Seems a reasonable suggestion to me.  The tricky bit will be how to
decide who's contributed substantially as a volunteer.  Or maybe I'm
overthinking it.  Otherwise, I like the blend of
first-come-first-served, guaranteed slots for folks who put in the
time, and a lottery system for those who don't register for code4lib
like they're trying to get free METALLICA* tickets.

-Mike

* Wait, are they still even around?


On Thu, Dec 22, 2011 at 10:26, Brett Bonfield <[log in to unmask]> wrote:
> Seems like a hybrid system might make sense.
>
> Reserve spots for presenters and scholarship winners, and decide on
> both before registration opens. I'm sure it's difficult to coordinate
> voting for presenters, and I know from having volunteered on the
> scholarship committee that it would be difficult to complete that
> process in time. But I think it would be worth it.
>
> I think it also makes sense to reserve spots for some number of
> volunteers. I think this would help with continuity, help to preserve
> the idea that everyone is a participant, reward people who put in
> considerable time, and also encourage more people to volunteer for the
> more time-consuming jobs. As with presenters, volunteers would have to
> pay for registration and their reserved spots would be
> non-transferable. Code4lib could vote on which volunteer positions
> guarantee the option to attend the conference.
>
> I think the rest of the open spots could be divided between
> first-come-first-served and a lottery system (50/50? 60/40?). The
> people who are sitting at their computers the moment registration
> opens would still get in, and the people who didn't know that was
> required -- the newer folks whose participation is necessary for
> code4lib to stay relevant -- would have a reasonable chance to see, in
> person, what code4lib is all about.
>
> Brett
>
> Brett Bonfield
> Director
> Collingswood Public Library
>
> On Thu, Dec 22, 2011 at 9:50 AM, Edward M. Corrado <[log in to unmask]> wrote:
>> I disagree about the random registration concept. As long as the time
>> is announced in advance (which was done this year) people should plan
>> accordingly. You didn't need to register the first minute this year. I
>> registered an hour after registration opened and while I was initially
>> on the waiting list, I eventually got a slot. If I ended up getting
>> locked out it would've been my own fault. I could have done what
>> others did and purposely avoided scheduling meetings around that time
>> and rescheduled the one that was but I didn't. Yes, I have bazillions
>> of other things to do and the registration time wasn't convenient for
>> me, but everyone else has bazillions of things to do as well. It would
>> not have been luck that got the people in who registered before me a
>> slot - it would have been a combination of their good planning and my
>> poor planning. Yes good people miss out when registration fills up and
>> maybe the library world suffers, but a random process would still have
>> good people miss out -- including those who would make the effort and
>> adjust there schedules accordingly -- which I think would lead to the
>> library world suffering more.
>>
>> Edward
>>
>> On Wed, Dec 21, 2011 at 8:00 PM, Karen Schneider <[log in to unmask]> wrote:
>>> I was really hoping that our Associate Director for Library Technology
>>> could attend Code4Lib. She did her best, but didn't make it. She was then
>>> pushed hard, early on, to drop her hotel room, which she did not do (good
>>> for her) though I'm guessing she has by now. We're a 5-person library and
>>> it's amazing to have someone with her expertise (IT tried to steal her
>>> before I arrived, but I took her back), and we wouldn't be what we were
>>> without her. I felt I owed her Code4Lib, but busy with my own distractions
>>> I hadn't been on this list for a long time, and didn't tune in to the fact
>>> that registration for C4L has become so nutzo that either she or her proxy
>>> needed to be sitting on the reg process the very minute it opened, not a
>>> few minutes later. She was probably doing one of the 8 bazillion things she
>>> does every long day that help keep us going and differentiate us from all
>>> the other teeny-weeny uni libraries out there.
>>>
>>> The library world will be a little less than what it could be because she's
>>> not at Code4Lib.
>>>
>>> My idea: registration should open for two weeks, close, and then assign
>>> spots randomly (and if it's too hard to think how that might be done, I
>>> have a few thousand old catalog cards you can toss in a bucket).
>>>
>>> FYI, I know what zoia is, and I even know WHO the real Zoia is, but
>>> invoking that super-secret-stuff is just icky. Maybe she doesn't need your
>>> super-secret decoder rings anyway. She does want to stretch herself beyond
>>> what we can make possible. We'll keep looking.
>>>
>>> Karen G. Schneider
>>> Director for Library Services
>>> Holy Names University
>>> http://library.hnu.edu