The Astrology Podcast

Transcript of Episode 256, titled:

NORWAC 2020: Moving an In-Person Conference Online

With Chris Brennan and guests Laura Nalbandian and Nicholas Polimenakos

Episode originally released on May 29, 2020

Original episode URL:

https://theastrologypodcast.com/2020/05/29/norwac-2020-moving-an-in-person-conference-online/

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Note: This is a transcript of a spoken word podcast. If possible, we encourage you to listen to the audio or video version, since they include inflections that may not translate well when written out. Our transcripts are created by human transcribers, and the text may contain errors and differences from the spoken audio. If you find any errors then please send them to us by email: theastrologypodcast@gmail.com

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Transcribed by Andrea Johnson

Transcription released May 14th, 2026

Copyright © 2026 TheAstrologyPodcast.com

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CHRIS BRENNAN: Hi, my name is Chris Brennan, and you’re listening to The Astrology Podcast. This is Episode 256, and I’ll be talking with astrologers Laura Nalbandian and Nicholas Polimenakos about the recent Northwest Astrological Conference which occurred this past weekend, which was, for the first time in its 36-year history, moved from an entirely in-person conference to an entirely online conference. So hey, guys. Thanks for joining me today.

LAURA NALBANDIAN: Thanks, Chris. Thanks for having us. I appreciate it.

NICHOLAS POLIMENAKOS: Hello, Chris.

CB: Yeah, you guys have had a long couple of months getting ready for this thing. You’ve finally reached the endpoint, and you actually, somehow, in I believe like a two-month time span—maybe three months—pulled out successfully an online astrological conference with hundreds of astrologers attending from around the world. And I just wanted to talk to you about what that experience was like. Right now, I’m sure you’re both pretty exhausted from running that, but it seems like it was a success, right?

LN: Oh, gosh, better than I could have even imagined. You know, I had a lot of hope, but no real experience with a virtual conference, online platform. I mean, I teach online, that’s one thing. But running a multi-layered, major astrological conference with six breakouts going at the same time was not something I had ever done before, and the technology was all new to me. And so, yeah, it was probably late March that I made the decision.

CB: Okay. So just to give people some background—for those that aren’t familiar with the conference—this was gonna be the 36th NORWAC. And the first one happened way back in 1984, and it was actually started by your mother. And it’s been a family-run conference that entire time, right?

LN: Absolutely. Yes, my mother started it in 1984. I would have been 25-years-old. And it has been a mainstay, and it has been run by our family. So I became my mother’s business partner for NORWAC probably somewhere in the early ‘90s and took on a partnership position with her, us doing it together, and then increasingly took on more and more responsibilities—speaker selections, lecture selections, contract negotiations, all of that. And probably as we get closer into the 2010s, I’m taking on more and more. And then as mom’s condition worsens, I’m taking over the whole thing. And she was pretty much retired, and I was doing pretty much the whole thing anyway with her advice. And then her condition declined, so here I am. I’ve been pretty much running it for a while. Even with mom alive, I was running most of it.

CB: 1994. So you’re a Saturn in Capricorn, right? So was that part of your Saturn return story, starting to become a partner with her in the family business?

LN: Well, my Saturn return was 1988.

CB: Saturn return in Capricorn.

LN: For me, yeah.

CB: Okay.

LN: It’s 1°. My Saturn return, I would have been 29 in 1988.

CB: Got it. Okay.

LN: Yeah, yeah. And so, that was Uranus. I think Neptune hit first, the Uranus hit, and then Saturn hit in ‘88. In ‘94, that’s another six years later. So, I mean, it’s closing in on the Saturn square, but it wouldn’t have quite reached there yet. There were a lot of things going on, a lot of transits. You had that pileup in Capricorn back in the early ‘90s, into possibly even ‘94, that would have gone over. So my earliest planet in Capricorn is 1, that’s Saturn, and then Mercury at 10, and then the Sun at 27. So it spanned quite a bit of—go ahead.

CB: I think I was mixing up the Uranus-Neptune conjunction that would’ve occurred around the 1992-‘93-‘94 timeframe that was in Capricorn with the Saturn return, which is not necessarily the same thing. And just to bring Nicholas in, you were originally a student of Laura’s, right? But then you started working the conference, and you’ve worked with the bookstore, and also, helped with recordings over the years for the in-person conference.

NP: Correct. You know, I still can’t remember the moment or how I found Laura.

CB: Okay.

NP: For some reason I think of a bulletin board in a grocery store or something.

LN: And I never put stuff up on a bulletin board in a grocery store. That’s interesting.

NP: I don’t know how it happened. I don’t know I found you.

LN: Wasn’t it like ‘97?

NP: It could have been 14 years ago.

LN: Yeah.

NP: Actually, to be honest. But yeah, I ended up being a student of Laura’s and being in a class at the house, and numerous students on the couch, basically. The cool thing about Laura—many cool things—was there were times she would come, or we’d come to class and she’d have a stack of books just to give away. And some people were on the books. I was always on the books.

LN: You were always on the books.

NP: “Yeah, like don’t take them all, Nicholas.” Like, “Okay, okay.” Particularly, I remember Robert Blaschke’s progression book, just looking at it. I’m like, “Okay, what’s this?” So, you know, being in class and learning from Laura, and so on and so forth, there was time here when the conference was coming up. I had no idea about the conference, no idea about the Washington State Astrological Association that meets every month, I just was in Laura’s house. So she talked about this conference that they do. Like, “Okay, whatever.” I didn’t have any money, per se. So it was presented to be like, “Well, you can help out, like be a room monitor,” and that happened. And I didn’t know anybody, and I did the room monitor thing, and that happened the next year. I don’t remember when exactly it went to the level of them doing stuff with Greg, as in helping Greg help the room monitors, right?

LN: Right.

NP: You know, I don’t remember which year, but it slowly progressed in that way, and then the bookstore and so on and so forth, and along the way, going to other conferences actually and seeing how they’re run and understanding and getting to know the whole community. Yeah, so over the years, I got to this place. And then, you know, here we were this year, and things shifted so fast with COVID.

LN: Exactly. And the thing is I turned to Nicholas because of his experience with Tony Howard. You know, I knew that Nicholas had experience that I really needed. I knew him well—know him well—so I felt comfortable working with him. So that’s how Nicholas came onboard, helping to craft and shape social media, helping too, I think, a lot in terms of the marketing in terms of social media. Did quite a bit of that. And just relying on him, and at times, calling Tony for advice on technical elements. You know, what platforms to use for videos and this and that. So, you know, the astrological community and those who have a lot of technical skills were very helpful in pushing NORWAC forward into this virtual platform. Cuz we really didn’t have time. I mean, once the decision was made, it was like a runaway freight train that you just basically were on and you couldn’t get off until it reached its conclusion.

CB: Right.

LN: There was just no time to breathe. You know, there was just a lot of 3:00 AM, waking up in the morning, freaking out about, “What have I done, and why am I doing this?”

CB: Yeah.

NP: Yeah, I would agree. I actually will say I still feel like we’re on the runaway freight train. And Chris, welcome aboard because we’re still going here. There’s still stuff happening behind the scenes, post-NORWAC.

LN: Yep.

CB: Yeah, it’s always such a big production. Even the conference itself in a normal year is like a big undertaking, and it takes almost like a full year to prepare for it, right? Like when did you start planning for this conference?

LN: Let’s see, I would have started taking speaker submissions in June, the following last May, would have made the final decision on speakers by August, no later than August. Registration opened—we were gonna open in October. Anyway, ISAR came out. I knew when they were launching their registration, so I moved my registration back and opened it sooner. So, you know, that’s just good business. So we got our registration open and it just flooded. We were sold out of the in-person conference by late January, early February.

CB: Oh, yeah, this was only like the second year, I think, in its history that NORWAC had completely sold out for the in-person conference.

LN: Correct. And we had a waiting list of 70 people.

CB: Wow. Okay.

LN: Yeah, we were just getting ready to—I was just getting ready to purchase/spend a couple of grand on new, short throw projectors, so that we could take up less real estate in the big ballroom and put in probably 25-30 more people.

CB: Okay.

LN: But that got kiboshed.

CB: Yeah. And in terms of timing—because it’s an annual conference—it always takes place every year on Memorial Day weekend, at the end of May, basically, right? So there’s no real negotiating in terms of moving the dates or anything. You always know it’s gonna be that three-or-four-day period at the end of May.

LN: Unless we know in advance that a major conference, such as UAC, was gonna happen on Memorial Day weekend. And then we have enough notice—that I have leeway with the hotel—to move it to another date. But I usually have three or four years of contracts already signed. I already know my dates. They’re already done. So, you know, our next year is Memorial Day weekend. It falls more squarely at the end of the month. Something like the 27th-31st.

CB: Okay. So in terms of when, it was always gonna be then. And it wasn’t like you were going out of your way to pick this set of dates. That’s just when it happens each year, and you roll with it. And I’m sure there are some years that have better astrological alignments that weekend and other years that don’t.

LN: Yeah, there was one Mercury in Pisces retrograde and one Mercury in Aries retrograde that were particularly obnoxious, where we walked into the hotel, and it was like we had never been there before. The hotel like didn’t even have anything set up the way they normally had set up. It was all backwards and it had to be redone.

CB: Wow.

LN: We were just like, “How long have we been coming here?” So yeah, I mean, you take what you get when you’re looking at that kind of weekend. Our first NORWAC was not on Memorial Day, it was in March. And we’ve had some on Easter. We’ve had them in April. We’ve had them in March. But when we landed on Memorial Day weekend, the majority of our 36 years have been on Memorial Day weekend.

NP: I like the fact that it’s, in a sense, not elected.

LN: Yeah, me, too.

NP: There’s something about it. If I think about the years I’ve been there, there’s been a bunch of Mercury retrogrades during it. You know, you look at it, and like, “Oh, here we go,” especially from the point of view of Greg and I, whenever we’re dealing with tech stuff. So it’s like it’s this thing. It’s almost a running joke. But I kind of like that, that it is on the same weekend every year, besides the UAC years. But even this year, if you were to look at the transits, at what’s going on, right? Certain things. And Venus retrograde and Neptune’s involved. You know, there’s a lot of mutability going on. I will say coming into this, knowing my own personal chart, I was kind of like, “Okay, I’m sweating this a little bit, transit-wise.” But at the same time, it’s Memorial Day weekend. It’s always here, so just deal with it.

