In about 12 hours the first part of the Cardiff Job will be kicking off, being the culmination of several months hard work and planning (mostly on the part of Trevor Bond and Ali Bevan). The “Job” (which steals it’s name from the London Job walks organised by Neil Bell) is the result of a conversation in the Aberwystwyth Wetherspoons late last October between myself and Trevor Bond. I had been in Aber for the day visiting my girlfriend who was in her last year of uni there, and arranged to meet up with Trevor for a pint and a chat. The topic soon got onto the future conferences and we both said it would be nice for one day to have a conference in Wales, but maybe we should organise a short tester meet up first to test the waters. We bandied about a few ideas and went our separate ways. Later I was contacted by Trevor who said he had a similar conversation with Ali Bevan and that we should go ahead and do it. The Cardiff Job was born.
It soon evolved from just a walk and a few pints in Cardiff to a mini conference, with speakers, a debate/podcast and evening entertainment. We had volunteers to do talks on several case (or crime related) topics despite the fact we could not afford to pay expenses, and several of these also volunteered to staff our panel for our podcast/debate.
The walk itself will still form a major part of the day, and will focus on Victorian buildings, crime related scenes and also anything Ripper related we can find. This will then be followed by our fantastic line up of speakers.
First up is Jenni Shelden, who will speak on the candidacy of Dr John Williams. I understand that this talk will be a revised and revisited version of her talk at an earlier conference, featuring the latest research. Williams is a Welsh suspect, from Swansea but who founded the National Library of Wales in Aber. Jenni of course debunked the theory that he was the Ripper, but this is still a fascinating topic.
Next, is Dave James speaking about the Vigilance groups. I don’t think I’ve ever spoken to Dave, but Trevor has told me that his research is fascinating and featured a lot of information that isn’t well known, so this is definitely going to be an interesting lecture.
Finally is Bob Hinton, speaking on the Mamie Stewart murder (or the Welsh Cave murder), which is of particular interest to me as it took place in my home town of Swansea.
At half past six will be a very exciting part of the night. We are attempting what we believe is the first ever live Jack the Ripper debate. This debate will last around an hour and will be broadcast live over the internet, and will feature an interactive element as we will be taking questions submitted as the debate is happening.
This wonderful project is the result of the input of Jeff Leahy. Jeff, who is of course well known for his work on the Definitive Story documentary earlier this year, offered to help us out with this project. If you have never met Jeff, he really is a top bloke and has an unending (and almost infective) amount of enthusiasm. It is perhaps because of this that we went from a simple recorded podcast to having a live broadcast. Then the fateful suggestion of doing video as well was added, and tomorrows project is the result. I truly hope you can all join us for what is surely to be a great event.
So I shall now sign off. I hope to be able to do a quick update blog tomorrow in Cardiff, but if not, we hope you enjoy the Vidcast tomorrow evening!