I have followed this discussion with great interest and have only one comment....."watch out for the slippery slope."
There will be "unintended consequences" whenever you try to ensure a "just" registration system, be it by controlling "randomness" or by "qualifying" the participants. Where do you stop!
In the spirit of collaboration and openness, instead of focusing on how to control the 250 registration slots, we should focus on how to make it available to more people (be it by size increase or by video streaming, etc). True openness and fairness for registration will mean that some people will always not be able to attend, and setting up registration "justice" will not fix that.... approximately 150+ people (and more in the future) will not be able to attend no matter what. And if there is no solution to increasing participation, then so be it. It stays the same size, and registration opens at the advertised time (everyone will know when that is) and close when full. Everyone will know that....and make their plans accordingly.
I think of it like the Oklahoma Land Rush, or getting your plane reservations for Christmas. Some get in, some do not, and each person is responsible only to himself for doing it "in time."
This is from a person who is coming for the first time following two failed attempts to attend in previous years.
My humble opinion only.
Michael North
-----Original Message-----
From: Code for Libraries [mailto:[log in to unmask]] On Behalf Of Reese, Terry
Sent: Thursday, December 22, 2011 9:46 AM
To: [log in to unmask]
Subject: Re: [CODE4LIB] Obvious answer to registration limitations
I find it hard not to laugh a little bit at this ongoing discussion because it is so uniquely part of this community. On the one hand, you have some very creative people that think that they see a problem and want to fix it. On the other, people are spinning their wheels, throwing out the crazies solutions trying to solve a problem that we as the community have created ourselves. It makes me smile because it really does personify both the strengths and weakness of this community. I think people like this group because there certainly isn't a lack of ideas or people willing to spend time and energy on them. When we put that energy towards coding and solving problems in libraries -- good things happen (as well as some crazy things). However, there are those times when it feels like things go off the rails and to me, this is one of them.
The conference is a nice event. It's something I know a lot of us enjoy because it’s a time to get together with colleagues and find out what people are working on. One of the reasons it works is because of its size. It's one of the few conferences where I get the opportunity to meet most of the attendees and get to have significant conversations around some very cool projects. But it's certainly not the only place where this happens.
And with all that said, I can't help but make one suggestion to help add some diversity to the registration process. I've not looked at the list fully to see who is attending, but I think you'd find that some institutions are sending large contingencies to the conference (and I can't toss stones, because Oregon State is one of them). A simple solution would be to limit registrations per institution, much the same way CNI does. My guess is that if registration per institution was capped, at least during the early registration period, you'd find that a much more diverse audience could attend.
--TR
***************************
Terry Reese, Associate Professor
Gray Family Chair for
Innovative Library Services
121 Valley Library
Corvallis, OR 97331
tel: 541.737.6384
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-----Original Message-----
From: Code for Libraries [mailto:[log in to unmask]] On Behalf Of Brett Bonfield
Sent: Thursday, December 22, 2011 7:27 AM
To: [log in to unmask]
Subject: Re: [CODE4LIB] Obvious answer to registration limitations
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
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