LN: Yeah, and that’s the thing. Look, the transits are the transits, but I actually don’t over-focus on them, the chart itself of the current conference because it’s gonna be what it’s gonna be. And if I do the best I can, stay present, focused on what I know to do—and that I have a long history of doing—then everything will be fine, and it usually is.

CB: Right. That’s almost a really good lesson to take from it when you have something like that, where you can’t control it necessarily, you just do your best. And you can observe the chart and make notes from that or learn things from it. But otherwise, the point is not to try to avoid something, per se, but to roll with it. And this year, more than any other year, must have been a great demonstration of that.

LN: Yeah, I mean, I had looked at solar return and knew something was coming, I did not know what. I thought it was all in my personal life and not in my business life. And this came along, and in January, not at all, I was not cluing in. February, I started getting the inklings, right? And then we hit March, and I’m like, “Oh, my gosh.” Now I’m calling the hotel, I’m getting the information. “What’s the deal? What’s my cancellation policy? How much will I owe you? What’s the attrition?” Yadda, yadda, yadda. And then panic starts setting in.

CB: Right. So what was that process like? So basically, in the middle of March, is when the entire US just goes on lockdown, and it becomes clear that an in-person conference is not gonna happen. So at that point, obviously, you panic, you start calling the hotel. What’s the sequence of events?

LN: Well, I call the hotel, and I first get the salesperson who’s really not in the know. And so, I’ve been with this hotel 20-plus years, maybe 25, so I know everyone, but I don’t know this guy very well.

CB: Which is one of the benefits of NORWAC. It’s always at the same hotel, that’s not far from the airport. And it creates this kind of familiar, home-like environment, in addition to the fact that it’s a family-run conference. Not just that it’s been handed over from your mother to you, but also, your brother, Greg, runs the bookstore, and your daughter and your son are often helping with registration and recording. So there’s this sense of, every year, coming back and familiarity with it.

LN: Absolutely. So I have this relationship with them. I had both my parents’ memorials in this hotel. Staff came to both my parents’ memorials that were there. I had my 40th birthday celebration in the suite upstairs. They let me have it for my 40th birthday, oh, so many years ago, so there’s a connection I have with them. And so, I ended up talking to this guy who is not part of that history. And he said, “Well, your attrition, right now if you cancel, you’re at 30%-or-35% of your guarantee. And your next rate bump up,” it was like five days from then, which was almost going to double the amount.

CB: So part of it was like you had to make an agreement with the hotel, that you’re gonna fill up a certain number of hotel rooms.

LN: And food.

CB: Oh, and food costs in terms of the banquets and how many people will be there. And you have to promise that those people will be there and pay for meals or rooms, otherwise, you have to pay some percentage.

LN: Otherwise, I have to pay it. Right. Exactly. Exactly. So that’s that cancellation clause that says if you cancel within a certain frame, you have to pay 30% of the overall expected revenue that they were expecting based on the contract. And that’s why you have to walk very carefully with your guarantees. And if you overpromise and something like this happens, then you’re in a world of hurt, right?

CB: Yeah.

LN: So I was, frankly, freaking out, and I then decided to call the general manager who I knew—I’ve known him for years—and I said, “Jim, what’s the deal?” and they were hurting, a world of hurt. Though it’s a Hilton brand, it’s a privately-owned hotel, and they were just hurting bad. So we did a lot of talking, and he extended my decision date for me. They gave me breathing room. We wanted to get closer to the end of March or get past where we were to see what was happening. They were not going to cancel my contract. They were not gonna let me out of it, even though we had a long history.

CB: So there was no disaster clause?

LN: There is.

CB: But this wasn’t covered? Why wouldn’t they let you out of it?

LN: It’s force majeure in any contract. In order for force majeure to hold, the government—whether it’s city, county, state, or federal—puts into place an order or some kind of whatever order that says you cannot meet. Now at that point that order only went to May 4.

CB: Okay, so it fell just short.

LN: It did. And so, if I held out and did not cancel, and was hoping for force majeure, the conference was never gonna happen, right? We knew that.

CB: Right.

LN: And so, they were trying to get me to move it to a different date, which wasn’t gonna work. So basically, they came back and said, “We’ve offered you alternate dates. Since you have not taken any of those alternate dates, you are still bound by your contract. We do not know whether we will be in a state of force majeure by the time the conference happens.” So I ran the risk of a bigger amount if I waited to make the choice. And I was caught in limbo. What do I do? So I came back to the hotel, and on a phone call, at the date we had suggested, I talked to the hotel general manager and the senior salesperson, and they offered me half of the early attrition as a dollar amount. And in order not to prolong it, I just took it. I’m that type of person. I gotta move on, right?

CB: So you took a financial hit.

LN: I did.

CB: But it was big and considerable, but not as big as it could have been, especially if you’d waited longer.

LN: Correct. It would have been three times higher than the amount I was owing, that they cut in half. Not the three times higher than the amount I paid. That would have been the amount I would have paid at the end. If I had waited, it would have been six times higher than the amount I paid, cuz it was cut in half. I have Saturn in 5th, people. I’m not a gambler.

CB: Sure.

LN: I’m just not. And so, I had to make a decision, pay the money. I figured NORWAC could limp through, make it, at least pay back that penalty, and then make a little. Because it is my living. I’m not a consulting astrologer. I don’t do readings for a living. I do them periodically, but it’s not how I make my living. I make my living running NORWAC.

CB: Right. And you’ve had a history of organizing, not just NORWAC, but also, other conferences, like the last United Astrology Conference, and another one years before that and other regional conferences. So this has been your primary thing for a while now.

LN: Yeah, it has. So, you know, the threat of having no income, the threat of not having enough money to finance NORWAC next year, that was all looming. It was very, very stressful, the feeling of letting down the legacy by canceling it and not having an in-person conference, not knowing how a virtual conference would look. And I just leapt. I just took that leap of faith and went, and I said we have to do it. I have no other choice. I have to pull this off somehow. So that’s late March. I’ve got from late March to May. So it was less than two months we pulled this off.

CB: And do you mind if we share your chart? Just cuz you were having some amazing transits the past few months that were very descriptive and illustrative of all of this.

LN: Mm-hmm.

CB: What house system do you normally use?

LN: I use Porphyry.

CB: Porphyry, okay. Let me cast a chart with Porphyry.

LN: Although in every other house system, it doesn’t change, except for whole sign houses.

CB: Right.

NP: I came into your class using Placidus, and we were having a running back-and-forth argument for months, cuz you’d tell me, “No, Porphyry, Porphyry.” And then my Pluto switched or something and then it all connected, and I started using Porphyry. I am a whole sign house user, too.

LN: From an evolutionary point of view, whole sign houses just doesn’t do it for me. I can see whole sign houses certainly in certain ways of looking at my chart, but from the evolutionary point of view, I do not.

CB: Right. Cuz in terms of evolutionary, that was something we talked about, and I meant to mention earlier, we did a profile in Episode 75 of The Astrology Podcast. The last time you were on, we did a profile with Gary Lorentzen about your mom, Maggie Nalbandian. And part of the interesting story surrounding that was her starting an astrology bookstore called Astrology Et Al in Seattle and that was actually what proceeded NORWAC. But you got in kind of at the ground level of evolutionary astrology because one of the in-house astrologers at Astrology Et Al was—

LN: Jeffrey Green.

CB: Jeffrey Wolf Green. And that’s funny, cuz your experience of that was different because you grew up around the bookstore, and Jeffrey was just like one of the astrologers around there.

LN: Yeah, I mean, he’s like an older brother to me.

CB: Sure.

LN: You know, that’s the environment we were in. It was a magical environment.

CB: Yeah.

LN: It was totally, totally blessed. Totally.

CB: I can imagine. So here’s your chart. One of the things I was just thinking about when you were describing all of this was just Uranus stationing earlier in Taurus, earlier this year, in January, I believe, and then started to move forward. But it’s just been going over your midheaven and other placements there. And it seems like the unexpectedness and the disruption from your normal, yearly, annual thing was a large part of that transit.

LN: Yeah. You know, I see myself—that midheaven and that Moon in Taurus and that Mars in Taurus—the analogy I use for myself is the horse to the field, the horse to the barn. The horse to the field, the horse to the barn. I like my consistency of going to the pasture, I know where I’m going. There’s familiarity, there’s comfortability. And back to my little place in the barn and my little stall, I like that.

CB: Sure.

LN: And so, you know, 20, 20-some-odd years of going to the same hotel, we change things up some, cuz I do like that, but there’s this consistency through the whole thing. And all of a sudden that’s not happening, right? So it’s like, oh, my gosh. And that Uranus triggered off my midheaven back in 2018 as we were doing the UAC 2018 conference. That was that May of 2018 in Chicago. So Uranus got as close as it was gonna get at that point and then backed away. But it certainly triggered some things off. It was a wild ride, and basically just all the earth in my chart has had to get over itself and become more adaptable.

CB: Right. So your midheaven’s at 5° of Taurus, and Uranus stationed at 2° of Taurus in January. And then, yeah, it’s at like, what, 8° now? So it was basically just going over that whole degree or range of degrees over the past few months. You’re not just having this unexpected disruption, but it’s actually kind of funny how much you had to then throw yourself into dealing with new technologies. And that’s partially where Nicholas comes in. Cuz, luckily, you had a good friend who had some experience in that area. When did you guys start talking? Like in March about this?

LN: Would have been right away. I think I pretty much called you right away and said I wanna hire you. And you were like, “Yes.”

NP: “Yeah, like I’ll do whatever it takes,” I told you, I remember. I went, “Whatever it takes, Laura, I’ll do this.” You know, because even the week before, when you were talking personally within your family, certain things, there was, honestly, a mourning.

LN: Yes, there was.

NP: There were tears.

LN: Yeah.

NP: It was shocking.

LN: It was. It was sad because I did feel like I was letting NORWAC down. I felt like I was letting mom down. I felt like here it was on my watch and the burden of it on my shoulders. And, you know, this isn’t life or death. I’m not gonna equate it with what people are experiencing. But when you’re emotionally-invested in something, and something like this, that has a lineage to your mother—who I was very, very close with—and being a Capricorn who shoulders responsibilities in a very serious way, sometimes disproportionately so, maybe even inappropriately so to take on responsibilities that aren’t mine, things were beyond my control. And so, what could I do to then salvage the situation? You know, I can name the people that helped me. You know, I have the organizer’s brain, and I have the fortitude and determination of that Taurus on the midheaven, that will push itself to all limits to get something taken care of, right? But, you know, it is Nicholas and my brother and Steve Wolfson—who did the website, who was and is brilliant—who came up with all kinds of creative solutions to things that I didn’t even know, and Tony Howard who gave me advice. So those are the four big ones that really were there for the technology side of things, that made this thing happen. And just being caring, kind people who supported me and knew how important this was to me and to my family, and have been connected to my family enough that it meant something to them.

