The ALA Conference jungle
After one Midwinter conference under my belt, I felt righteously compelled to give advice to someone on how to prep for their first ALA Annual.
Honestly, I may be completely wrong. I may have to give an abject apology for leading them down the primrose path to horror, confusion and taking the wrong shuttle bus in Orlando.
What I said follows. What would you add/correct/etc.?
One newbie's guide to ALA conferences:
1) The ALA event planner is, to some extent, your friend. It is useful if you know exactly what you want to do at conference, and it's just a matter of laying it all out on a single grid.
2) ALA unit webpages listing conference programming are your friends. Picking programming based on the sponsoring unit (roundtable, office, division, whatever) is a good way of finding out whether being affiliated with that unit works for you.
3) Your friends, physical and virtual, within ALA are your friends. If there are people you know/respect/admire and you find out they are participating in certain programs ... follow them. If you don't like the program, you can always leave and tell them later, 'I'm sorry, I had a schedule conflict with such-and-such' or you can tell them it just didn't toast your Pop-Tarts.
4) The conference program book ... may not be your friend. Because ALA is huge and it's an alphabet soup, and taking the space to spell out every unit name every time it's used, and having descriptions of all of the programming would, in the words of Michael Gorman, make the conference book the size of the Manhattan phone directory. Selecting programming that interests you may be akin to finding the needle in the haystack if you base it solely on the con book.
However, the maps inside are really useful.
5) Unless you're a total pig, there is no shame in following the food (or following people who follow the food). There may be some private or ticketed receptions where this is a faux pas, but generally, it's okay and a way to meet people who are open and relaxed and enjoying themselves.
6) Prioritize. There's a lot to do, and there probably won't be enough time to do everything you ideally would want to do. In fact, you may run into a fair number of conflicts where 2 or 3 events you might be interested in are scheduled directly opposite each other (welcome to my world). Figure out who is most important for you to meet, what topics you must hear more about, and what activities you must participate in. This may end up being more important than having a firm schedule because you may end up hearing about events at the last minute that will wreck your pre-made schedule. However, if it fits in with your priorities, workarounds can be done on the fly.
7) Try to get all of your planned events on one big schedule. This is where the event planner loses its effectiveness. If there's an unofficial alumni lunch for your former library school chums, or your friends from work plan on playing hooky one afternoon and go to Le Tourist Trappe, or you get invited to a vendor function or 3 ... it will help to get everything on one grid. And once you have that grid, put it on your PDA, your laptop or print it out and stick it in the program book. And if you're not meeting at an ALA location, definitely include the name of the location on your schedule. Street addresses help, too.
Comments
Good list. I'd add one thing, based on my failure to do so in early years:
Don't overschedule. If that event planner is full, you're doing too much. Leave time for exhibits (of course), but also for sightseeing, goofing off, sleep.
Posted by: Walt Crawford | May 1, 2004 09:40 AM
I would move your #5 to #1. After all, a good conference experience is all about finding the best food. For a newbie, it's the most relaxing environment to strike a good conversation. For a poor student, it definitely helps to save the food bill. :) Show up at the receptions, whether you are invited or not. Unless it's a small private reception, they will never turn you away. Most likely, people will be delighted to meet you since you have gone so much trouble to be there. Follow the food!
Posted by: Sandy | May 2, 2004 01:03 AM
Good list! I'd add a few more that sort of interfile with yours...
1. prioritize, but have a back-ups for every event. Things get cancelled, things move, things fill up. If you have two things that conflict, try for number one but realize you may wind up at number two.
2. meals can be for networking or for resting, but know ahead of time which sort of meal you are signing yourself up for
3. if you are on an expense account, realize that others may not be and try to pick restaurants/bars accordingly.
4. the free shuttle bus is your friend, ride it often but don't count on it alwas being timely.
5. mail stuff home or check bags of posters/freebies at the coat check
6. don't hog the email terminals, please. also, do not count on them.
7. you will walk miles every day. you may go hours without eating. wear comfy shoes, carry water bottles and snacks [if you bring snacks and water to share you make many friends very quickly]
8. I rip the day's schedule from the conference book and stick it in my pocket, highlighted with the things I want to see. Spend some early time at the conference figuring out what you are interested in and then bid your heavy ad-laden conference planner book goodbye.
9. try to mix up big keynote speakers with small panels, with lectures with demos. it's easier to stay interested if you're not sitting in on all the same type of programming.
10. you may be offered a chance at a governing role in many of the group meetings you are sitting in on and learning about. Think in advance how much you want to get involved in a group. If you want to get very involved, conferences are THE time to do that. similarly, going to membership and council meetings is a very good way to know what is going on at ALA if you are interested in some sort of leadership or committee role -- more things are open to the general ALA public than you might think.
11. if you are going to small talks or small panels and you know you have to leave early, your presenter will love you forever if you tell them in advance you have to leave early, and it is not because they are boring you silly that you are walking out.
I'm sure there's more, but you have a really good start and I hope other people add a bunch of stuff as well.
Posted by: jessamyn | May 2, 2004 07:45 AM
Good list! I'd add a few more that sort of interfile with yours...
1. prioritize, but have a back-ups for every event. Things get cancelled, things move, things fill up. If you have two things that conflict, try for number one but realize you may wind up at number two.
2. meals can be for networking or for resting, but know ahead of time which sort of meal you are signing yourself up for
3. if you are on an expense account, realize that others may not be and try to pick restaurants/bars accordingly.
