I'd be glad to learn more about how others handle this too.
I get those same giant conference emails. Also, tons of professional e-newsletters that have similar burdens.

Can't wait to hear more.
emkay

I'd process the items on arrival by copying item info on my lists/calendars etc, with a note that more info is in the mail archive. Then I'd move the email into my mail archive. I'd be sure to use language straight from the message to make it easier to find with a search later. E.g.:

SOMEDAY/MAYBE.TXT
[INDENT]Go to "Cat Shaving Tips" Workshop in Baltimore in June?[/INDENT]
[INDENT][INDENT]Reg deadline March 1. Schedule of speakers in mail Short-term archive[/INDENT][/INDENT]

When I'm reviewing my someday/maybes, I can simply open my mail program and search for "cat shaving" to call up the message in the archive (and if necessary, use Find "cat shaving" within the message) to get to that info.

I'd process the items on arrival by copying item info on my lists/calendars, then I nuke the Mail.
Re Email Newsletters: I do nothing about them, just archive and delet from time to time. I see them more as a channel, like TV. If it is suitable for a project to check out the newsletters I do it then. I try to be proactive here. Just because I bought a TV/ subscribed to a newsletter, doesn't mean I have to watch all the shows.

While I'm new to GTD, I do get emails with weekly seminar topics and speakers, I've just been giving the email a next action (to read it, and decide which seminars are interesting/relevant and fit into my schedule) and make sure that action gets on my Friday Must Be Done list. (Some of these seminars start at 7:30am on Monday.)

For conferences you could do something similar. Make it a next action to go through the information, and decide which are interesting, relevent, and possible. Put those in your someday/maybe file, or better yet, your tickler file a month or so before abstract deadlines, so you can make a decision on going.

I used to put emails like this in my 'Read' stack, only to miss the one really interesting seminar because I didn't have time (or forgot) to sit down and read it before the seminar.

I copy the portion of the email relevant to me into a calendar event (Outlook). If there's a due by date for registering, I give it a reminder of a week in advance for time to consider it. I then usually ditch the rest of the email. If there's more than one item in the email I'm interested in, I put each item into its own calendar event. This way it's read and actioned and not sitting in a TBR pile that I usually don't tackle. Most of my TBR items end up being Someday/Maybes :(

I'm also interested in how others tackle this differently

Gmail labels could be useful here. I use one label for each freelance assignment (Stone index, Carnes index). If one email has information about two different projects, I just give it both labels. So for a massive conference email, I might give it several labels: "shaving conferences," "indexing conferences," "name-of-organization conferences"...whatever.

Now I'm wondering if it's possible to get old labels off of my current labels list without deleting them. Anyone know?

Do Mi