoon events

The afternoons are not scheduled! These are times to talk shop with others, go to the shops in Bar Harbor, see if the tide is low enough to cross the bar onto Bar Island (hence the name Bar Harbor), go on hikes, ride bicycles (there are rental places in town, and the carriage trails are easy to reach), take a nap, swim in the ocean (yes, people do this, with water temperatures typically in the 50s), paddle kayaks, or do whatever you'd like.

For those wishing to hike, it's usually best to become friends with someone who has a car, or to ask one of the shuttle drivers to take you someplace. The appropriate form of bribery is appreciated (just ask). You can find out more about the trails here:

https://www.acadianationalpark.com/trails/

or

https://www.nps.gov/acad/planyourvisit/maps.htm

Dinner

Dinner is on your own (except on Monday). Find people to eat with. We encourage people to meet in the courtyard of Davis Village. If you are not part of a group, ask to join one! If you have a small group, invite someone who seems to be alone. Nobody should be eating dinner alone (unless they want to).

We encourage people to walk to Bar Harbor for dinner. There are a lot of restaurants to pick from. The walk is pleasant and the sidewalks are wide.

We have learned the informal rule that groups going to dinner together be no larger than 6 people - restaurants in town are really not big enough to seat larger groups easily.

Evening events

Though the dorms have common areas, these are very close to people’s rooms, and are therefore not appropriate for socializing after hours (unless you somehow socialize silently). Please be quiet in these areas. Please note that quiet time (outside) is after 9 PM. Inside, you can be noisier.

Our evening social center (for those not going into Bar Harbor) is Deering Hall. It's got a lovely large common area and a porch that faces out to the ocean. Keep in mind, it has to be cleaned up (as if nobody had been there, except for trash and recycling) every night. Michael often do this, which explains why he's so tired by the end of the week. Please help. We have used Deering Hall for game night, hanging out with guitars, long conversations with new friends, and so on.

There is typically a night when interested folks go out to sing karaoke. We look forward to someone organizing this event. There is typically a night when the young and the restless hit the dance floor at a local club. Again, we look forward to someone organizing this. In both cases, it requires finding out when and where things are happening. There will be a time for public announcements at the start or end of every discussion section so that folks can provide details.

Events during the week

Sunday

Shuttles will pick up travelers in Bangor or Bar Harbor. Many drive in from Portland or Boston. Once you arrive on campus, someone will greet you with information about the campus, your name tag, keys for your dorm room, and some information about the week. Be aware that you have to make your own bed in the dorms - there are sheets and blankets for you, but the rest is up to you.

You will be mostly on your own on Sunday, but we strongly encourage going to dinner with people you may have met on the shuttle. In general, the place to meet people for dinner is the courtyard area in Davis Village, where the dorms are. The walk to downtown Bar Harbor is about a mile (1.5km). There are plenty of good dining options and people who have been here before may have recommendations.

Starting on Sunday, people tend to hang out in the evening (after dinner) in Deering Hall (see the map above...).

If you are attending for the first time, don't be surprised if half (or more) of the people greet each other as old friends. One of the nice aspects of this conference is that we get to know each other pretty well by the end of the week. Join a group - people are friendly and you'll be friends with folks by the end of the week, we hope!

Monday

On Monday morning, you will have to find your way to the cafeteria for breakfast. It is served from 7.30 to 8.30. You will need your name tag for the folks there to know that you have already paid - or, you can tell them that you are part of the FFPER conference. They are super friendly about it. Join a table of people you maybe don't know, introduce yourself, and enjoy your meal.

At 8.30, we move to the lecture hall. If you are new, find someone who has been here before - walking with the co-organizers is often a good idea. The three co-organizers will more formally introduce you to the conference, the talks will begin, and you should quickly get a feel for the meeting. Talks are an hour long. We sit in a crowded lecture hall. After each talk, there is a brief time for "clarifying questions," which are typically brief. After a half hour coffee and pastry break in the cafeteria, we come back to the lecture hall for an hour-long discussion. Questions come from the audience, there is a question, there are responses, there are follow-up questions... and eventually we move on to a new question.

At the end of the discussion section, we will ask for volunteers who wish to run collaborative sessions at some point during the week. See above for more information.

Lunch is back in the cafeteria. Nothing is scheduled from the end of lunch to 4.30. At 4.30, we have collaborative sessions in locations that will be announced on the conference calendar. The collaborative sessions end at 6.

At about 6.45, people should collect in the courtyard of Davis Village. We will split up into cars and shuttle vans in order to drive to the lobster bake. It is located a few miles from campus (too far to walk) at Bar Harbor Lobster Bakes. You will have told us (via a survey we sent to you) your meal preference - lobster, steak, fish, or vegetarian. Seating is in long rows - find some people to sit with, join the crowd, and get to know the folks around you. Eating lobster (if you've never done it) is messay. Have fun!

After dinner, we drive back to campus, and people tend to hang out in Deering Hall. There are typically people hanging out on couches, some are playing games, and some are out on the back patio, looking out over the ocean. Please join in!

Tuesday, Wednesday, Thursday

Every morning will have breakfast, two plenaries, a coffee break, discussion, and lunch. (Changes that occur will be announced).

On Tuesday or Wednesday, we will not have collaborative sessions and will instead have a poster session. This lasts about 2 hours. If you have a poster, please stay with it for some (but not all!) of the time. Also, if you see a poster and nobody is there, feel free to chase down the person at some other time during the week. Posters stay up until Friday to give you the chance for further conversation.

Because the conference is very dynamic, there will be regular announcements by the conference organizers to keep you up to date on events, changes to the schedule, and information about social events that have been planned.

Some people really like karaoke... there is typically a karaoke night sometime during the week. You do not have to sing in order to join in.

Friday

The mornings remain the same at the end of the week. In the afternoon, we may have reports from our collaborative sessions or an overview synthesis and discussion that involves all speakers.

In the evening, we have a sunset cruise. Please meet at 6.30 at the pier of the Margaret Todd. This is a 4 mast ship with orange sails, located near the park on the water in downtown Bar Harbor. We say this in other areas of the site, but it is worth repeating: out on the water, there's a strong wind and it's colder than on land. Dress warmly.

Traditionally, Deering Hall is pretty full on Friday night...

Saturday

Sadly, you cannot stay late on Saturday morning, even if your flight is later in the day. Please leave your rooms by 9.30 so that the staff can clean the rooms for the next group coming to campus.

To clean your room, strip your bed and bring the laundry to the laundry room between Millikan and Dority. When you are ready to leave, use the envelope that you got for returning the key and put your key in it and then in the key dropbox that is in the laundry room. Leave your room unlocked when you go, in case you leave something behind and have to get back in.

Anything else?

If we've forgotten something, we apologize! Feel free to send Michael an email (click here...). See you soon!!

Past meetings!

Were you actually looking for something from past conferences? Links to all meetings are in the footer of every page.