NP: You know, I’ll tell you, on a personal level, I’ve been working with Tony Howard, Astrology University, just doing some basic stuff and learning along the way. I mean, a lot of it’s just social media posting and stuff that happens with our webinars. You know, by doing that, you learn things, you pick up on things. But even before that, my world, I was already planning to do my own types of livestreams within the music world because I’m friends with a lot of musicians. Had plans to do my own channel, acquiring equipment along the way, knowledge, learning, so on and so forth, and it sidetracked with other projects. But it felt like to me, my world. The last two years of my life, the stuff that I was learning along the way and researching was actually for this, I just didn’t know it. And another project—it happened at the same time as this. Because I’m doing a major livestream project with music and multi-casting with music. So as soon as the COVID thing happened, and then the next thing you know, Laura and I are talking, here it is. I’m like, “Okay, let’s do this.” And it’s not odd, but it just flowed that way for me.

LN: Synchronicity.

CB: Yeah, you and I had a lot of conversations about livestreaming and astrologers needing to take advantage of that more. And I think you gave me my first capture card a few years ago, when I was starting to do video in order to do more things like this, high-quality videos.

NP: Listen, since we’re here, let’s just say it out loud how that happened really quick, because this is connected to NORWAC. Because several years ago, whenever, I had my laptop and a bunch of things stolen out of my car at NORWAC. Okay, so that just wrecked me. It was the Saturday night it happened and the next day was Sunday, I was, “Keep going and show up.” It just crushed me. A lot of information I lost. Backup your stuff, folks, cuz I lost some stuff. So anyway, the next day, I was coming through in the morning, and Greg was like, “Come here,” and he was over—with people who know the hotel—where people have breakfast. And I was like, “What? What?” He’s like, “Come here. Come here.” I’m like, “What?” Cuz we’re always playing on jokes on each other. “What are you gonna do? What are you up to?” So I go over there, and I think it was Demetra and Leisa, and it was you, Chris. “You know, come over.” And then, basically, not a lot of people know this, but that was the year that Chris’ book came out, and it was in the bookstore. And it did so well, Chris. We sold your book. It was a huge year for you. And, you know, we got to the point of the conversation, and you said, “Nicholas, I’m gonna give part of my book sales to help you recover,” right? And I’m like, “No, dude. Not gonna do that. I don’t do that.” I don’t let anybody do that for me. I got a crazy sense of pride, you know. I just do. But I was like, “No, no, no.” And Greg’s looking at me, and he’s like, “Dude, come on, man. You’ve got to accept this. You have to accept this.” You know, it’s all quiet, and I’m looking at everybody at the table. Demetra’s staring right at me, what am I gonna say? No to Demetra, no to Leisa, no to Chris? And I accepted it. You know, to be part of NORWAC, how I ended up there and my journey, and being a room monitor and helping out in the bookstore, and then all the people that I’ve met over the years—I’ve always made it a point, the new people that walk through the door, it’s not my job, it’s not my title, it’s just I can’t help it. I always say ‘what’s up’ to them. Like, “Who are you? What’s up? Where you from?” I don’t care what kind of astrology you do, whatever, I just welcome. Because I know what it is, we all know what it is to walk alone. At some point in our life, in our astrology journey, we’re walking alone. And you’re like, “Where’s my crew?”

CB: Right.

NP: So saying all that, that moment there, it hit me. Like accept it, so I did. And the next day was Memorial Day, so on and so forth, and it just so worked out. I think Leisa and Chris were like, “We’re going into town to Pike Place Market. I’ll pick you up and go ride, or I’ll meet you. Come on, let’s go hang out.” And so, part of what happened there, too—it just popped in my brain that night—I had a capture card I brought to you.

LN: I’m sorry. What is a capture card?

CB: Something that connects a nicer camera to your computer, if you wanna go above doing just a webcam.

LN: Okay.

CB: So it was kind of instrumental in moving into the next realm of doing audio and video with the podcast, basically.

LN: Okay.

CB: But he had given it to me.

NP: Yeah, so basically, the next day, I can’t completely accept something. I feel like I have to reciprocate, that’s just who I am. But it just made sense. I followed it, and I go, “Hey, Chris, take this capture card, we had a beautiful lunch,” so on and so forth. So to go back to your capture card thing, by the way, and technology and how we started talking about this and to go to now, into this moment—all of sudden, we have COVID and there’s this thing. And Laura’s calling me to do it. I’m like, “Whatever it takes.” You know, and from there, from that moment, I’m like, “Okay, I think we can do this. We don’t know what’s gonna happen or how it’s gonna form itself.” But one thing I can say about myself and the family—it’s like being the Nalbandian family and Marcella—we’re all pretty good with going with the flow, and we’re all used to being with each other at the conferences and dealing with each other’s quirks and our emotional places and knowing how to hold space for each other when things are heavy. We’ve had experience doing this in person, at the conference. So here we are in this, it’s a new thing. So there’s the thing of trust. You can trust people. Like I trust Laura, and Laura can trust me, that type of thing. That’s the only way you could pull something like this off.

LN: And there we were, all seven of us, in my house, in different locations in the house, for four days. I mean, they didn’t stay overnight. They went home each day. But still, you’re not roaming around the hotel and being able to go up to your room and take space, so there that was. But we did great.

CB: Maybe that was part of the family dynamic of NORWAC, like when you had that crisis, Nicholas, where somebody broke into your car in the middle of a conference. Like everybody felt bad and wanted to make it right, because no one member of the family should have something bad—

NP: Mark Jones came up to me the next day, and he’s like taking money out of his wallet. You know, I had other stuff that happened to me afterwards. It just hit me. I knew it before, but it just hit me in a deeper way. Like this is my crew, this is my family. In my mind, in my view of NORWAC and my participation in it, it’s the number one thing.

LN: It is.

NP: It always has been. It is. And I think people feel that. It’s not fake, it’s real.

LN: And it’s messy sometimes.

NP: Yeah, it’s messy. Stuff goes down. We’re all concentrated in this hotel, this funny hotel that gives you warm chocolate chip cookies. You know, there’s all these funny, quirky things, but it contributes to the space. You know, there’s people working there, the bartender.

LN: We know the bartender.

NP: And everybody who comes through, for the most part, contributes to that. And I’ll say it felt that way this weekend, this past weekend.

LN: It did.

CB: That was part of what happened. Another crisis happened, but then it seemed like different members of that family or that crew kind of stepped up in order to do what was necessary to still make it happen, cuz it was important to everyone.

LN: Yeah. All right, so once I knew the mechanism, right? Once I knew the mechanism of how this thing was going to happen, then my next level of concern—

CB: What was the mechanism?

LN: The mechanism was, okay, we’re gonna use Zoom.

CB: Okay, Zoom.

LN: We’re gonna have seven computers, six for the breakouts, one for the main room. We’ve got this website platform we’re gonna use, Restricted Content Pro. It does a lot of things, we’re gonna use that. So those basic technical elements. We were working on what kind of other equipment we needed. I upgraded my internet to a gig. We ran hard lines for all the computers, CAT 6. So we had all that in place, we knew, right? And we rehearsed. I think the underlying fear I didn’t have time to face, but once I knew the mechanisms were in place to have the conference happen, it surfaced, and that was how in the heck are we going to create an environment that is unique to NORWAC? How are we gonna do that?

CB: Right. That sense of community.

LN: Yeah, how are we gonna do that without hugging each other and having the space to hang out and chat? So it was like from the very beginning, I was like I gotta have ways that people can connect, right? So let’s leave the chatroom. Let’s leave the rooms open. Let’s have one of seven computers—when it’s not being used—for the main ballroom. Let’s have people chat there. Let’s support other mechanisms and platforms for people to connect on, whether that’s Google Hangout or whatever it might be that people were finding. And so, my goal was to bring forward into the virtual space as much of NORWAC as I could, so part of that was the virtual vendors. Now they didn’t do as well as they would have done at a normal conference, but they got advertising to as many eyes as possible, as they could. They did have people come into their rooms, and they did have some sales, which is all good. But, you know, we really tried to get them to support—get the attendees to support the vendors more actively. So we wanted to have a trade show, and we wanted to have places for people to gather. We wanted to have our traditional opening ceremony with the creating of sacred space, and we wanted to have our traditional closing ceremony, with the closing of the circle. So I knew those were the things that we wanted to have, and then I decided I was gonna do a weeks-worth of orientations. Meaning, send out an email, set up the Zoom orientation, get as many people into the Zoom orientations, which, by the way, only ended up being, I don’t know, maybe a third to—it wasn’t a half, for sure. But it was possibly between a third and a half, so maybe two-thirds.

CB: Of the attendees?

LN: Yeah, of the attendees coming through the orientations. And what I asked my veteran attendees to do was to serve as ambassadors. To serve as ambassadors and to reach out to new people that they didn’t know. I asked new people to stretch beyond their limits and introduce themselves to other people. And so, I worked very hard at fostering the environment where connection could happen because that’s our motto, ‘Where Connections Can Happen’.

CB: Yeah, and one of the things I love about it—that Leisa Schaim mentioned to me this weekend during NORWAC, that she had heard from Nicholas, and that Nicholas, you had heard from Laura, from your interview that you did as a promo video on the NORWAC YouTube channel—was you were talking about the very first chart for NORWAC, and how that very first chart still seems to be operative in some ways.

LN: Yeah, it does.

CB: And if you pull it up, what I saw, that I just thought was brilliant, was the ascendant for the very NORWAC. So the chart is March 23, 1984, starting at 12:45 PM in Seattle, Washington, and it has 1° of Leo rising. And so, the descendant is at 1° of Aquarius. And that’s exactly where Saturn stationed retrograde this month, in the middle of May. So the chart for NORWAC, in some way, was having a Saturn transit right over its ascendant in Aquarius, which is both appropriate in terms of having a year in the history of the conference where everybody still is able to get together, but has this sense of separation and not being able to there in person. But also, just this general Saturn in Aquarius theme of trying to connect people, even though we’re separated due to the quarantines and everything else.

LN: Right. And from a modern point of view, you’re looking at that Saturn, as it hit that, come back to square Pluto, which is the modern ruler of the 4th. And so, in some ways, we ended up doing the conference at home, it sounds like.

CB: Right.

NP: From all our homes.

