Queen's University International Development Conference

I must admit that I am one of few academic breeds who get accepted to speak as some pretty prestigious conferences around the world for example, the World Public Health Congress 2009, Istanbul, Turkey; the International Union for Health Promotion and Education 2010 Geneva, Switzerland, and the World Medical Law Congress 2010, Zagreb, Croatia (to name but a very few). But of late, I am rather getting invited - now, I think that's really cool! On January 25th, I received this letter from Queen's University International Development Conference (QIDC) Team:

Dear Ms. Veronica Fynn,

My name is Teddy Lui and I am the Speakers Coordinator for Queen's University's upcoming International Development Conference (IDC) taking place on March 12-13, 2010. This student-run conference will be held in Kingston, Ontario. Hopefully you are familiar with it.

I am contacting you on behalf of our conference team with an invitation requesting your attendance as a guest speaker for our panel entitled Human Trafficking: The Fight Against Modern Day Slavery. Your wealth of experience in this area before law school and also in Geneva would undoubtedly engage bright young students who are passionate about making a difference in the international development community.

I have attached to this email an official invitation to IDC 2010. Please don’t hesitate to reach out and contact me if you have any further questions.

I hope to hear from you soon.

Best Regards,

Teddy Lui
IDC 2010 Speakers Coordinator
Queen’s University, Bachelor of Commerce 2010

Earnestly, I thought it was a spam because I do get those sometimes, inviting me to register for a conference. So, I went to google (as usual) and did my search. QIDC truly existed and Teddy was a human being! Knowing that my calendar gets full really quickly, I immediately accepted and confirm my attendance. On March 12th, all roads led to Queen's University. It was awesome to see participants and speakers from all walks of life with diverse perspectives on international development. Hats-off to the students for putting on, what I called, an atypical conference organized by students - from the hotel accommodation, to the quality of speakers and overall service delivery - I left Queens feeling very lucky to have been invited!