I hope it's not too late to throw in a couple of ideas on the conference
thread in addition to the excellent suggestions already put forward.

For the past 8 years, INFACT Canada has jointly sponsored a June conference
with Women's College Hospital, Etobicoke Health and Humber College.  Working
with a hospital, health unit and educational institution enables us not only
to learn from the various perspectives but to tap into each other's
resources.  For example, the conference is held each year at Humber College
so we don't pay for venue hire, just food.

During the early planning process, we hold a lunch meeting and invite a wide
range people involved with breastfeeding and brainstorm ideas for sessions.
Invitees have included a range of health professionals, represenatatives
from various cultural groups, grassroots community groups, those working
with low-income families etc.

We assemble all the speakers' handouts into a proceedings book which is
spiral bound and given to each delegate.  This has proved popular as people
get information from all sessions, not just the ones they attended.  We also
make the booklet available after the event at a nomial cost.

We had some bad/good new this year. Betty Crase of LLLI, who was to be one
of our keynote speakers, will not able attending because she has accepted a
new position with the AAP.  If I'm not mistaken she's been hired to
implement their new breastfeeding policy, but perhaps someone else can fill
us in!  Two wonderful breastfeeding advocates moving to key positions in one
week -- how much excitement can we take?  (Never fear, we still Tom Hale and
Jack Newman confirmed as keynotes, and we're working on a replacement for
Betty.)

Jean Geary
Fundraiser, INFACT Canada  [log in to unmask]   www.infactcanada.ca