ALA Marginalia

Jenny Levine: Conference planning is a BHD (Big Hairy Deal) at ALA, with an emphasis on Big. Last year, I literally diagrammed out the whole process to try to get a handle on it in order to create a new conference scheduler in ALA Connect. Every time I think I understand the full scope of it, I find another piece I didn’t know about or fully comprehend. I’m not convinced any one person within ALA truly knows every detail of every step of every process, although a few folks know a lot more than me.

And yet I’m still going to try to explain this behemoth, so here goes. There are exceptions to every rule, but here’s my take on how it works in general, most of the time.

Right now it’s May 2011, and we’re about a month away from the 2011 Annual Conference. If you want to submit a program for Annual 2012, you may have already missed the deadline.

Wait, what?

Yes, you read that correctly – the deadline may have passed. How can that be?

If you read my previous post that takes a snapshot look at Annual, you know there are more than 1,600 sessions this year. Granted, most of those are committee meetings that already have traditional time slots they use year after year, but that still leaves almost 350 presentations/sessions and almost 200 discussion group get-togethers. How do you schedule more than 500 new sessions over a three-day period in a way that makes any sense at all?

You plan carefully, and each session goes through an approval and placement process. By an overwhelming margin, most sessions are scheduled by the 11 divisions and 18 round tables. The others come from ALA committees, ALA affiliates (like CALA or REFORMA), and ALA exhibitors. In order to mesh their own sessions together so that the unit’s Big Name Speaker or Big Session doesn’t conflict with the unit’s board meeting, membership meeting, etc., many divisions cut off their program submission process just over a year in advance of a conference. The unit’s “program planning committee” also tries to make sure sessions on similar topics aren’t in the same time slot. They usually do this work at Annual, where they spend their meeting planning for the next Annual.

Mary Ghikas: But, you say, isn’t that too far in advance? In some cases, yes. Some divisions, like LITA, tend to work on a tighter schedule. Some, like ALCTS, may set up “placeholders” for a day/time but decide on content much closer to the actual event. Most “president’s programs” – both for the ALA and for the divisions – are initially entered as “placeholders,” with final content determined much later. So this isn’t really as rigid as it may seem at first.

Jenny: Diving back into the planning process, the unit program planning committee comes out of Annual 2011 with a plan for 2012, and a representative takes that plan to the Conference Program Coordinating Team (CPCT) meeting in the Fall (a meeting that will become virtual starting this year). This is where representatives of the ALA Conference Committee, the divisions and the round tables try to mesh all of their sessions together to come up with the basic program. They negotiate time slots, look for patterns in like sessions, etc. And even though it seems like every session you want to go to is at the same time on the same day, the CPCT does try to keep similar sessions from being scheduled against each other. Remember, though, that there are really only three days and 4-5 time slots per day in which to pack in those 500+ sessions, in addition to the committee meetings, big name speakers (a.k.a., the Auditorium Series), and other happenings.

After the CPCT has finished its work in the Fall for Annual 2012, around 75% of the program is now set. The ALA units now enter all of their sessions into a form for ALA’s Conference Services staff so that they can start all of the preliminary work. Don’t forget that these staff members are also negotiating with the big name speakers, implementing the details of the contracts with the venues, helping prepare catering orders, finalizing the opening of registration, and more. It’s amazing how much behind-the-scenes action there is to pull together a conference the size of ALA Annual.

Then in March 2012, the program submission form closes so that ALA staff can begin placing those 1600+ sessions. Because as you might imagine, that takes a little while since we have to take into account the unit’s request for A/V, internet access, location, room size, and other options for every single meeting request. Once all of the sessions are placed, a draft schedule goes out to ALA units for proofreading, and after any requested changes are made, the preliminary program is formalized. In May 2012, the online Scheduler becomes available, and now all of the groundwork has been laid for Annual 2012. Don’t forget that by June 2012, the process for Annual 2013 is already in full swing.

