Medium Dawn Felagund of the Fountain

The Mereth Aderthad is indeed happening! The general chaos of my life lately made it so that the website was severely delayed: mostly built but needing just enough essentials to make it impossible to finish in the time I had for it. But ... it's done! Finally!

http://mereth-aderthad.com/

Absolutely anyone can register for a membership. There's also an email newsletter to sign up for to get updates. There's also an LJ comm: mereth_aderthad. More social media will follow, but these are the ways to get updates for now.

If you're attending, there's an additional RSVP form I'm asking people to fill out. One, because it will help us to know how many people will actually be here! :) Also because there are sections of the site for doing things like planning carpools that don't need to be open to all and sundry, and sending in an RSVP gets you access to those.

In case you're not sure what the heck I'm talking about: Mereth Aderthad is a gathering of Tolkien fans in Vermont's Northeast Kingdom. It's going to be part fan convention, part holiday. We'll have a kickoff event that first Saturday (more information on this is forthcoming). The week after will be more informal and we're really open to doing whatever our attendees want to do. (Hike mountains? Sit around a bonfire and drink VT beer? Hang out on the beach and watch the lake?) All Tolkien fans are welcome. My only stipulation is that they should be open-minded about fanworks.

If you want to know what the heck I'm talking about? Or would be interested in meeting up with other Tolkien fanfic people next summer in the picturesque mountains of Vermont? See this post on Dreamwidth or this post on LiveJournal and please comment there or message/email me if you're interested in further information about this.

I say there but it is worth saying again that this is a Tolkien fandom event, not a I-have-to-be-good-personal-friends-with-Dawn event. More details are on the posts above.

What I'd like to accomplish on this post is to decide how best for all of us to discuss this. So far, I have had about two dozen people express interest in possibly participating in a real-life Mereth Aderthad, and I'm sure there's more that missed the original post. My thought is that we need an online space where we can discuss plans and share news. I think this space needs to be members-only, since we will sometimes be talking about travel plans and locations and the like, and not everyone is comfortable with that in a public forum.

I would propose setting up an LJ community that defaults to members-only (although it is possible to make public posts for general announcements). Everyone who has responded so far is on LJ. It is possible to set email notifications even for those who do not regularly check their flist.

This is just one idea. If you have other suggestions, this is the place to make them. If we have multiple suggestions, I will run a poll on my journal and go with what the majority prefers.