LN: So, you know, I would say Friday was a pretty stressful day. Thursday’s pre-conference, pre-pre-conference was very smooth. Friday was pretty challenging because I didn’t know what I didn’t know. And that’s a truism of pretty much everything. You don’t know what you don’t know, right?

CB: You just have to do it. There’s no way to know until you’ve done it, and failed, and then you get another chance at some point in the future.

LN: I was trying to do too much. So I had to delegate one of my tasks away, so that I could focus on support calls, people freaking out they couldn’t get in, they couldn’t make their passwords work. You know, I’m on the phone with Steve Wolfson and on the phone with them. And emails are coming in faster than I’ve ever seen them. And I’ve got people talking in one ear and somebody talking in the other and the phone ringing. It was nuts.

CB: Wow.

LN: Reminded me of that first day of UAC 2018 where I was being pulled in five different directions.

CB: Yeah, and let me show the chart for that. So this is the chart for the opening of this year’s NORWAC, which opened on Friday, May 22, 2020, at 12:45 PM in Seattle, Washington, with early Virgo rising.

LN: Yeah, that early Virgo rising—when we left our Leo rising charts behind and came into the mutable cross, that was really a shift. You know, my natal Sun sits right there at 27 Capricorn, and there is Saturn on one side and Jupiter on the other. So Jupiter’s pushing from behind and Saturn’s in the front saying, “Slow down, sister, slow down.”

CB: Right.

NP: You know, I have a 20° Gemini Sun. I have a 2° Aquarius Moon. The charts just lit for me just in general right now. But I haven’t looked at this chart. Actually I didn’t think about the opening. You know, we were too busy. But I’m looking at it now. And yeah, Neptune’s right there, too, so huge for me.

CB: Yeah, so that first day was a little rough, and you were trying to do a little too much on your own. And it looks like that was the day of the Moon-Mars square. But you realized pretty quickly that you needed to delegate responsibility more.

LN: Yes.

CB: And in doing so, things ran more smoothly the next couple of days.

LN: Without question, they ran more smoothly. So Aaron’s partner, Whitney stepped in. She had already been rehearsing with us. And she was originally going to take on the task of just hanging out in the ballroom and monitoring chat and helping people and answering questions, and possibly picking up the phone and answering that. But I realized the phone questions are highly technical. I need the backend of the website. I know what I’m looking at. And it was like, “Look, she can take the room. She can take the room I was hosting. And I should never have been in that room to begin with.” But, you know, we have a stay-home order here in Seattle, with no more than 10 gatherings, so I was trying to keep the number down. But I realized we can all share the duty of watching the northwest ballroom when we need to, and what I really need to do is get Whitney in the room that I was running and free me up to do other things which were absolutely necessary.

CB: Right.

NP: You know, can I say something here, to this point here?

LN: Sure.

NP: You know, we’re talking about technicalities and the timeline of things and before that we were talking about just what NORWAC is family-wise. It’s almost, to me—or not just us—we’re trying to do something new and trying to pull something off. But everybody’s been doing something new before this because of COVID. Everyone’s had to learn how to use Zoom or Google whatever, whatever app. People who are not into tech have had to figure it out. So one thing I noticed this weekend is, yeah, Laura’s had to take a ton of stuff like this. You know, sometimes people can’t find an email, whatever. But I noticed, though, in the rooms—cuz I saw some of you in the rooms—within the weekend we’re getting more and more proficient, and they were coming in with tools already, even before the conference. And I actually think that contributed to the type of energy that was involved in people feeling connected. Because they’ve had to do their own kind of training to talk to whoever else in their life before the conference.

LN: Well, isn’t that serendipitous, though? COVID set up in place for both things to occur, so the conference had to go viral. And because of COVID, people learned to use technology, and they all met in the middle. Their use of technology leading into this brought them to the conference. I was talking to Kelly Surtees this morning, and a couple of things I find interesting—one is that people started bailing from the conference as soon as it went viral. We lost around a hundred people.

CB: Yeah, that was a big concern. I mean, I was scared for you because I know that this is something you spend a year on, and it’s part of your livelihood. And I was really wondering if that was gonna be the end of NORWAC. If everybody bailed, would a NORWAC happen again?

LN: It was just happening, just by the numbers, everyday more cancellations and more cancellations. And yes, I was very much concerned. “You know, I don’t really feel like sitting at my desk for three or four days. You know, I really come to the conferences for the in-person socialization and the information is secondary.” And what happened is that element got skimmed away. A great element. There’s nothing wrong with that. That’s what they want in a conference, that’s awesome, right?

CB: Sure.

LN: So what it left were the people who were more interested in information and wanted the information. And then I got a big push from you and Kelly and Austin on your podcast, and people from all over the world who had not been able to afford travel and hotel and food expenses, but had always wanted to come to NORWAC because of its high-caliber speakers and all of that, so that started happening. Then I also noticed that some of the people who canceled came back. They re-registered. And what was happening is that this was now what conferences were gonna be for this year, right? It was either gonna be this or nothing.

CB: Yeah.

LN: Right?

CB: And there was so much uncertainty, I’m sure, in March and April, that everybody was just canceling all of their plans. But once you realize that this is like the new normal, you sort of have to adapt.

LN: There you go. That was it. That was it. You hit it right on the head, Chris. It became the new normal. It was like, oh, okay, this isn’t the anomaly, this is what is. And if I wanna connect up with my friends and learn astrology, this is the way it is. That’s just the way it is.

NP: Yeah, there’s an acceptance that has to happen, or did happen. You know, it’s different for everyone. Some people are more resistant to things changing and shifting. You know, honestly, to be straight up here, because of what happened on Twitter, too, other people from past NORWACs saw the announcement and the format, and they’re doubting it, understandably, because it’s something new. But, you know, also to give a shoutout to our past ‘NORWAC-ians’, as we call them, they went, “No, this could be something.” Yeah, so Laura set this whole thing up to get the train rolling. We’re all on the train. But honestly, on the other side of it, it’s just people, friends, fellow astrologers, people I know that helped it along, too. It’s not fake. It’s real.

LN: Right.

NP: So that helps.

LN: Yeah, and they were down on the price to begin with. And they wanted us to give them all of the content forever and ever. And no, there are other formats that do that, and that’s their format, but this is not NORWAC’s format. We wanted to stick as close to our conference format as possible in terms of our policies and what we did. And so, originally it was one week, and then through some conversations, we came to the two-week access. And I wanted to come back to something, though, Chris, and that is my conversation with Kelly this morning. I had been thinking about this—what happened that took this conference from just a bunch of people sitting in their homes, watching, to the kind of connection we normally have at NORWAC? How do we jump that chasm? And I realized that there were a couple of components. One is we are a family-run environment. And because we’re family, we have this connection with us, and we carry that connection. And there’s a kind of ease of behavior that we have with each other and an ease of behavior. We’ve created relationships with the speakers, so the speakers know my children. My children have been at NORWAC since they were babies. Jen was born in ‘83, so she was just a year old when the first NORWAC happened. And Aaron was born at the end of ‘84, so he was a baby the following year. So they have been at NORWAC since they were born, basically, and so, people know them. And so, the speakers know them. The attendees know them. So getting into the chatroom, there was this familiarity that starts to happen. We’re chatting with them. “How are you? So happy to see you.” And then we start seeing veteran ‘NORWAC-ians’, right? We’re talking to them, they’re cross-talking, and all of a sudden this energy’s starting to connect. It almost seemed to me like a web was being woven of energy, as people were reaching across to each other saying ‘hi’, connecting up, inviting new people in. And so, I think that there was so much foundation of familiarity between the ‘NORWAC-ians’, the veterans, the speakers who knew them already because they’d been coming to NORWAC so long. So I think that really helped to create this environment that was not sterile, not stodgy, not isolating, and not cold. So many people have sent me emails, so many people have posted on Facebook that exact feeling. And some people posted, “Even at NORWAC or conferences in the past, I felt awkward, overwhelmed, and shy, and I didn’t feel like I could step into a group of new people. And that would be me if I went to a conference. I would just go to my room, if I were an attendee.” So that’s what they were writing. They were like, “Normally, I would just go to my room during lectures. I felt overwhelmed. I just wandered the halls, kind of disconnected.” And they felt more connected in this environment, with this platform, than they would have coming into the conference in person. So all kinds of magical things happened that, again, you can’t know until it happens.

CB: Yeah, one of the things that I thought was interesting was during the live lectures—when everybody was attending through Zoom—there was always a lively chat and discussion between people as the lecture was going on. And Sam Reynolds mentioned once that it was almost as if we were all sitting in the same lecture room, but you could hear everybody else’s thoughts and there was some kind of telepathic connection between us. But I think that really helped and was an interesting and innovative facet of this that I didn’t anticipate would help to create a greater sense of community and connection between people, and something you wouldn’t have normally in a standard model of a conference.

LN: Right. And people really loved coming back into the classrooms, talking to the speakers, or jumping out of those classrooms and heading on over to the northwest ballroom to hang out and chat and just connect with one another, build friendships, say ‘hi’ to old friends, all of that. So I think that was the right choice for me to make, so that it wasn’t just have the classroom, shut the classroom, right? So that there was a place for people to virtually gather. That was the right thing to do.

CB: Yeah, and that was both the challenge, but also, where the innovation took place in figuring out how to create a social element to an online conference, since that’s such a huge element in NORWAC in general. So even just going ahead with the conference in general was important in terms of helping to foster community, I feel like, this year. Because NORWAC was one of two big in-person conferences that were supposed to take place prior to COVID, in 2020. And the other one is the ISAR conference, which was supposed to happen in Denver in September, but it seems like it’s all still up for discussion. And the official newsletter that they’ve sent out has said that they’re not sure if it’s gonna happen in person. And if it doesn’t happen in person, they do not think that they want to host an online conference, although we’re still waiting to see if that’s the final word.

LN: Yeah.

CB: But that was what was important about NORWAC, though. The fact that you did step up in order to put the entire conference online, I think, was crucial because it could have ended up being or might end up being the only major event that happens in the astrological community this year.

LN: In the United States, yeah. Cuz the AA conference is gonna happen in England. And I’ve been in contact with Wendy Stacey, and we’ve talked regularly and supported each other. But I would say this, yes, NORWAC is not a volunteer organization until it’s at conference time, when volunteers come in and in exchange for room monitor work, they get the conference, right? This was not a volunteer process, right? I paid people to do this work. From Nicholas—my kids got paid, cuz they put in hours. The web guy, Steve Wolfson, obviously is paid. So, you know, ISAR is built on volunteerism.

