I gave two workshops and the closing keynote address. The first workship was on Buddhism and evolution with a local Buddhist monk Rev. George Churinoff of the Deer Park Buddhist Center. The second was on the emerging biopolitics, and my co-presenter for that one was Janet Staker Woerner, the CEO of Converging Communications and an IEET member and booster. My closing keynote address was on the future of human evolution, introducing ideas about our transition to posthumanity and the existential risks we face along the way. The slides are here if you are curious.

Among the many excellent speakers at the conference were folks like Eugenie C. Scott, Executive Director of the National Center for Science Education; Robert Pennock, a philosopher and a-life researcher at Michigan State University; and John Haught, a Teilhardian Catholic theologian and defender of evolution from Georgetown. I was thrilled to meet and be interviewed by one of best public affairs radio show producers in the world, Steve Paulson, the Executive Producer of To the Best of Our Knowledge. Over lunch I recruited two more IEET interns whom I hope to introduce shortly. So a successful 36 hours, and a big thank you to BTCI’s executive director, Karin Borgh, for setting up such a great conference.

However, I guess it’s fine for me to say that four have already delivered their essays, and that the quality is going to be high if these end up being typical. Indeed, there’s no reason for the quality to be anything else, given the calibre of the people involved. (There are a lot of people on the list whose names my regular readers will probably know, without expecting to find them appearing together in a book like this.)

It’s all happening, folks. As this comes project to fruition over the next year or so, culminating in publication of the book some time in 2009, I’ll say more. Meanwhile, please us help get the word out. We need to start generating a bit of buzz if we can.