I feel like this discussion is missing the boat. Let's be clear: there
are some aspects of small conferences that simply cannot be achieved
by large conferences -- you get to where you are swapping one bad
situation for another. Having said that, I think those of us who pine
for the small conference experience of Code4Lib need to get over it.
Nothing could be simpler than single-tracking. Getting 500 people into
a room designed to hold that many is relatively trivial, and yet we
are cooking up incredible schemes to attempt to cut that number to 250
people in a room for no reason that I can fathom.
Having been one of those aforementioned people whining about the small
conference experience, I hereby withdraw any objections I may have
had. Let's celebrate the success of this community in its ability to
welcome an ever-widening circle of technical librarians of all stripes
and keep on truckin'.
Let's see some proposals for next year that offer the ability to host
a much larger conference than this year's and see what we can do with
it. If it's a disaster then we can try something else.
Roy
On Fri, Dec 23, 2011 at 9:37 AM, Joe Hourcle
<[log in to unmask]> wrote:
> On Dec 23, 2011, at 12:15 PM, Susan Kane wrote:
>
> [trimmed]
>
>> You could repeat the conference at a totally different time of year ...
>> everyone who didn't get in is automatically registered for the second
>> conference later that year ... kinda wacky but ...
>>
>> You could plan for a second conference of the same size in the same city
>> (different hotel). After presentations for C4L1 are finalized, presenters
>> are sought on similar topics for C4L2. Overflow registrations for C4L1
>> automatically go to C4L2. Similar content means that institutions who paid
>> for you to come to learn about X will hopefully not be upset if you learn
>> about X from a different person across the street. Everyone hangs out
>> informally during off-presentation times.
>>
>> One could call that "tracks" but I'm trying for more of a "mirror download
>> site" concept.
>
> [trimmed]
>
> For some reason, this jogged my memory --
>
> The DC-IA (Information Architecture) group used to hold an meeting
> after the IA Summit to basically recap what was discussed at the IA
> Summit. (I think they called it the 'IA Redux')
>
> As there was more than one track, it allowed people who did go to
> the summit to hear more about the other presentations they missed,
> and for those who didn't go at all, it gave them a chance to at least
> hear second-hand what was discussed.
>
> Obviously, it wasn't nearly as complete as the original, and lost some
> in translation, but I found it to be informative.
>
> Particularly when you consider the proposal to limit the number of
> attendees from one organization, this means that you spread the
> number of attendees out, who can then spread the gospel to the others
> that weren't able to attend.
>
> Now, I'm not saying that people have to go out and take copious notes
> and then try to get them into some format for dissemination (I did that
> for the last RDAP meeting ... it's a lot of work trying to get 'em into a
> format that others might understand), but if you get a few people
> together who were at the meeting, and they can talk about what they
> thought was interesting (possibly referring to notes they might've
> jotted down), and that often spurs interesting discussions in itself.
>
> -Joe
>
> ps. as an example of understandability, compare:
> http://vso1.nascom.nasa.gov/joe/notes/rdap/RDAP_2011_notes.txt
> http://vso1.nascom.nasa.gov/joe/notes/rdap/RDAP_2011_report.html
> (and I took the original notes by hand, not typed, so I was spending
> my nights at the meeting typing, then making 'em understandable for
> the next week or so)
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