4. the free shuttle bus is your friend, ride it often but don't count on it alwas being timely.
5. mail stuff home or check bags of posters/freebies at the coat check
6. don't hog the email terminals, please. also, do not count on them.
7. you will walk miles every day. you may go hours without eating. wear comfy shoes, carry water bottles and snacks [if you bring snacks and water to share you make many friends very quickly]
8. I rip the day's schedule from the conference book and stick it in my pocket, highlighted with the things I want to see. Spend some early time at the conference figuring out what you are interested in and then bid your heavy ad-laden conference planner book goodbye.
9. try to mix up big keynote speakers with small panels, with lectures with demos. it's easier to stay interested if you're not sitting in on all the same type of programming.
10. you may be offered a chance at a governing role in many of the group meetings you are sitting in on and learning about. Think in advance how much you want to get involved in a group. If you want to get very involved, conferences are THE time to do that. similarly, going to membership and council meetings is a very good way to know what is going on at ALA if you are interested in some sort of leadership or committee role -- more things are open to the general ALA public than you might think.
11. if you are going to small talks or small panels and you know you have to leave early, your presenter will love you forever if you tell them in advance you have to leave early, and it is not because they are boring you silly that you are walking out.
I'm sure there's more, but you have a really good start and I hope other people add a bunch of stuff as well.
Posted by: jessamyn | May 2, 2004 07:56 AM
Good advice, and I like Jessamyn's #8: rip out the pages you need (including the maps) and leave the rest of the program in the hotel (or garbage). In the unlikely event that you need to refer to a part that you didn't bring along, there are thousands of other librarians around you who didn't heed this advice who'll let you take a peek.
While I'm sympathetic to Jessamyn's #11, don't let it come in the way of this cardinal rule: if the session you are in sucks, get up and leave. It's not your fault that it sucks, and you could either catch another session, or just rest for a little while. This is a good reason to sit near the back if you aren't sure you'll be there for the duration.
Posted by: Steve | May 2, 2004 02:08 PM
A few more suggestions to add to the pot:
1. Bring a notebook to jot down interesting topics, discussion points, ideas, etc. You may get asked at your next staff meeting, "So, what did you do at ALA/CLA?" and you'll be able to pull out your notebook and summarize.
2. Definitely, mail stuff home. I know at the ALA/CLA conference, Canada Post had an outlet set up right in the centre.
3. Don't be afraid to ask questions during the Q&A period. If you didn't understand something and need it clarified, chances are that someone else feels the same way too.
4. Strike up conversations with people you meet standing in line or waiting for a session to begin. Never pass up an opportunity to network!
5. Business cards, business cards, business cards. If you have them, bring lots to hand out to people you meet (so they'll remember you) and to put in free draws and suchlike. If you don't have them, it's fairly simple to make up a batch in MS Word or Corel WordPerfect and print them out.
6. Try and travel in packs, especially if you're in an unfamiliar city. Chances are, someone will know something about the city, or knows someone who does.
Posted by: Mary K | May 3, 2004 06:48 AM
Everything that everyone has said is great. I'd only second Walt's comment to make sure you take some time out. Back-to-back-to-back sessions can really overstimulate you sometimes, regardless of whether said stimulation is positive (inspiration) or negative (disillusionment). I find that grabbing a non-librarian meal with friends in town or just getting together with people who may also be librarians but can manage to not talk about libraries for a beer or two to be a really nice break.
Posted by: carol o | May 3, 2004 07:51 AM
OK, Eli, you've started something here: I've already noticed some tips that...well, I've used them for years but never thought of mentioning them. (E.g., even booklovers should recognize that the conference schedule is a resource to be mined for needed pages. Personally, I mostly rip out the area map; the daily schedules are too thick.)
If you're not planning to compile some or all of this into a submission somewhere, can I have permission to put an aggregated version in the immediately-pre-ALA Cites & Insights? (After waiting to see who else adds great ideas.)
Posted by: Walt Crawford | May 3, 2004 08:24 AM
Such wonderful ideas ... and I hope more make their way here.
Walt, I was considering compiling this into a list to go into a SLIS student newsletter, but I wasn't thinking of anything bigger than that. Can we share?
Posted by: misseli | May 3, 2004 09:17 AM
Eli,
Of course we can share!
You get first priority, since it's your weblog, but in any case I'd be giving credit where credit is due.
Oh, and look over at the right: You have a By-NC CC license, just as I do for Cites & Insights. Assuming that comments are automatically covered (as they should be), I could be rude and just do it without asking...but won't.
[The main difference is that, with the CC license, I can quote with attribution rather than doing lots of paraphrasing.]
It would be interesting to see how your final interleaved-and-expanded set compares with what I wind up doing...
Posted by: Walt Crawford | May 4, 2004 07:31 AM
OK, a little late, I wanted to add one other thing I didn't see in these lists:
If you don't have the money to join sections you are interested in (say, GODORT or RUSA), at least subscribe to listservs about those areas a couple of months before to find out about interesting events which might get buried in the program. There are things I learned about through GOVDOC-L which I just never would have seen by just pawing through the book. This is partly because the titles of some sessions just aren't descriptive enough, and you need to read the blurbs about them to decide whether or not to go.
I can't wait for a real online conference planner thingy like SLA has! Alas, SLA can only afford it because they are deeply corporate....
Posted by: Vera | May 7, 2004 02:38 PM