CB: Right.

LN: Organizations are built on volunteerism. And so, for them to convert to a virtual conference won’t be as easy, or wouldn’t be nearly as easy because the level of commitment of hours it will take is beyond what you could really or should really ask of a volunteer.

CB: And they’re gonna have over a hundred speakers or something. How many speakers did you have at NORWAC?

LN: Counting me, 33.

CB: Okay. So it’s like that’s a lot, but you guys were able to pull it off. But then multiply that by three, to like a hundred-something, that starts getting a lot to manage.

LN: Yeah, we do have a lot of single lectures, a person doing one lecture. But a lot of our people are doing multiples, and that’s not something you get as much at the bigger conferences. Because I was the coordinator of UAC 2018, as a thank-you, ISAR did give me two lectures for ISAR 2020. One I earned through voting, and they gave me the second one. So the first one was not given. I was actually up on the charts for that. So my point is that it would take a lot for them. They would either have to pay people to do it, to bring that off and have that kind of commitment, or they’re gonna have to scale it back. You know, when you’re dealing with one lecture per speaker—the majority are doing one lecture—then you’re gonna have space for more speakers, and that’s what they wanna do. Because with ISAR and with UAC, you wanna get in as many speakers as possible, so that new speakers can be launched and seen. And because UAC is such a singular event that happens once every four-to-six years, you never know when the next one’s gonna come around. You know, people wanna get in, so you’ve gotta make it so that you can get a higher number of speakers in. So UAC had a 170, and ISAR would have had, or will have a hundred. So managing a hundred speakers is very different than managing 30 or 33.

NP: I was just thinking about those of you watching, who are speakers—because I got a hold of you to do some tests—and what it takes to do that and the tech aspects. And on my end, it was trying to line all that up. And then we’re talking about a hundred speakers right now for ISAR. I’m just like, oh, wow, because that in itself is its own job, it’s own thing, having to have conversations with speakers on the tech end, to try to bring the highest quality you can, under the circumstances, but under the highest quality you can, like the audio, the visual. Something like this, Zoom, any lecture you’re doing virtually, one of the most important components is the experience is not ever gonna be the same as it is in person. But since we’re doing this here, you have to make the effort and try to go as pro as possible.

LN: And you know me, I was like, “I just gotta get the mechanism some place.” And you and Greg were like, “No, no, no. You gotta make sure all this stuff is in place.” And I’m like, “Well, you guys do it.”

NP: Yeah, we had this bickering argument. You know, Greg and I, we were used to doing audio and all this stuff before. We’re like, “No, no, no, no, no. We gotta talk.” So those types of things.

CB: That was one of my biggest concerns, actually, when it was switched to an online conference. And I think I said a couple of times make sure people get decent microphones—and there’s some kind of prep—because that was always my biggest struggle with the podcast. Even if you wanna do an interview and somebody has an internet connection, if they speak into a built-in microphone on a laptop or a webcam, when you edit it in post, it really just does not sound good when you listen to it again afterwards. So sometimes having an external microphone or buying one is like a necessary thing to get good audio. And I knew that would be a stumbling block if people weren’t thinking about those things. So that was one of your jobs that you helped coach people on. Right, Nicholas?

NP: Yeah, I mean, I’m gonna be straight up. I still feel like I didn’t do the best job I could’ve. But when you’re dealing with human beings, and you’re talking—

LN: And so little time.

NP: And so little time, you can only do so much, right? And I’ll be honest, I mean, I was just trying to charm people—speakers watching. “Do you wanna look good? Do you wanna sound good or not?” So it’s one of those things I’ve had to say. But for our end, you wanna have the best copy. This is for the future. This is it. You only get one shot, right? So, you know, I mean, I’m really critical of my work, so I’m like, okay, I could’ve done this or that. And I thought about it even this morning when I got up. But, you know, you have to make the attempt. For people out there who are thinking about taking things to another level—you’re gonna start your own podcast, your own channel, or you’re gonna maybe do a virtual conference—you gotta invest in equipment the best way you can. Do the tests. If you get an email from somebody like me, you wanna do the tests. Even though you’ve done a hundred Zooms, and you run your own school, you gotta do it anyway and go through the motions. Because of what happened this weekend a couple of times, I’m glad that I did the tests with many speakers. Some of the things I did with them—when challenges did come up—they knew exactly what to do. We knew what to do with them. We were in the moment, and you adapt. So again, to go back to how we started talking about this, 30-plus speakers, so on and so forth. Then you get to something bigger, that’s a huge task.

LN: It is.

NP: Go back to you, Laura, you were talking about volunteer, you gotta pay somebody. You gotta take it to that level.

LN: You do. And the fact that we had all the computers, we hosted all of it here, in one location, which is not something I think ISAR can do. It’s gonna be a big lift for them to get to something, I think. Do I think it can be done? Yes. But it’s gonna take a major restructuring. I had to restructure the whole schedule. I redid it. Luckily, serendipitously, everything fell into place. I mean, is this Jupiter on my Sun or what?

CB: Yeah, it stationed right there at 27, right?

LN: Yes, it stationed right on my Sun. I thought for a while, “Laura, are you overshooting this? Are you biting off more than you can chew?” as my mom used to say about Jupiter. She said, “You know, Jupiter. You’re biting off more than you can chew, girl.” So I thought, “Well, maybe I am. Maybe I’m thinking too big.” So I tried to keep a realistic site on things. So when Kelly tried to tell me, “Oh, this is gonna be big,” I was like, “No, no, no, no, no.” Patricia Walsh tried to tell me. Patricia, of course, being a Sag, was a little bit more vocal. She was like dancing and telling me she told me so. But I had no idea, frankly. I was just looking for, “Can I get back to where I was, number-wise? If I could get back the hundred people I lost, I’ll be good.”

NP: Yeah. You know, I just wanna be clear here for a second.

LN: I’m modest.

NP: Yeah, I just wanna be clear, because we’re being honest here about the technical stuff, about this conference, about what’s gonna happen with ISAR. And I don’t want it to seem like ISAR can’t pull something like it off, right?

LN: Like I said, I think it can happen.

NP: Yeah. Yeah, I think it can happen.

LN: If they really wanted it to, it could. It presents different challenges than NORWAC because it’s bigger.

NP: You scale it, though. It definitely has to be scaled and with a different mindset involved, but it can be done. It’s just you gotta get the right pieces in the right order, and then you gotta light a candle.

LN: Yeah, well, and some creative thinking. Some seriously creative thinking. You know, you can’t rely on old standard ways of thought with this. If NORWAC proved one thing, I think it proved that a virtual conference can transcend the limitations of a virtual conference energetically, which is what everyone was most concerned about. I think those people who dropped out were concerned about it. And I think that there are those who have talked about potential for ‘Zoom’ fatigue by the time ISAR gets here. But if ISAR is the only next conference until NORWAC 2021, it’s an important conference.

CB: Yeah, well, and that’s the problem. That was actually, to me, what made NORWAC even more important. Let’s just say, hypothetically, ISAR doesn’t happen. At least in terms of US conferences, that’s it for the next year. So it actually served a very important social component in the astrological community this year. And also, many new speakers get their start at NORWAC. I got my start at NORWAC, my first major conference talk way back in 2000, what was it? ‘05-2006 was at a NORWAC. I started off as a room monitor, and I volunteered helping to set the bookstore up with Aaron, your son, when I was living in Seattle in 2005, going to Kepler. But there were a number of new speakers that gave really important and innovative talks this year, like Diana Rose Harper, Bear Ryver, Kaitlin Coppock. And the fact that NORWAC was still able to take place and still able to host the presentation of people like that was really important and I think crucial for the community.

LN: Absolutely. And whether it’s ISAR, it’s NORWAC, or another major conference, this is where speakers get launched. You know, this is where the chance happens, right? And so, it’s an important place for those things to occur. There’s just so many reasons why conferences are important. I’m not just talking about NORWAC. I mean conferences in general. They’re important to our community. It’s how we gather. It’s not just about the gathering. It’s not just about the learning. There are a lot of elements involved in why conferences are so important, and why I’m passionate about it. I’m not just passionate about them because it’s what I do for a living. I do it for a living cuz I’m passionate about it. You know, that’s what I do. And I’ve done non-astrology conferences. I coordinated a public health conference for 10 years, and I stuck with it because I was passionate about bringing my type of brand of conferencing to a kind of stuck-and-stodgy public health conference and change the face of this public health conference that had also been going on for 30 years in the state of Washington. So I’m passionate about how people connect. I’m passionate about how learning is elevated when we are connecting to one another. Connections are everything, so that’s why it’s our motto.

CB: And sometimes unexpected developments come out of astrology conferences, in the astrological community. I know Project Hindsight came out of a series of dinners at a United Astrology Conference in Washington, DC in like 1992. I know some of the early talks about Kepler College were promoted or at least announced at some early conferences, I think, in the ‘90s.

LN: It was ‘91. In July of ‘91, in Chicago, from Rosemont.

CB: Okay. I think AFAN was founded out of a walkout of an AFA conference or something like that.

LN: Mm-hmm.

CB: Okay. So stuff happens sometimes that you don’t anticipate and isn’t planned, but there’s little effects that bounce off of conferences that have, sometimes, very important and long-lasting ramifications.

LN: Absolutely. No question, the unintended good consequences of all kinds of things. It is the ripple effect. Every action ripples out into the world. And you may or may not see the effects it has as it ripples into the future, as it ripples out into our environment.

NP: You know, even during the conference, okay, there’s never gonna be anything like this experience we just had.

CB: Right.

LN: You don’t think so? Yeah.

NP: Example, we had the panel on Sunday, the 2020 panel, okay? Chris, I’ve never seen you—we’ve all seen you, we watch your podcast. We know you personally, right? Everybody’s got their own experience with you. You’re out there. You know, you’re a public face—a lot of people. You know, I’ve never seen you do what you did there on Sunday. There’s the technical aspect, the slides, everything. But what I felt from you, and what we all felt from you, energetically, coming through virtually—we’re not in the room together. We’re virtually there. I’ve never seen that part of you. You know, the reason why I’m bringing this up, Chris, is cuz, first of all, I love you, and I’m glad that you were able to be on the panel.

CB: Yeah.

NP: But the whole panel—Demetra, every single person—had something profound to say, and it all had to do with our adaptability, with surviving, and going on and pushing forward as astrologers, as human beings. You know, you create a space in person or virtually, things do happen. You know, people step up whether they know it or not. We all step up. You know, we’re connected. But, you know, Chris, I gotta say, I go, “Is this me? Am I just getting the tears welling up?”