Recognizing that this laborious process presents some issues to having timely content at Annual, and also that many members and other potential speakers or presenters do not have an existing “route” through a division, round table or committee, Jim Rettig instituted the “Grassroots Program” during his presidential year in 2008-2009. This program let anyone submit a session proposal outside of the above-outlined steps without having to go through a division or committee approval process.  Until that point, it had never been possible to submit a program proposal directly to ALA itself.

The response to this was so positive that we kept the grassroots program and it runs every year. For Annual 2011, the grassroots submission form didn’t close until February 2011.

Mary: In addition to the formal program proposal process, there are other, perhaps less well-known ways for members to propose more current content for the upcoming conference.

1. Most of the division discussion groups submit placeholder programs and then call for presenters in the spring. We’re still adding speaker names and descriptions to discussion group meetings at Annual 2011 when we receive them. Look for the discussion groups in your division that match your interests to see if you can get on a panel or submit an idea to them.
2. The deadline for submitting a poster is much later in the process, usually at the beginning of January. See http://www.lib.jmu.edu/org/ala/ for more information about poster sessions.
3. ALA provides the “Networking Uncommons” at both Midwinter and Annual. This open space can be used for impromptu programs and discussions that don’t have to go through any submission or approval process at all. Any attendee can reserve a projector by adding their name to the schedule, even during the conference itself.
4. Members can submit a program for the Annual Virtual Conference as late as February for the upcoming event.

Jenny: So there are more ways than most folks realize to get on a conference program, although we probably don’t market them all as well as we could. The question is, are there other things we can do to mitigate the need for a long planning process? Are there other ways we can help you submit more timely programs later in the process? Is there a different way to do some of this?

What do you think? Do you have other questions about the conference planning process?

Annual is big. Really big. I knew this when I took on the task of improving the “Event Planner” folks use to plan their conference schedules, but until I had to work on standardizing all of the data, I didn’t really understand HOW BIG.

Logically, you kind of get the numbers. Legend has it that at their height, Midwinter had approximately 2,000 distinct sessions, while Annual had around 2,200 (I’ve also heard 2,500 but can’t fathom that so I’m sticking with 2,200). It’s no wonder it’s impossible to make sense of the program and participants feel like it’s raining sessions.

I have some better numbers to report this around, though. The first version of the Conference Scheduler that was integrated into ALA Connect was for Midwinter 2011, and there were just over 1,100 sessions. That’s still a lot, but it’s a far cry from 2,000. Most of those were committee meetings because Midwinter is generally considered the “business meeting,” although that’s changing and we’re seeing a lot more discussion group activity there.

Having just launched the second iteration of the Conference Scheduler in Connect for Annual 2011, I can tell you that we’re down to just over 1,600 sessions. Some of that decrease comes from committees holding virtual meetings outside of conference, and some is from sections and round tables holding “all committee” meetings where several groups meet in a big room at once instead of each requesting a separate room and time.

Just for comparison as the Association moves forward, though, here are some specific numbers for Annual 2011:

• 693 committee meetings
• 348 presentations/sessions
• 196 discussion groups
• 46 forums/updates

Keep in mind that there’s some overlap between these categories, so the numbers are kind of fluid, And while there are just over 1,600 sessions in the Scheduler right now, that number will grow as we add all of the author signings and more informal social events (have one of those to announce? send it to me!).

That also doesn’t take into account all of your meetings with vendors and friends, and every presentation you want to go to will still be scheduled at the same time on the same day. But I”m intrigued to see where these numbers go.

I also wonder how to quantify hallway discussions, which are usually the best part of a conference. In case you haven’t walked an ALA conference lately, we have a lot of hallways. In fact, I think a vendor should give away pedometers so we can have a contest for most steps walked on the Annual campus. I’m not sure who would win – some staff members, Executive Board members, or those of us who constantly get lost.

Having manhandled every one of those 1,600+ session records, I can definitively say that there is something for everyone at Annual. Next I want to think about how we get a better snapshot of Annual After Annual, especially to figure out how we can help facilitate all of the stuff that happens but doesn’t show up in the official categories (ie, committee meeting, presentations, etc.).

