Coordinator, Philosophers’ Cafe  (SFU, 2015)

For approximately 40 years, Simon Fraser University sponsored this popular event series, which it considered part of its mandate to promote public engagement and dialogue. Free and open to the public, Philosophers’ Cafes were hosted by experienced volunteer moderators (usually professors or graduate students) who chose the topics and questions they wanted to discuss.

My role as (temporary) coordinator was to organize and coordinate the approximately 90 events that comprised the 2015 series. This required me to liaise with venues and moderators, including recruiting and vetting new ones, as well as to review and schedule all event proposals, edit their titles and descriptions, oversee the creation and publication of the program (linked below) for both print and online formats, and ensure moderators received their honorariums.

As this was a temporary position filling in for an employee on leave, little training was available and I had to work fast to meet the deadlines for the approaching start of the event season. At the end of this temporary assignment, I updated and vastly expanded the manual for organizing these events.  The full 2015 program pdf is linked here.