Just a quick reminder that there will be an official conference twitter feed, available here: www.twitter.com/LibDemConf. Conference staffers and stewards will be updating the account with information as it happens at conference – who’s speaking, when sessions start, and how Conference votes.

If you’re using twitter at conference yourself, don’t forget to liberally sprinkle your updates with the hashtag #ldconf – this will help other people find the messages you send.

And if you want to see those messages for yourself, whether or not you’re a signed up twitter user – click here.

Finally, there’s also Ryan Cullen’s Liberal Tweets service, which brings together the thoughts of nearly a hundred Lib Dems on twitter – whether or not they’re talking about conference.

Here’s my absolute, most important top tip for people attending conference – pack sensible shoes. I cannot emphasise this enough. You will be spending much of your time on your feet, and you will be schlepping wearily from venue to venue. Bits of Bournemouth are hilly, so you will also be trekking up a small cliff to switch from conference hall to fringe meetings. If you just pack strappy shoes, or dress shoes, or the ones that look good with your suit but are murder on your toeses, you will spend the week in agony. Pack comfy trainers. Include the footwear you choose for leafleting. You feet will thank you for it.

The second most important tip for people who haven’t been to conference before – there’s a special event just for people like you! Here are the details:

New to conference?
Unsure what Federal Conference is all about? Anyone unfamiliar with conference is invited to come to this session aimed at helping you to get the most out of your first – and subsequent! – visits.
Location: Old Harry’s, Marriott Highcliff
Time: 21.45 – 22.30
Date: Saturday 19th September

I went along one of the sessions for new people at Conference in 2006 – and you can still hear the resulting vox pop interview podcast.

Elsewhere in our #ldconf 101 series:

• Attending conference – even if you haven’t registered!
• How to get to be a voting rep at short notice
• Speaking at conference

Good morning. Today we remember the deaths of Hildegard von Bingen, and, centuries later, Laura Ashley; and today’s birthday girl is Tessa Jowell.

Two big stories

A surprising number of newspapers seem to be leading with a story about how soon, we will all have the right to register with any GP we choose. I struggle to see why that’s made so many front pages.

Instead, my picks are the Independent’s story about racism in the US, with President Carter weighing in on opposition to President Obama’s current policy platform:

After lurking near the surface of political discourse in America for months, awkward questions about race and bigotry burst into the open yesterday after Jimmy Carter forthrightly suggested that “an overwhelming portion” of the more violent opposition to President Barack Obama and his policies has to do with the colour of his skin.

Meanwhile closer to home, the Telegraph is finding new ways to use numbers to scare us:

In his 2000 Budget, Mr Brown described money spent on debt and welfare as “the costs of failure” and lauded Labour’s record in reducing those payments. He said: “Our promise was to reduce the costs of failure – the bills for unemployment and debt interest – in order to reallocate money to the key public services.” Now, Mr Brown’s own figures reveal how those costs are set to grow dramatically. Already the largest single item in the budget, by 2013/14 spending on social security will dwarf every other item of Government expenditure.

2 must read blog posts

Mary Reid writes about the party’s new policies for women:

Back in 1917 the ‘perfect’ woman was 5ft 4in and nearly 10stone. 100 years later, and girls aspire to be very tall and very, very thin.

And whilst much of the post is about the airbrushing proposals, there’s also a handy summary of some of the other aspects of the policy too.

Secondly, Mike at The Atomium Blog has some scathing words on tax credits:

But seriously, if you were asked to come up with a way of doing this, could you have ever designed a more clumsy, inefficient or convoluted system than the one which the Labour government, under Gordon Brown as chancellor, managed to create?

This is the third in a small series of articles with what every delegate needs to know about Conference. See also our posts on how you don’t have to be a registered delegate to attend fringe and training events, and how to be a voting rep at conference even if you weren’t elected to that position at your local party’s AGM.

This is perhaps the area where I am least qualified to speak, since I have never given a speech to Conference in the eight or so years I have been attending.

But I have noticed there’s very clear and much improved advice on how to speak during the main debates, with, in particular, a whole page of the Conference Agenda dedicated to tips on how to fill in Speakers Cards to maximise your chance of being called to speak.

Page 9 of the agenda – available online here – is where it’s at.

Essentially, you can only speak if you are a registered delegate at conference, or if you have been given permission by the Conference Committee. Registering for the day is not enough. Both voting and non-voting members of conference can speak. Once you’ve passed that hurdle, you need to complete a speaker’s card, and submit it in good time. Cards are available from stewards in the auditorium and also, on Friday evening, in the foyer of the Conference hotel. You must submit it before the beginning of the morning or afternoon session in which you want to speak – and it helps the chair of the session if you hand it in earlier than that.

Finally, for some debates where there are likely to be a large number of speakers, the standing orders of Conference allow for Interventions. Page 7 of the directory sets out the rules:

There will be interventions during debates F4, F11, F18, F26, F33, F36 and F45. This procedure offers voting or non-voting representatives the opportunity to make concise (one-minute) speeches from the floor during the debate on the motion. Eligibility to make an intervention is the same as for making a speech (see speaking at conference on page 8). There are two microphones in the body of the Auditorium facing the stage. Those wishing to speak during interventions should sit in the designated seats and complete the form handed to them by the steward overseeing those seats. Three lights will be
visible on either side of the stage: the green light comes on at the start of the intervention; the amber light will show after 40 seconds; the red light will come on at the end of one minute and the intervention must stop immediately.

I apologise from the outset, but this is going to be one of those posts that not everyone understands. If you’re not technical, or if your diary is still entirely paper based, look away now.

Neil McGovern, a Cambridge City councillor, has grepped the conference directory so that you don’t have to. He’s written a program that scrapes the information about the training and fringe events (including LDV’s fringe fiesta) and plugs them into a Google Calendar.

This means that if you use GCal yourself, you can import all those events into your diary – and from there, straight into your PDA or phone.

If you don’t use Gcal, there are feeds available that work with pretty much any online diary system, including HTML and ICAL.

Here are the handy links. Good luck!

Fringe Events
RSS | iCAL | HTML
Google Calendar address.

Training Events
RSS | iCAL | HTML
Google Calendar address