LN: I was starting to cry with what you said. You really touched my heart. And I wasn’t the only one, and neither was Nicholas.

NP: Yeah, in the chat, everything.

LN: It was amazing.

NP: It was amazing, Chris. And moments like this—cuz we’re talking about moments of what happens in certain places, and then what happens afterwards—everyone’s changed. You’re changed. I’m changed. Laura’s changed. Everyone who went to this conference is changed. We’re in unprecedented times—what we’re doing, what has happened to the world. But it also shows resiliency and hope, and faith starts to show up. It’s just basic human things. And I caught that from you. I caught that from you, Chris, and the panel. And I caught it from Demetra, from Patricia, and Judith. So I just had to say that.

LN: I thank you.

CB: Yeah.

NP: Yeah.

LN: Thank you for saying that, too, Nicholas. That was amazing, thank you.

CB: Yeah, I was just trying to also remember it was Sunday, and it was one of the final, last panels. And I was trying to remember from previous years some very inspirational speeches that I’ve heard at NORWAC and how that’s always such an important and sometimes either inspiring or uplifting or just really interesting points. You know, Rob Hand would often, for many years, give one of the final speeches at NORWAC that would be very deep and very thought-provoking and stuff. And so, I was just trying to think of and take some inspiration from those early NORWAC experiences that I had and sort of pass that forward.

LN: Well, you did it. You definitely did it.

NP: Yeah. Then that wasn’t even the end.

CB: Right.

LN: Yeah.

NP: We closed out with Sam, Samuel Reynolds, who just took it to the highest level, like we all did. We were all there. We were just coming up from the panel. Anyway, from the pre-conference all the way to the closing, it just built. And even on our end, as we’re working, we’re grinding. You know, it’s not the same thing as for people attending. We could feel it, but we just have to keep going. But when we got to the end and Sam’s keynote, and then we had time afterwards, I didn’t know we were gonna have the type of conversations we did.

LN: I didn’t either. I was like, “Oh, my God, we’ve got 30 minutes left. What are we gonna talk about? Okay, let’s talk about diversity.”

NP: Yep.

LN: So that was awesome. And it was a 30-minute, great conversation about certainly how NORWAC has been at the forefront of building diversity on a multitude of levels in the astrology community. And we will continue to do that. You know, I was originally slated to do two lectures. I dropped one cuz I was like that is just not gonna happen. And I thought I should have dropped the second one, but I kept with it, and I’m so glad I did. I thought I was gonna be tired. And the reason I wasn’t tired is because I woke up and smelled the coffee and thought, “I can’t do all this I’m doing,” so that’s when I handed it off to Whitney. And so, at least I had the resources to do my Sunday lecture, and it was great. It was well-attended.

CB: Yeah. How was the attendance? I don’t know if you can say official numbers, but it seemed like, ultimately, the early fears that much less people would attend or it could be a disaster didn’t pan out, and instead, it was the opposite.

LN: Yeah, didn’t pan out at all. And again, by no means do I minimize what I’m about to say, and I mean it with all sincerity. It wouldn’t have grown as rapidly without you, Chris, and you talking about NORWAC and the importance of conference and the importance of community. And the people around the world who listen to you and your podcast jumped on, and they came in great droves of numbers. So, you know, right now, I know the count that I’m looking at on my computer is wrong—because I think there’s some single days that are missing—but I’ll give you the honest numbers. We had 775 people registered full-conference.

CB: Okay.

LN: We had 70-plus, probably 70-80 additional people who were scattered throughout the day. So that’s not counting them single, by day, that’s one person might have had a Saturday, one person might have had a Sunday. Somebody might have had a Friday-Saturday. I counted up the individuals. So there’s 70-plus people there, so that’s almost 850. And so, the vendors attended and paid. So you’re looking at 845 with the mixed dailies and the full conference. And then you’ve got the vendors, so you’re at 850.

NP: Laura, what’s the max at the hotel?

LN: The max at the hotel I can take is 475. That’s what will fit into the ballroom. And so, I have to cap it at 475, full conference, everyday. So I have to manage that. And overall, last year, throughout the conference, we had 525, because not all of them were full-conference. But everyday, we did not have any more than 475 people in the hotel for the conference. And this year, with speakers—and that 475 has to include the speakers. You know, if they’re gonna be in a room, I have to count who’s gonna be in seats. So the total number—which is, I think, under-counted a little bit—is 600, excuse me, 967 individuals, with speakers and all.

CB: So easily at least double what you would normally do in a maxed-out year, which last year was the very first time you even maxed out.

LN: Yes. And so, we have the room counts and the counts from the plenary, and a big significant portion from around the planet are watching right now in their homes. They’re watching post-, right? So we had about 550-600 of that number show up.

CB: Yeah, I remember watching the live, during some of the big meetings, where everybody was in the plenary talks. There were 550-600 people watching live, it seemed like, often.

LN: Yeah, yeah. And there’s no way we would have ever had that at a NORWAC.

CB: Right.

LN: There’s no way. There’s never gonna be 500-600 people in a ballroom. Not in the hotel we’re using. And we had never intended, really, for NORWAC to be that big. We liked that kind of boutique feeling, a family feeling, when you walk in. And that’s not always gonna be somebody’s experience. You know, people are shy and awkward, and they don’t feel like they fit in, even in that environment. But as long as we provide that environment for them, then the rest is up to them.

NP: Yeah, well, that’s the other thing, too, right? We went virtual. And I saw plenty of tweets and comments on social media, and there were people from all over the world. They can’t make it to NORWAC.

LN: No, they can’t.

NP: They can’t get a plane ticket. You know, it’s expensive to do any conference, honestly, to attend one.

LN: Yeah.

NP: That’s the other golden thing about this, all these people from all over the world, and how many I saw from people who were like, “I would have never been able to go to NORWAC.”

LN: Over and over again.

CB: Right.

NP: And to bring back what you said, people are different. Some people are more shy. There’s plenty of people out there who aren’t as extroverted or maybe don’t do well in groups in person. But this is a place—this is something they can do. They’re comfortable at home, they feel secure, and they still get the knowledge. They can still have the interaction and still have the experience. Their experience.

LN: Absolutely. So what we’re gonna do for 2021, I’m not really sure. I mean, it’s a day after the conference. I’ve got enough voices speaking in both of my ears to tell me to do a dual-conference, and I’m not inclined.

CB: To try to do a hybrid, where it’s partially in person again, but also, partially online?

LN: It’s still on the table. And the reason why it is sitting closer to the edge of the table, to fall off, is that we will end up running two satellite conferences in the same space, at the same time.

CB: Right.

LN: So there’s the in-person conference happening and there is an online conference happening. How to get those two merged together is the deal.

NP: You’re making me nervous. You’re making me nervous right now just talking about this.

LN: I have to make these decisions. Demetra was like, “Well, can’t we bring cameras into the lobby, and bring screens in?” And then it’s like, okay, people in their homes are just watching people in a bar have fun? How is that fun?

CB: Sure.

LN: So I haven’t quite put it together yet. And certainly, anybody who’s got a grand idea can certainly email me.

CB: Yeah. And you don’t have a ton of time, in terms of making a decision. Cuz you said, like right now, very soon, by June, is usually when you would start doing speaker applications.

LN: Yeah.

CB: I think you said you launched—was it in September that you launched registration for the in-person conference?

LN: Yeah, I’ve gotta do advertising, and all of that has to be set in motion by July and August, and sometimes even sooner for The Mountain Astrologer. I’ve gotta have my ads. I’ve gotta get in touch with my ad designer, graphic designer. I’ve got to cull through the names of speakers that have already reached out to me for 2021, then go through my lists and see who I wanna bring back. You know, I have this sort of in the back of my brain, I wanna bring back a lot of people that were this year, so that attendees can have a chance to meet them. You know, I just don’t know yet. The way my brain works—I have Uranus on the ascendant in the 12th inconjunct Mercury. And so, I have to let things go. I have to let things go, and they will come to me as to how it should be. And it usually comes in time that I have to make the decision. I will know what I need to do. And my husband is very creative. So he’s been going, “Well, maybe you could do it this way. And maybe you could do it this way.” And so, I told him this morning, I said, “It’s great that you’re sharing your ideas with me. Something will click.” I said, “Something you say, something somebody else will say, it’ll be a combination of things. Something will click and I’ll know what I need to do.”

CB: Sure. And we still don’t know what’s gonna happen with the virus and with the public, yeah, just all sorts of things. At least in terms of where we’ll be exactly in May of 2021 and needing to know those details, ideally, before fully committing to things.

LN: Yeah, and that’s the thing. Yeah, that’s a huge thing. Cuz even as the president of WASA, I’m having a hard time getting people to commit to next year. What’s that gonna look like, we don’t know. And so, you know, I may have this problem with NORWAC. And there may be the potential for having some of our speakers Zoom into the conference versus we put them up on a screen. They would Zoom in, if that becomes an issue and we’re still having the in-person conference. So there’s just so many unknowns, Chris.

CB: Right.

LN: It throws me back to what I was experiencing in March, where it’s just so unknown. So much unknown and trying to make a decision in the face of so much unknown. It’s really hard.

CB: That does remind me, though, in March, I meant to thank you guys because you mentioned WASA, the Washington State Astrological Association, which is the local astrology group in Seattle that you’re the president of. And I remember we were trying to figure out what to do that month with our local meeting, and you were the first group—I remember in the country—that announced that you were switching your meeting online, and you would not be meeting up in person. And it wasn’t clear yet, cuz this was slightly before the lockdowns fully went into place. But you guys kind of led the way.

LN: Yeah, we did. Our first meeting in March was a webinar. It was a Zoom. All Zoom. And so, we’ve done March, April, May. And we’ll do June, Leisa.

NP: Yeah, because actually March, you did it.

LN: I did it.

CB: You did? Okay.

NP: Then was it Rick?

LN: It was Rick Levine in April.

NP: And then Bear.

LN: Bear in May.

NP: Bear.

LN: And Leisa in June.

CB: Leisa Schaim, next month in June, is speaking for WASA. Yeah, and then we followed your lead with the Denver Astrology Group that month. And Arielle Guttman still came out, and we still streamed it from our studio, because she didn’t have a good enough internet connection to do it at home. But that ended up working out well, so that we were still able to hold our meeting. Of course I got sick like right after that.

LN: I know.

CB: Probably running out to get food for us that week was probably a bad call. But it was still an early prelude to NORWAC, which probably gave you guys a little bit more experience leading up to doing like a massive version of that.