All of which is a roundabout way of announcing that the 2011 Annual Conference Scheduler is officially open. Let us know what you think about it!

The event planner for the ALA Annual Conference in Washington, D.C., June 24-29 is now available.  Using feedback from a survey conducted last summer, comments heard from some of our active members, and some just plain testing, several of us have worked to improve its performance.

The first big change was to impose naming conventions to the unit – subunit field for each meeting.  Divisions were simple.  A division like ACRL has the unit field of ACRL and the subunit field for each of its sections; a division without sections, like YALSA, has just the unit field.  Then we pulled all of the round tables out from under ALA, so that NMRT, GLBTRT, and SRRT will be found directly.  We sorted the Affliates by adding subfields for each of them BCALA, REFORMA, THEATER LA, etc. are now AFL – BCALA, AFL – REFORMA, etc.  Finally, we reworked all the ALA-level committees so that they stand on their own, for the most part, and are not listed under the headquarters unit providing staff support.  Thus, the Intellectual Freedom Committee is under ALA – IFC, not ALA – OIF, the office that provides the support.  This is because OIF also supports the Committee on Professional Ethics, the Freedom to Read Foundation, and the Merritt Fund.  So, if you are looking for everything sponsored by a committee of interest, start with a search of the unit – subunit.

Next we regularized how meetings are titled, so that when there are committees with the same name, like Membership Committee, we added the acronym.  This makes for more text on the print out of your schedule, but if you’re representing your division to another, you’ll know if the meeting is to get input or to present input depending on your role.  We hope it will also help with searching.

Then we tackled the on-screen messaging.  In our training room, we watched a first-time user of the planner try to complete basic tasks, discussed the missteps, and wrote up new language we hope will be beneficial to all.

Lastly, we tested, and questioned, worked with the vendor, and tested some more.

It should be better than in the past, though there are limitations.  The planner runs on a database that does not have authority control as we know it built in.  We were also working with a data file that had been prepared weeks earlier by a number of meeting planners and volunteers.  All we could do was work on vocabulary control to try to ensure greater consistency of search results.

This may be the last run for this particular planner software, though what we have learned will be helpful as we build a planner into ALA Connect.  We’ll still be working with the same meeting planning software, but we have learned a lot about configuring it and writing instructions for the meeting planners.

Do let us know what you think.  As indicated on the planner login page, contact Karee Williams, kwilliams@ala.org, with login and technical questions.  I am happy to field the search questions; use library@ala.org.

For the first time this year,  “big ALA” experimented with offering a virtual conference component of its Annual Conference. While some of the divisions have done this in the past (ACRL, PLA) and AASL is currently running a parallel virtual event, this was the first time we’d tried this for the monster, “big kahuna” Annual Conference.

While you may be thinking about MidWinter because it’s just around the corner, we’re thinking about Annual, so the Conference Planning Committee has already started talking about how to improve next year’s virtual Annual. We have a three-year contract with Learning Times, so that will be the platform, but many of the other pieces are up in the air at this point, which makes it a good time to ask for some input.

We can’t promise anything at this point, but what’s your wishlist? There are already some “givens,” but building a structure around them, what would you like to see? Here are just a few of the questions we have, but feel free to give us feedback around other issues, too.

• We can’t do this for free, not if we want to offer a quality, stable video feed. Keep in mind, though, that our members do tend to stream some of the more popular sessions, such as Top Tech Trends, and that will continue. Which sessions are you okay with as volunteer streams versus quality feeds?
• We can’t stream the keynotes because the speakers don’t give us permission, and in fact, they usually forbid it. Otherwise, though, what types of sessions do you want to participate in remotely?
• What does “participate in remotely” mean to you?
• Where are the price points that fit? Are there tiers or does one-size-fits-all work in this type of situation?
• Where can we add value to improve your virtual conference experience? Are you more interested in just sessions, or do you want virtual hallways, networking opportunities, and other comparable experiences, too? If it’s the latter, what do they look like?
• If you’ve seen this done well somewhere else, we’d love to hear about it. Just give us a URL and a description of what you liked about it.

