We were happy to hear that Logicon was discussed on a recent episode of Rational Alchemy. As the organizers of the event, we’d like to send you a few clarifications. It was mentioned that we in Edmonton chose “LogiCON” because we weren’t comfortable using the word “skeptic,” but there’s a little more to the story.

When we held our Skepticamp, something we noticed was that, to our surprise, we ended up with a fairly general audience. We had a lot of people turn up who weren’t necessarily skeptics, but were nevertheless interested. We don’t know what the typical demographics of a Skepticamp is, but this was something that really got us thinking.

We had a meeting soon after the event in which we broke down what worked, what didn’t, and what we thought we could accomplish next time. One thing that we wanted to build on was getting more “outsiders” to attend, and so increasing the number of newcomers became our primary goal.

With months of planning and a smooth execution on April 9th, the event now barely resembles the Skepticamp that it grew out of—perhaps most significantly, yes, we’re curating speakers. The Telus World of Science agreed to host us, we got Daniel Loxton as the keynote speaker, were fortunate to include among our speakers K.O. Myers and Barbara Drescher, and we had many local experts from the University of Alberta and the Edmonton community. We had workshops for kids and advanced and beginner talks. Attendees did have to pay the admission cost of the Telus World of Science, but were allowed free reign of the facility, and most excitingly for us, we’ll were open to drop-in traffic from the everyday World of Science crowd.

Question 6 on IndieSkeptics’ “Top 7 reasons SkeptiCamp sucks” page asks what the value of an event not focused on outreach is. The answer given is that not all events have to be focused on outreach. While true, it’s our feeling that outreach is something that skepticism is sorely lacking. Here in Edmonton we have a fantastic team, a strong skeptical community, and a wider community that appears quite happy to show up and learn a little something about science. We saw the opportunity to make the outreach event that we wished already existed elsewhere, so we got to work.

Once we knew that we were no longer making a Skepticamp, we had a discussion about the word “skeptic.” Ultimately, we did decide to shy away from it. Whether or not it should, it does have some negative connotations. It also suffers from being routinely used in many different contexts, meaning that we have to explain it to outsiders every time. It’s rampant in philosophy, it’s commonly used in everyday life, then we have things like climate change skeptics, and our skepticism. As much as we may wish we could exclusively own the word, each of these uses is entirely legitimate.

We could argue on this topic all we wanted, but what matters is that this isn’t a battle we need to fight. If this were an event for rallying people already identified as skeptics, then we would of course use the word. But this wasn’t an event made by skeptics, for skeptics (which is not to say that those events aren’t important). They were welcome to attend, of course. Many did, and they enjoyed the talks as much as anyone. We chose topics that we felt were accessible for everyone, and we felt the name should reflect that.

We don’t want to compete with Skepticamp. We remain big fans of the model, and wish anyone wanting to try one the very best of luck. We certainly value what we learned, and we’ve been able to take those skills to try something that we’re really excited about. Now that it’s over, we’ll be doing the same breakdown of the event that we did the first time, but the general feeling so far is that we achieved what we set out to do.

If dropping the word “skeptic” worries anybody, then I suppose all I can say at this point is to look at what we did, and decide if LogiCON, on its own merits, was a worthwhile endeavour. We’re certain that it was, and look forward to making the next one even better.