LN: I suppose. You know, it’s one Zoom per month, the class. I host the Zoom room for the lecture, and then the speaker hosts the workshop. So they have control over the workshop and they can close it down and do their things and that sort of thing.

CB: Okay.

NP: That goes to the thing we were talking about earlier. We were talking about earlier like we’ve all had to figure stuff out with tech here.

CB: Right.

LN: And I’ve been teaching at Soulwise. I’ve been teaching with Soulwise now since September, so that gave me some experience that I didn’t have. And so, we had already determined the distance learning process/all virtual learning environment before COVID even happened. So yeah, all of that, I think, underneath it all, gave me the confidence, some level of confidence, obviously to make the decision and move forward. But I gotta tell you, I don’t like it when I hear people say this, but I’m gonna say it anyway. I didn’t feel like I had a choice, and I know I had a choice, I know I did. But financially, I was up against the wall.

CB: Right.

LN: And that wasn’t workable. I was like, “Husband, if things go really bad,” cuz we keep our accounts separate. We don’t merge our money. That was the agreement, and we both were like, “Yeah, this is the way we’re gonna do this.” So I was like, “If things go really bad, I’m gonna be the dependent wife.” He’s like, “I gotcha, babe. I gotcha.”

CB: Yeah, he was probably thinking that was a good idea about keeping those two separate at that point, maybe.

LN: Yes, absolutely.

CB: Okay.

LN: Absolutely.

CB: So, what was I gonna say? So right now one of the things that’s really interesting is that the conference, while technically over, actually isn’t over for most of the attendees.

LN: No.

CB: Cuz one of the weird things that’s happening, that I was actually doing last night as I relaxed was I was going back and watching lectures that I missed. Because one of the unique and innovative things about this conference, again, that’s probably gonna end up being groundbreaking in the long term, is people were not just able to attend the lectures live, like you would at a normal conference, through Zoom, but you have access to all of the lectures from the entire conference for the next two weeks after the conference ends, if you are a conference attendee. So everybody is not just watching other lectures that they missed right now, but I know AFAN is organizing watch parties. So groups of people, of attendees, are getting together and watching certain lectures.

LN: Let me tell you how we’re doing that. Cuz I’m connected to that, obviously, because it’s NORWAC.

CB: Okay.

LN: So Patricia’s launching a watch party, and AFAN’s gonna do a watch party. So if you were registered for any part of NORWAC, we will have access through the login website. So let’s say you only registered for Saturday, but AFAN’s got a Friday gig going from a Friday lecture. I’m sorry, you won’t be able to see it because it’ll be done through the website. You’ll go to whatever pages you have available to you, based on what you paid for, and we’ll put up the Zoom link, with that lecture, just like we did in the beginning for each class, and you’ll click through to their Zoom. One of them will be a NORWAC room that Patricia is hosting, and one will be an AFAN room that AFAN’s gonna host. They will put out a schedule. I’ll send out an email blast to all of the NORWAC attendees, letting them know this is happening. Patricia’s room—since it’s a NORWAC room—will hold 500 people, so there’s no limit for her. I don’t know what AFAN’s room will hold. It might only hold a hundred. Don’t know how many people are gonna join, but it’s gonna be a fun endeavor. They’ll pick different lectures. Patricia’s gonna pick her favorites that she had missed and wants to share with other people, like a drive-in movie from your car, right? So her thing is sit in your jammies and grab a bucket of popcorn and let’s watch the lecture and then have a discussion afterwards. And she’s gonna invite speakers in. So I know she’s choosing mine for Thursday, next week. And so, after the lecture, I’ll pop in after the viewing, and then we can all talk. So it’s gonna be fun.

CB: Brilliant. Yeah, I love that. That’s really great. It’s one of the interesting additional nuances and ways that it was developing a sort of community setting, even though everybody’s in different places, all over the world right now. There was also a lot of great social media stuff going on with people—

LN: Like Nicholas.

CB: Yeah, largely driven by Nicholas. Who was the other person?

LN: Rashanda Jefferson. Jennifer, and Jen Gerkin—or Jen Upton, I’m sorry. My daughter’s Upton.

CB: Yeah, Jen.

LN: Yeah, so that was the social media team. It was Jen on Facebook and Instagram, Nicholas on Facebook.

NP: I was doing Instagram Stories and a lot of other weird things.

LN: Right. And then Rashanda on Twitter.

CB: Okay.

LN: Yeah, so it was a great team effort. Absolutely amazing.

CB: Social media was great. On Twitter, you can follow the hashtag, #NORWAC2020. And there were just tons of discussions going on, especially with people either during or coming out of lectures, quoting things that they loved. There was this really amazing Twitter account that’s new, that was on Twitter, that was @CosmosandPsycho, that was doing memes of things that they learned during different lectures.

LN: Really? I’m so not a Twitter person. Somebody’s gonna have to show me how to do this stuff, so I can find these stories and find this stuff.

CB: But here are some of the random memes: “Us promising ourselves we wouldn’t cry during Sam Reynolds’ lecture.” Just about every sort of meme. “Tony’s logic regarding the lot of fortune representing finances.” And there’s a picture of a guy throwing it in the trash and Ben Dykes’ name is over the guy. Lots of funny things like that, that won’t make sense if you’re listening to the audio version, but you can check out that Twitter account. Other things that went really well, I know Wade Caves was the MC, and he did an amazing job hosting and introducing the entire conference. He was great. That was his first time hosting, right?

LN: Yes, it was.

CB: Okay.

LN: Yeah, absolutely. So NORWAC’s gonna rotate MCs around. That was our goal coming into this year. So if you don’t see an MC coming back right away, it has nothing to do with their quality or their ability. My next goal is to get a woman MC. We’ve only had one woman MC in 35 years, 36 years, and that was Gloria Star. So it’s time to find a woman who can be the face up there during the plenary. So that’s my goal.

CB: Okay. And for the opening and closing, your good friend did that, the opening circle and closing circle.

LN: Yes, Patricia did the opening. It was gorgeous, beautiful, perfect. And then she closed the ceremony, closed the circle for us with beautiful imagery. It was perfect. It was absolutely perfect. I couldn’t ask for anything better.

CB: Yeah, that was really good. And then, normally, Greg Nalbandian, your brother, runs the bookstore. I did see him running one of the Zoom rooms. But what was he doing? Was that his main thing?

LN: We had talked early on about a Zoom trade show. And that was also an innovative element, putting the vendors in and getting them hooked up, as I said earlier. And we talked about him revamping his tired—sorry, Greg—tired website into something that’s a bit more modern and doing something, and he seemed pretty excited about it. But then he got so focused on—he does this. He got so focused on producing the conference—which he helped me with—that he took that on. And I could have gotten somebody to host the room instead of him, and he could have focused on that, but I think it was right for what it was. I’m not sure how well a virtual bookstore would have done in the face of that anyway.

CB: Sure.

LN: You know, the vendors did all right, but not great.

CB: Who were some of your vendors? I know the almanac team was there.

NP: Honeycomb.

CB: Yeah, Honeycomb Personal Astrological Almanacs, who’s also one of our sponsors. But I know they were there because they were unveiling a new version of their almanac that they’re coming out with soon. Who were the other vendors?

LN: ZODI Collection.

NP: Actually, ZODI. It’s ZODI.

LN: Is it ZODI?

NP: Yeah.

LN: I thought they corrected me to ZODI.

NP: Oh, really?

LN: Yeah. I could be wrong. Apparently I am.

NP: They’re getting a double-plug.

LN: Yes, they are. They do a deck and map.

CB: Yeah.

LN: We had Astrolabe Software, AstroGraph Time Passages. We had Bradley Naragon and his beautiful art. He said he got some sales. We had Sandy Rueve and her Intention Beads.

CB: I love Sandy. She’s great.

LN: Yep. Let me go to the website.

NP: I guess I should say this one. We had Astrology University.

LN: Yes, we had Astrology University. We had Kepler College. We had—

NP: Time Passages.

LN: Yeah, I said that.

NP: Oh, you did?

LN: AstroGraph Time Passages, we had them. AstroGraph. Astrology University. Anaragonic Creations. Honeycomb Collection. Intention Beads. Kepler College. Luna Astrology, another software. They had launched a couple of years ago at NORWAC. Portland School of Astrology. Tarot with Katy-K. And then the ZODI Astrology Deck and Map. Those were our vendors. And most of them had produced a demo video. I posted that. They had Zoom rooms with times available to go see them. They had links to use discount codes to buy software or other products that they were selling. So I do think that if ISAR is able to do something, they should—should I use that word? Nobody likes to be ‘should’ on.

CB: It’s good to pass that information forward, now that you’ve tried and learned.

LN: Yeah, and I think we can learn from it, and I think the vendors learned from it. Bradley started a thread with the vendors, cuz he wanted to hear how everybody did. And so, I’m getting feedback from the different vendors on how they did. And, you know, they had their ads in seven rooms running in front of hundreds and hundreds of people everyday.

CB: Yeah, I thought that was a nice touch, running the ads in the rooms before they opened.

LN: Mm-hmm.

CB: Or before the lectures start.

LN: Before the lectures started, absolutely. So I think that was really important for them. So they got full advertisement, they had a vendor room, and they got to go to the conference. And so, I think that was good for them, right?

NP: Yeah, I’m gonna go back to things happened so fast, also, with Greg doing the other responsibilities. To put together a website in a certain way—

LN: Yeah, in two months.

NP: Yeah.

LN: Well, I did.

NP: Yeah, I know. But I think it’s a different dynamic.

LN: It is.

NP: We’re dealing with actual books he would have to get. But we talked about it behind the scenes, and he already has it in his head for next year—even though it’s gonna be in person—to still have this new site and stuff. So it’s coming down the pipeline. It’s happening.

LN: We’ll bug him, pester him to get his website done, and he should.

NP: These are the conversations we have behind the scenes.

CB: Yeah, I like it. It’s all a work in progress. And speaking of books, you actually created a book list, Nicholas—a list of like all of the speakers’ books that was really great—on your website, which is SparklesofGold.com.

NP: Excuse me, I gotta be real here. I did a little bit of that, but DazmondNatalie.com, that’s my partner, she came up with a lot of that, and she helped me do that.

CB: Yeah, I thought this was brilliant. And it links to—what’s the website that you use? Because then some of the proceeds go to a local bookstore.

NP: Yeah, the referral links. So just like Amazon has referral link stores for people, but Bookshop.org lets you have a storefront. You don’t provide the books, you just get a little referral link. Where it takes you is to the closest independent bookstore where the book is.

