Hey folks: 

I'm not going to be attending code4lib yet again in 2012 (alas), so treat this with a grain of salt, but I wanted to point out that at least one project is encouraging their community to sign up for code4lib accounts and vote for their project's proposals. 

This seems rather gauche to me, and if left unchecked in future conferences, likely to lead to election-style pandering & the likelihood that we'll miss out on higher-quality proposals that don't have an army of ballot stuffers to whip into a frenzy or who are too honourable to engage in such behaviour. That would be an unfortunate future for the conference, in my opinion. 

It's too late to do anything about it this year, but a thought for next year: maybe voting gets limited to those who register for the conference so that voters have some skin in the game (that is, their precious time and travel expenses). Proposals could be made before registration, but voting would occur after registration (with attendance slots held for speakers, naturally). 

Dan Scott