I have to admit: I’m not a disinterested observer here, because I coordinate OPAL (www.opal-online.org), a collaborative effort by libraries to offer public programs and professional development opportunities to librarians and library users worldwide, using web-conferencing software. If the ALA Conference Planning team would like to beta test offering some live online events, I could do it in DC with very short notice (I’m lithe in spirit, if not in body!) for a very modest fee (well, I think it’s modest). It’s also easy to record and podcast online events, which would give people interested in ALA Annual Conference events another way to time-shift, too. Permissions, market research, revenue streams (or rivulets), and other factors are important considerations, but just trying new things on a small scale can provide useful information and knowledge.

Plus, it’s difficult to register by the “early bird” deadline without preliminary info. So all I’m really trying to say is that even without physical “printing,” the timeline may not necessarily change if the point is advance notice.

Hopefully more soon, and please keep the suggestions coming! Thanks for sparking the discussion, David.

On the size of the rooms thing – just my guess here, but is it possible there’s an average attendance number for, say, a division program at annual? Etc etc – we’ve done ALA Annual for awhile now, so I’m guessing ALA knows approximate sizes of rooms for different meetings… ???

I’d also agree with you that the huge behemoth ALA conference might not the best first experiment.

First, I think it works by first letting anyone who wants to submit their proposal. So you’d need a 1-2 months window for proposal submission. Then, “the community” votes on those. I suppose between the submitting and the voting time, you’d have the option of weeding out obviously poor programs. You could even go so far as to weed it down to the 5-10 best (depending on the conference…). SO that would hopefully cut down on all programs getting a similar number of votes.

Next, on to your more specific thing about the same number of votes. Hmm… good question. I suppose you’d have a few options: 1. program committee gets to choose if there’s a tie; 2. let everyone talk, but give them shorter presentation times, or group some on a panel; 3. no real interest, so you cancel that part of the conference? I’d opt for #1 personally.

In order to publicize the initial vote, especially if we need to do it in print in “American Libraries” and give sufficient notice and time for voting, we’d probably have to add at least two more months. To leave time for a potential vote off, that might mean another two months. Now we’re 10 months out from conference, and that’s not even counting getting the proposals in.

This is just my uneducated guess, as I know that there is a lot more behind-the-scenes planning required for this kind of thing. For example, how would you know what size rooms you’ll need if you don’t know the speakers and topics in enough time?

Having just planned the gaming symposium, I know you have to plan ahead for A/V and space requirements when you book venues. And I know even ITI doesn’t leave open, unpopulated sessions, as I asked about doing that for the public library track this year.

I’m not making excuses, just thinking out loud about the various pieces. Maybe we could try this at the division level and then see about scaling it up? (She says, thinking the messenger is going to be shot….)

I agree that somehow collectively voting on programs we’d like to see would be great, but I also think that the committee members who plan these huge conferences do a remarkable job of sifting through tons of program proposals (many mediocre) and choosing the best ones. I’m really new to ALA, but my understanding is that the way it’s currently set-up is that the committee members choose the best from what’s submitted to them from libraries and librarians, then they will try to fill in noticeable gaps by trying to plan programs themselves (or find people to submit a particular type of program). In the end, hopefully you have a broad collection of programs that will offer something appealing to each attendee.

This method is good, but not perfect. I think a more transparent, quick, collective method of planning conference programs would be great.

Voting for sessions also means that you could have sessions that are relevant right then. One of the problems with ALA is the huge time lag between proposal submission and actual program. One year is too far in advance to be cutting edge.