This is your chance to give us input to help shape the future of virtual ALA conferences, so please share your thoughts!

ALA’s Conference Services director Deidre Ross has shared a report from McCormick Place, venue for the 2009 ALA Annual Conference exhibits and many meetings.  During the meeting we diverted 65% of waste from landfills.

Deidre explains, “The report was provided by Allied Waste which shows the total tonnage of a variety of recyclable materials that were reclaimed during our event, along with the percentage of waste which was diverted from landfills (diversion rate) and the environmental impact of these efforts.  The report tries to focus on two main statistics which evaluate overall performance:  the diversion rate and the total tonnage.  The diversion rate is a great indicator of successful capture of recyclable or reusable materials.  The year to year changes in total tonnage may indicate changing habits by exhibitors and attendees which include the reuse of materials or bringing fewer materials which may go to waste.”

She continued, “We also sent out a green questionnaire to exhibitors and if they answered the questions correctly as to their recycling efforts, they received a “Green Exhibitor” sign for their booth. If we all partner together we can continue to improve and save the environment.”

Deidre is optimistic about diverting 70% … or more … at the ALA Annual Conference is Washington, D.C., June 24-29, 2010.

Karen

(I think if you right click on the image you can view it with type large enough to read … still learning to embed images.)

Everyone knew there would be a lot of online activity during the 2009 Annual Conference, but I think even we were surprised at just how much people came together on social media sites around the event and the sessions. Clearly there’s going to be parallel event online for all future ALA conferences, one driven completely by people and not by planners.

So here’s a benchmark for future measurements, because for the first time, we’ll have an archive we can refer back to, at least for Twitter, which was the most heavily used site during the conference. Here’s a summary I wrote for Keith Michael Fiels, ALA’s Executive Director.

—————–
Some numbers:

• Flickr: 4,011 pictures
• A Google Blogsearch says there are about 14,000 posts using the tag ala2009, but that’s not really right  because it includes the Flickr pictures, comments on blogs, etc. Unfortunately, it’s impossible to get an exact count. If I had to guess, I’d say that most of the posts are recaps of someone’s conference experience, followed closely by summaries of sessions, and links to presentation materials (in that order). Some samples:
  • ALA 2009: A Perspective
  • ALA 2009 Wrap-Up (Warning: It’s LONG)
  • Displaced at ALA Annual
  • ALA lesson #2: The Power of Teh Intarwebs
• Twitter: 10,362 tweets using the #ala2009 tag by 1,321 authors (including the ALA Annual account and other ALA units)
  • tweets before: 765
  • tweets thu: 680
  • tweets fri: 1380
  • tweets sat: 2390
  • tweets sun: 2250
  • tweets mon: 1725
  • tweets tue: 589
  • tweets after: 583 (7/15-24/2009, although tweets continue to appear so this number will still increase a little)
  • by tag:
    • #ala2009 – 8517 (this was the main hashtag that we asked people to use)
    • #ala09 – 415
    • #alacouncil – 82
    • #membership – 39
    • #totebag – 265 (an unofficial snark channel)
    • #unala2009 – 450 (the unconference)
    • #acrl101 – 22
    • #ala09_is – 8 (ACRL Instruction Section)
    • #ala2prom – 26 (Library 2.0 session)
    • #lib2.0 – 118 (Library 2.0 session)
    • #ttt2009 – 35 (LITA’s Top Tech Trends)
    • #toptech – 43 (LITA’s Top Tech Trends)
    • #bigwig2009 – 13
    • #clene09 – 10
    • #clenets09 – 6
    • #godort09 – 3
    • #mobile_lib – 50 (WO panel)
    • #rusaht – 6 (RUSA Hot Topics session)
  • The reason I can give you such specific stats about the tweets is that ALA member Heather Devine offered to create an online Flickr/Twitter tracker for the conference a couple of weeks before the event. She finished it just a couple of days before Annual started, having done most of the work while she was on vacation. You can see it still running, and she’s going to give us the code and database so that we can 1) archive it, and 2) implement this for other conferences in the future. I can’t begin to describe how lucky we are that Heather did this, because there’s no good way to archive tweets right now, and we don’t have the resources to create this ourselves. The site got a lot of notice and a lot of hits during Annual, with Roy Tennant in particular noting it. I’d like to request that ALA to send Heather a letter of thanks if possible for this herculean and incredibly valuable effort.
• LJ very smartly did a daily recap of what they considered to be the “best” tweets of the day. Reading through them gives an excellent overview of the conference.
  • Saturday
  • Sunday
  • Monday
  • Eric Hellman did an analysis of the ala2009 hashtag
  • Then there was the interesting, but relatively harmless, appearance of the anonymous alasecrets and alasecrets2009 accounts on Twitter. While they were discussed, retweeted, and linked to online, those tweets didn’t spill over very much into the mainstream hashtag, and in fact, it allowed the really nasty stuff to stay out of the ala2009 space, which was good for us. One media blog picked up on it and noted it in a post, but that was about it. Someone shut down the original alasecrets account when it devolved into sex talk, but others had saved the tweets and posted them on Scribd, and the alasecrets2009 account took over where the first one left off. LJ did an interview with the anonymous originator of both accounts.
• According to Boopsie, more than 1500 people downloaded their ALA2009 application. I’m unclear if this figure includes people like me who accessed it on the web. It garnered a lot of praise online, with a couple of people tweeting that it helped them find a session when they didn’t know where it was.
• There are also a ton of great videos on YouTube from the conference, including several of the book cart drill teams and a wonderful fake fight between Neil Gaiman and James Kennedy for the Newbery Award.
• The staff of American Libraries did their usual, wonderful job covering the conference. See their blog posts on Inside Scoop, videos on AL Focus, and the Post-Conference issue of AL Direct for a full overview of everything that happened at #ala2009.

