One round of applause to Hans Mattsson for what he recently did. That takes a lot of bravery.
So my last post was about the exmormon rumor mill. I made that in response to hearing about Hans Mattsson and his future New York Times article from Grant Palmer nearly a month ago. I'm pleased to see that the New York Times artcle was finally published. I then realized that my post was stupid since it could screw him over, and deleted any references to him from my post, or twitter, etc. Still, that got me to contact Hans a month ago, and get him to say he might be willing to speak to us.
My goal is to get him out here during the week of the Exmormon Foundation Conference. Preferably that Sunday night, October 20th. This means that we would need to pay for his flight out, hotel and other accommodations, and a speaking fee, so nearly $2000. To donate to that, do so here: http://www.postmos.org/donate.html. I'd work in close conjunction with the other major exmormon players to make sure this was a smashing success. My philosophy has been to never charge people, because I want Mormons to be able to show up to something like this who wouldn't otherwise. In fact, this might be an event where I would advertise it plenty of places as not being associated with us. (Like we did with the "Help! My Loved One is Apostatizing!")
As far as other speakers, we did buy Brian Dunning (aka Skeptoid) a plane ticket last April. Unfortunately, a week after we bought the ticket, he pleaded guilty to fraud. At that point, we couldn't get a refund for the ticket.
Mr. Deity is willing to come speak with us. On a Thursday in a couple weeks, we'll have a skype meeting with him, where anyone can ask him questions directly. In order to fly him out, that will also require a speaking fee from him, as well as accommodations. I'd like to do that, but my first priority is Hans Mattsson at the moment.
As far as donations go, I'm more than happy to show anyone the accounts in person if they want to follow how the money is spent. I have no concerns with that. I usually end up spending my own money to make things happen, and I'm often fine with that. This, however, is far enough outside of my price range that I wouldn't be able to cover the costs without having to save up for quite a while.
