Frustration
First, I offer my apologies for the recent pre-fab ("add water and stir") entries lately.
Secondly ... I apologize in advance for this post ... it's rather cranky.
I got my copy of American Libraries in the mail and cracked open the prelim schedule of the Annual Conference. And I became really excited over some of the programming -- I was ready to take a red-eye out of Atlanta on Friday night, stay in a hostel or El Cheapo motel for a night, fly out on a red-eye on Sunday and push the limits of caffeine intake the next day to function properly at work. But I noticed that some events that pique my interest directly conflict with each other, particularly on Sunday. This made me slightly cranky.
Today on BART (yes, I do a lot of library-related reading on mass transit), I decide to make a grid of what I was interested in at first glance. And I discovered these two programs:
Open Access, Open Minds: Emerging Technologies in Scholarly Information
Speakers: Heather Joseph (President, BioOne, Inc.); Lawrence Lessig (Stanford Law School); Lizabeth Wilson (Director of Univ. Libraries, UWash.)
Sunday, June 27, 2004, 2:00 p.m. - 4:00 p.m.
Cultural Democracy and the Information Commons
Speakers: Sam Trosow (Univ. of Western Ontario); Howard Besser (NYU); Jed Horowitz (producer, Willful Infringement), Frederick Emrich, (info-commons.org)
Sunday, June 27, 2004, 1:30 p.m. - 3:30 p.m.
Nearly all of my enthusiasm for the conference drained away. Why on earth would someone schedule Larry Lessig and Howard Besser in separate events opposite each other? Of course, no one did ... both events are being sponsored by different ALA units. They cover different issues. Completely different set of speakers. There's no obvious conflict.
And yet this frustrates me to no end. Lessig's work with copyright and open access, and Besser's articulation of information commons inspired me throughout grad school. To have them both at the same conference, and only being able to hear one ... it's driving me nuts. So nuts, that I wonder if I really should go at all.
Mind you, I'm not completely in my right mind now (thesis issues), but this is really striking a nerve with me.
Comments
That's...that's... just *wrong*!
This sort of thing is why I often don't go to conferences and just end up reading the papers afterwards. I'm always bound to miss something really great.
I do my library reading on public transport too, and knitting and learning languages and whatever. That time can be so productive!
Posted by: Fiona | March 14, 2004 05:44 PM
Oh, bless you ... I thought it was just me, re: the scheduling.
I don't know whether ALA consistently distributes the papers from Annual. I know that the Internet Librarian does (you can pre-order a CD with all of the slide-shows, outlines, etc. from the presentations), but for SLA, it's up to the sponsoring unit to make material available outside of the conference.
Posted by: misseli | March 14, 2004 06:26 PM
As someone who hears second-hand about the horrors of scheduling and other ALA conference processes, all I can say is that it's a nightmare and I am glad I don't have to do it. Yes, it's difficult to imagine that anyone would have the bad sense to schedule these two events at the same time. I've heard three schools of thought on why it happens:
1) The conference is huge and complex and it would be too big a task to track and correct all such problems;
2) The conference is huge and complex and the people doing scheduling are not up to the task of tracking and correcting such problems;
3) The conference is huge and complex and the people doing scheduling find some perverse pleasure in creating such problems.
What's the real reason? My openness to one or another explanation varies with circumstances and with my mood. But none eliminates the frustration caused by problems that seem like they could and should have been avoided.
When I was at Annual in Atlanta, I saw that some conference presentations were being recorded (audio and video) for later posting on the web. I'm not sure how successful this is -- my impression was it was a daunting task -- but if one of these panels is being recorded, it might be worth focusing on the other at conference, trusting you'll catch the other presentation online later.
Or you could run back and forth between rooms. I think that's what most people do at conference ...
Posted by: Frederick Emrich | March 16, 2004 03:47 AM
I don't even think it would register as a problem for ALA's scheduling staff. And that's fair. But it's very frustrating.
I'm hoping both events are at least in the same building ...
Posted by: misseli | March 16, 2004 08:21 AM