I know my conference experience was better because of these online components. What was your experience?

Last year we inaugurated the ALA Conference Materials Archive, on a wiki at http://presentations.ala.org/. The wiki already includes links to materials from earlier conferences, along with links to similar material from some of ALA’s units. The goal is for all collateral conference material to be linked in some way from this wiki.

So, if you are a speaker at the ALA 2009 Annual Conference in Chicago, this is *the* place for you to upload your handouts, or to publish links to your material, if it is resident on another site. Posting materials prior to conference ensures immediate access by attendees — waiting until after the conference means missing a valuable opportunity to share their knowledge and insights.

Go green! Post your handouts to the wiki before the conference–and you don’t have to make paper copies!  Just  note their availability during your presentation (add “view or download more information at http://presentations.ala.org/” to your last .ppt slide, for example).  This does work–the SLA conference has been largely paper-less for two years now.

Unlike last year, the wiki is not pre-loaded with program titles, but it is organized by day/time. When you add your program, please be sure to include the full text of the listing as in the final program, especially including unit acronyms(!). Full instructions on using the wiki, including the attribution license, and a suggested convention for organizing materials and links, appears on the wiki.

If you will not be with us in Chicago (still time to change your mind!) or if you have one of those inevitable conflicts, know that there is now a place to find the conference material, this year and into the future.

Please also know that you can always contact the ALA Library (library@ala.org) for assistance with locating more about a particular program.

Karen Muller, ALA Librarian

The March issue of American Libraries is shrink-wrapped with the preliminary program for the 2009 ALA Annual Conference. We on staff get issues of AL a bit sooner than they are in mail, but you’ll have yours in a day or so.

In between reference calls and staff questions, I’ve been paging through the program.

First, I checked that the program being planned by the committee I’m staff liaison to is there and accurate. It is (p. 79 … top of middle column). And it’s even in the right program track (on p. 41).

