+1 from me on this, no surprise. :)

What if we did a next gen catalog day thing? We could spend the  
morning on solr, which many projects have in common, in the morning,  
and then in the afternoon have sessions that build on top of solr  
(vufind, blacklight, kochief, etc.) We were going to submit a proposal  
for a blacklight pre-conference regardless, but it makes a lot of  
sense to do something more coordinated, and it particularly makes  
sense to ensure that as many people as possible can take advantage of  
Erik's presence and expertise.

One goal I also have for this conference is to solicit community  
feedback on how to improve solrmarc and marc4j, which are used by both  
blacklight and vufind (and a few other projects at this point...  
yes?). A solr-focused session might be a good venue for some of that  
discussion as well... as we discuss neat things to do with solr we  
might ask how do we do that with solrmarc. Or maybe that's a separate  
discussion. It's up to the community.

Bess

On 10-Nov-09, at 5:38 AM, Erik Hatcher wrote:

> I'm interested presenting something Solr+library related at c4l10.
> I'm soliciting ideas from the community on what angle makes the most
> sense.  At first I was thinking a regular conference talk proposal,
> but perhaps a preconference session would be better.  I could be game
> for a half day session.  It could be either an introductory Solr
> class, get up and running with Solr (+ Blacklight, of course).  Or
> maybe a more advanced session on topics like leveraging dismax, Solr
> performance and scalability tuning, and so on, or maybe a freer form
> Solr hackathon session where I'd be there to help with hurdles or
> answer questions.
>
> Thoughts?  Suggestions?   Anything I can do to help the library world
> with Solr is fair game - let me know.
>
> Thanks,
> 	Erik
>
> On Nov 9, 2009, at 9:55 PM, Kevin S. Clarke wrote:
>
>> Hi all,
>>
>> It's time again to collect proposals for Code4Lib 2010 preconference
>> sessions.  We have space for six full day sessions (or 12 half day
>> sessions (or some combination of the two)).  If we get more than we
>> can accommodate, we'll vote... but I don't think we will (take that  
>> as
>> a challenge to propose lots of interesting preconference sessions).
>> Like last year, attendees will pay $12.50 for a half day or $25 for
>> the whole day.  The preconference space will be in the hotel so we'll
>> have wireless available.  If you have a preconference idea, send it  
>> to
>> this list, to me, or to the code4libcon planning list.  We'll put  
>> them
>> up on the wiki once we start receiving them.  Some possible ideas?  A
>> Drupal in libraries session? LOD part two?  An OCLC webservices
>> hackathon?  Send the proposals along...
>>
>> Thanks,
>> Kevin