CB: Okay.

NP: So the independent bookstore is getting a cut, and the percentages of it—the whole concept is to help independent bookstores. Not the big ones. Not Amazon, whatever. It’s to help that. So, for me, I just was like, “I’m gonna put this together.” Plus, you know, I don’t know what’s gonna happen. No one bought a book on the weekend. People clicked over, and that’s cool, cuz they’re finding out about books. But I’m into the philosophy of it all, right, and all that.

LN: It’s intention.

NP: Yeah.

LN: You had the intention for it, and that’s great.

NP: Yeah.

LN: Yeah, so as to whether people were gonna buy books, that was a whole other thing. But I think what’s happening right now is people are buying, excuse me, the crap out of audio. And it’s audio-only. It’s audio-only right now with slides. And I just created a new account for Vimeo. All of the videos are gonna go up there. ‘Mr. Sparkles of Gold’ is going to work on that—Nicholas. And we will be selling video as well.

NP: This goes back to the beginning of this conversation, to get it straight. Cuz you were asking what Greg was doing behind the scenes, and that’s another thing he was doing besides the other stuff. He was editing all of the audio for this. So this is all Greg editing the audio, like he does every year. Not just for this year, but all of the audio in the past NORWACs. There’s a huge archive that Greg has.

LN: Yeah, we haven’t even gotten to it yet. I’ve got 2018, 2019. Hang on, I gotta cough.

NP: Yeah.

CB: Right. Cuz there’s like 36 years of conferences that you’ve been doing recordings of.

LN: Yes. And some of them from the early days were old tape recorders, the little tape cassette players, and the quality is pretty poor.

CB: It’s like little cuneiform tablets, some of the older lectures.

LN: Yeah, yeah. Somebody was in the corner chipping as somebody was talking, and they were getting it all down.

CB: Yeah. Like 1986-1987, I imagine that that’s what it was like.

NP: I still have one of those fragments.

CB: Yeah.

LN: We still have the old tapes. We have the old, original tapes. They’re being digitized. We usually wait until somebody requests something from the old catalog. If it hasn’t digitized, we digitize it. But there are folks that have passed, that we have a lot of audio of, and people that have retired and no longer lecturing. So we’re working on all of that to get it up on the website. And it’ll be a very extensive catalog of audio, and it’s a lot of work to get it done. So we’re working on it, and Greg’s gonna be working on it. And I am considering—this is brand new what I’m about to say. Nicholas doesn’t even know. If, in the next two days, you would like to purchase the conference at the conference rate, you will have two weeks to watch the video.

CB: Okay. Yeah, I think the idea of doing a conference package is a brilliant idea, if you do decide to go forward with that. Just because having access to everything and being able to watch all of that at once, especially the video versions, would be brilliant.

LN: Yeah. And so, right now, the platform is to use the website for that. And I have a website that can determine your two weeks, when it’s up—when you register and when it goes dark. And then that is access, not owning. And then we have to yet determine whether the purchase of videos will be an ownership thing or a forever-access thing. You know, will you be able to download it, or will you just have perpetual access to it, if you buy it? So that has yet to be determined. It’ll all be through the Vimeo platform, which I know nothing about. So this will be another learning curve for me to figure out. But for those of you who are listening, if, in the next few days, you feel like, “You know what, I really missed out. I really wanted to go to this conference. I know it’s done.” But if you are willing to register for the price of the conference, then you will have your two weeks.

CB: Okay, awesome. And other than that, the audios are available immediately right now for purchase.

LN: The audios are, yeah.

CB: Audio. And it comes with the PowerPoint slides that the speaker used.

LN: Yeah, I would say 98% of them have slides. There’s a few—Austin Coppock—who have not sent me their slides.

CB: Oh, I’m gonna have to hassle him.

LN: Yes, please.

CB: Okay.

LN: And then there are some that didn’t use them. Like Jessica Lanyadoo didn’t use slides. The How to Become a Professional Astrologer was a great conversation, and we did not use slides. Steven Forrest only had one slide, and really, he didn’t use it, so his keynote was without. And really, you know, Sam, Samuel Reynolds, was without. So there’s a few that do not have slides because they weren’t used.

CB: Sure.

LN: But I’d say 98% of them have slides, and they’re included. They’re bundled. So when you click on the thing, purchase it, you get a receipt that has a download link. When you download that, inside the zip file is the audio and the PDF of the slides.

CB: Okay.

NP: I’m glad you’re doing that, Laura. Because even during the conference, I was getting personal messages, and I saw messages coming through our social media. I was asked, “Like can I buy a two-week viewing period after the conference?”

LN: I’m gonna do it. And I’ve got people in my email—I’ve gotta go through and find them—that were interested in this. And if it’s just a handful, it’s a handful, that’s fine. You know, if it’s more than that, then awesome. I have to talk to my web guy tomorrow to make this happen. It’s his birthday today. So happy birthday, Steve.

CB: Thank you, Steve.

LN: So we have to just reconfigure the website a little bit, so that people can get access. And those of you who went to NORWAC, who are looking for their slides and you don’t wanna buy audio, you don’t have to buy the audio to get the slides. All you have to do is go back, log in, and right above or below the video—I think it’s right below the video. In between the video and the description of the lecture is where the PDFs live. So all you have to do is click on that and the PDF pops up and then you can print it or copy it to your computer.

CB: Okay. Yeah, there it is. So it’s right below the video. Cool.

LN: Yep.

CB: Yeah, that was a great system. Steve did a great job on the website. It was a really nice website, and it was very flawless. Cuz I’ve done my own websites for a long time, so there’s like a spectrum of how well this could’ve gone versus like how badly it could’ve gone. And it definitely ended up going way more smoothly than I expected.

LN: Yeah, we used a plugin called Restricted Content Pro.

CB: Okay.

LN: And so, this plugin had everything. And Easy Digital Download is made by the same company as Restricted Content Pro. So you just set up your different levels of registrations in there. It’s memberships, but you set up your different levels of registrations. You know, if you bought Friday, then that’s what you get, you get Friday. And if you bought the whole conference, then you have access to everything that’s available in the content.

CB: And is Easy Digital Download the plugin you’re using for the audio sales now on the website?

LN: Yes, yes.

CB: Okay, got it. Yeah, that’s what I use as well. Awesome. Well, that’s amazing. What is the plan for next year? I guess we’ve talked about that a little bit. We’ve talked about recording. I’m just trying to make sure there’s not anything else we forgot. Is there anything that we need to mention, either about the future or dates to look out for? Do you have a mailing list or anything for NORWAC?

LN: I do. I need to talk to Steve about this. It’s not directly on the front page. If you go to the front page, I don’t think where you sign up for the mailing list is upfront, which is kind of strange. You click on any page, but it should be on the front, to be honest, somewhere.

CB: But right now, if you go to the contact page, then over on the right, there’s a little form, and you can fill that out in order to get on the mailing list. That way, if there are announcements about, let’s say, the audio, or announcements about future dates when NORWAC is announced for next year, then they’ll get the heads up.

LN: Yeah. But since we haven’t had it on the front page, I’ve almost had no new sign-ups into my mailing list. So that’s a note I have to make, to talk to him about that. It needs to be somewhere on the front, so people can see it.

CB: Sure.

LN: Yeah, well, that’s just another thing.

CB: Thing to do, number 247.

LN: 230.

CB: Yeah. All right, well, thank you guys for joining me for this today. This has been great.

LN: Thank you.

CB: I wanted to do this—even though you’re so exhausted, and it’s been a long couple of months and a long week—just to document this because I felt like this was a historic event. I felt really major Saturn in Aquarius vibes going on, going from a 35-year, in-person conference to suddenly doing something online, and lots of interesting things came out of that. And I just wanted to get some of that documented and share it with our listeners, and also, for people in the future. It’ll probably be interesting, cuz years from now, who knows what the standard will be. People will be doing VR conferences or what have you and this will sound very quaint, like the first time we did an online conference. But at least it will have been documented what happened.

LN: Oh, that’s funny. It will be, you’re right. I didn’t even think of that. At some point this is gonna be, “Aww, that’s so cute. We did that.”

CB: This is like the ‘Ford Model-T’ version of the car or something like that, or the transition point from horses to—what do they call them?

LN: Yeah.

CB: Buggies or what have you?

LN: Well, horseless carriages, basically.

CB: Horseless carriage, yeah, that’s it. Horseless carriages.

LN: Yeah. My brother says I’m Neil Armstrong. I landed on the Moon. I don’t feel that way. But, you know, it was innovative. It was forced innovation. It was necessity meets invention, right? Isn’t that what they say? Necessity is the mother of invention, right?

CB: Yeah, I love that. Innovation as a result of necessity. That’s a very good Saturn in Aquarius theme.

LN: Isn’t it?

CB: And this is only the very beginning of Saturn in Aquarius. So who knows what else awaits over the next two-to-three years, but this has been a nice preview of that.

LN: Well, I’m glad we did it. And I’m glad you asked us to do this. It was great. It was lovely talking to you. And I know my inbox is now filled with a hundred emails.

CB: Right.

LN: Cuz I’ve ignored them.

CB: Well, I will let you get back to that. Thank you. And thanks, Nicholas, for everything you did to help get this together and promote the conference and everything else. And I’m looking forward to seeing you guys again next year for NORWAC 2021.

LN: Yep, we’ll be there.

CB: Brilliant. All right, thanks everybody for listening to this episode of The Astrology Podcast, and we will see you again next time.

[credits]

Thanks to the patrons who helped to support the production of this episode of The Astrology Podcast through our page on Patreon.com. In particular, a shoutout to patrons Christine Stone, Nate Craddock, Maren Altman, Irina Tudor, Thomas Miller, Christina Caudill, and Bear Ryver, as well as the Astro Gold Astrology App, available at Astrogold.io, the Portland School of Astrology, at PortlandAstrology.org, and the Honeycomb Collective Personal Astrological Almanacs, available at Honeycomb.co. The production of this episode of the podcast is also supported by the International Society for Astrological Research, which is hosting a major astrology conference in Denver, Colorado, September 10-14, 2020. More information about that at ISAR2020.org. And finally, also, Solar Fire Astrology Software, which is available at Alabe.com. And you can use the promo code ‘AP15’ for a 15% discount on that software. For more information about how to become a patron of The Astrology Podcast and help support the production of future episodes, while getting access to subscriber benefits, like early access to new episodes or other bonus content, go to Patreon.com/AstrologyPodcast.