Then I noticed that there, on the inside of the back cover, is a short planning calendar–and better yet, a blank page facing it. The planning calendar was a feature of the preliminary programs when I first started attending annual conference, long before joining the ALA staff. And I’ve missed them. Yes, I have created them in any number of planning tools, but this one is immediately available as I page through the booklet. Handy place to note what catches my eye now so I can see if I can shoehorn in an extra or two, once I know the schedule for what I must do.

I looked at the field trips being offered by Camp ALA. Because the conference is in Chicago, I probably won’t be using Camp ALA this year, for the first time in years. If you are thinking of making your trip to conference a family vacation, know that kids enjoy Camp ALA and that the staff are wonderful and caring. Good destinations for the field trips, too.

What else?

• A great line-up of speakers between the division presidents’ programs (p. 10) and the Auditorium Speakers Series (p. 3) including several of my favorite authors
• 2009 Empowerment Conference for library support staff (p. 52 … good speakers … I’ll see if Val and Jessica would like to go)
• Scholarship Bash at the AIC on Saturday, Book Cart Drill Teams on Sunday … starting to look like I should get the kids exhibit passes, which reminds me that one of the nice things about an ALA conference is that it is family friendly
• Theme for the Membership Meetings: Libraries in Hard Times (p. 48)
• Forty (!!) pages of program listings … though some are awards receptions and special dinners and events, including the FRTF 40th Anniversary Gala … these will take more time to sift through. Some catch words: disaster preparedness, metadata, information literacy, influencing legislators, planning, partnerships … surely there’s something for everyone.

Yes, plenty of reasons to make me eager to attend, even after decades of “going to ALA”!!

Karen

Just in time for Midwinter, it’s the 2009 Midwinter Executive Director’s Report (127kb, PDF), summarizing recent accomplishments and upcoming events. Some of the ‘highlighted’ stories include:

• AL Direct, Special Tough Economy Issue
• Libraries and the Economic Stimulus Package
• Tough Economy Toolkit
• Building Statewide Coalitions for All Libraries in a Tough Economy Panel Discussion
• Add It Up: Libraries Make the Difference in Youth Education and Development
• ALA and Univision Radio Partner on First-Ever PSA Campaign to Target Latinos
• Registration Opens January 20 for AASL National Conference
• William J. Brennan, Jr. Award for Judith Krug.

And here’s some good news from the report:

“ALA Membership through the first quarter 2009 stands at 67,045, a 2% increase over the same period last year. Personal membership renewals are a key indicator of the membership ‘health’ of the association. Through November, personal renewals are 8% ahead of last year. In addition, new memberships are up by 3%.”

It’s that time of year again, when we’re all gathering in a cold place during the North American winter. If you’re heading to Midwinter this week, you naturally want to know about everything that’s happening there. To make sure you don’t miss any of the big stuff, check out Mary Ghikas’ biannual “What’s Happening” list. Here’s your Midwinter 2009 version (169kb, PDF).

Here are some interesting numbers that kick off the document.

“As of January 16, 2009, advance registration for the 2009 Midwinter Meeting was 5,840 – compared to 5,833 at the same point for the 2008 Midwinter Meeting in Philadelphia. This included 671 first-time Midwinter Meeting attendees, compared to 371 in Philadelphia on January 4, 2008. (Note: In 2006-2007, ALA began asking conference participants to self-identify as first-time attendees.)

Ever wonder what that number includes? As of January 8, the total included 4204 regular
members registered, 231 student members, 60 trustees, 61 retired members 144 nonmembers, 78 former members, among others. California was most heavily represented, with 452 registrations, followed by Colorado (359), Illinois (352), New York (336) and Texas (268). There are registrants from all 50 states, from 9 Canadian provinces (a total of 53 registrants), from Puerto Rico, and from the Virgin Islands.

As of January 9, 2009, there are 96 international librarians from 17 countries attending the Midwinter Meeting in Denver. For the second year in a row, there will be an orientation for international colleagues. International attendees are coming from all across the globe – from Australia to Qatar to Nigeria to Denmark.”