Panel and Round-table Sessions

These sessions are scheduled for 90 minutes and, unless a chair has already been designated, we will ask the first person listed in the program to serve as the informal moderator. This means simply welcoming everyone, starting the session promptly at the scheduled time, asking speaker to introduce themselves, and calling on folks in an orderly way during Q&A.

For the three-person sessions, please keep in mind that individual presentations should be roughly 15 and no more than 20 minutes in length. This makes certain that everyone has the same amount of time to speak and should afford ample time for questions in the last half hour of the session. We encourage as much discussion as possible, but do ask that you bring the sessions to a close sharply at the scheduled time so that the next group can get set up in an orderly way.

AV

All sessions will be based in university rooms with a full AV suite that should accommodate slides, sound, and film clips. Conference staff will be posted in each room to provide assistance.

To facilitate an easy transition between presentations, we ask that you bring any slides or other AV materials on a thumb drive. We’ll be using machines that are already configured to work well in the individual rooms and plugging in your own laptops would be disruptive since we cannot guarantee they will work easily.

We use Windows machines on campus so your presentations should be saved in formats (e.g. PowerPoint) that are compatible with those machines. Internet will be active, but we strongly encourage you to download all your files since the university security systems can make it difficult to access many shared sites like Dropbox.

Venues

Conference events on Thursday, Friday, and Saturday will take place on the University of Tulsa’s main campus with the registration table and many of the events focused on the Lorton Performing Arts Center at 550 S. Gary Place. There is ample parking located in front of the building that you are free to use.  Please just put a note on your dash that says “Dylan Conference.”  Additional venues for those first few days are a five-minute walk at two other campus buildings: Tyrrell Hall and Helmerich Hall.

The Saturday evening concert hosted by the Bob Dylan Center featuring The Million Dollar Bashers will take place at the legendary Cain’s Ballroom at 423 N. Main in downtown Tulsa.

On Sunday we will convene the concluding panel sessions at the Oklahoma Center for Humanities at 101 Archer East Archer, just around the corner from the Dylan and Guthrie Centers.

Getting Around

We will provide shuttle service from three downtown locations to the conference venues on Thursday, Friday, and Saturday. Busses will run continuously from 8:00am to 10:00pm on Thursday and Friday and from 8:00am to 6:00pm on Saturday. Pick-up points downtown include the Hotel Indigo, the Fairfield Hotel, and the Hyatt Regency Downtown (lower level).

On campus, we will also have a small shuttle circulating between the Lorton Performance Center and the other campus building to assist those with limited mobility.

Sunday, no shuttle service will be provided since the venue is within just a few blocks of all the downtown hotels.

Ride share services like Lyft and Uber are readily available in Tulsa and provide an easy point-to-point service.

Website Updates

As the conference gets closer, we urge you to check the website and our Facebook page for additional updates. Please also feel free to write us at bobdylaninstitute@utulsa.edu with any questions or concerns.  Our staff are monitoring the mailbox during regular business hours and will respond promptly.

We will shortly provide on the website a guide to Tulsa to help you find restaurants and identity interesting things to do around the city. This is typically a very hot time of year, so we will also offer some advice on dealing with the heat as well.  We do encourage you to dress in layers since the air-conditioned rooms are often in stark contrast to the outside temps.  Rain is somewhat unusual at the end of July, but you should still plan to grab an umbrella since it can keep off the sun as well as the rain.

Book Display and Sales

We are once again pleased to have Tulsa’s premier independent bookstore, Magic City Books, providing sales at the conference. They will be onsite during registration and around the keynote events selling a variety of Dylan-focused books. If you visit the main store at 221 E. Archer and show your conference badge, you will also receive a 10% discount on most items.

In the lobby of Lorton Performance Center, we will also have tables set up for those who wish to place flyers, promotion materials, and similar items to share with the conference. Feel free to drop off here anything from a sample copy of your own book to advertisements for Dylan-related events and publications.