This thread seems to have meandered a ways from what seemed like a
perfectly good suggestion from Cynthia: that the program committee be
allowed some leeway and/or encouraged to exercise some judgement with the
talk selection. I don't see why a change like that necessitates a big,
centralized, formal organization (like SXSW has).

And -1 on anonymous proposal authors for the reasons jrochkind mentioned.

--jay


On Tue, Nov 27, 2012 at 8:17 PM, Edward M Corrado <[log in to unmask]>wrote:

> I am not thrilled with the idea of anonymous proposals as I think that
> goes against the openness non-organization that is code4lib. Also based on
> the numbers posted earlier it seems inputs are more of an issue then the
> voting.
>
> However, I love the idea of X number of presentations reserved for first
> time presenters. I don't know what the value of X should be but Bess's idea
> of 15% sounds good to me.
>
> I'd personally also like to see a limit to the number of talks someone can
> give or propose, but I know this has been brought up before and, at least
> in the past, there was not overwhelming support for this.
>
> Edward
>
> --
> Edward M. Corrado
>
> On Nov 27, 2012, at 18:41, Bess Sadler <[log in to unmask]> wrote:
>
> > I am not volunteering to write the voting mechanism for this, but what
> if we had two rounds of voting?
> >
> > 1. First round, anonymous (people who follow these things avidly would
> of course have read everyone's names on the wiki, but I think for most
> people not having the names listed means you have removed the names from
> consideration). We use the current system of assigning points. Once you've
> cast that ballot, then you get ballot 2:
> >
> > 2. The same ballot with the names present. You now have the opportunity
> to change your vote, if you want to. It might be because you didn't realize
> that person who secretly bores you was one of the speakers. It might be
> because what at first looked like just another talk about marc software
> sounds more compelling if its from someone who's never spoken before.
> >
> > I wonder if we might also set aside a separate competition for first
> time speakers? Say, 15% of the talks? Assuming that generally speaking,
> offering ways for early-career folks or those new to public speaking to
> participate is a good thing and would benefit diversity as a bonus.
> >
> > Bess
> >
> > On Nov 27, 2012, at 3:20 PM, Kelley McGrath <[log in to unmask]> wrote:
> >
> >> I'll second the idea of approaching people individually and explicitly
> asking them to participate. It worked on me. I never would have written my
> first article for the Code4Lib Journal or become a member of the editorial
> committee if someone hadn't encouraged me individually (Thanks Jonathan!).
> >>
> >> It would also be good to find a way to somehow target the pool of
> lurkers who maybe aren't already connected to someone and get them more
> involved.
> >>
> >> As far as anonymous proposals go, we recently had a very good workshop
> on implicit bias here. Someone brought up that found significant changes in
> the gender proportions in symphony orchestras after candidates started
> auditioning behind screens. There are also lots of studies about the
> different responses to the same resume/application depending on whether a
> stereotypically male/female or white/black name was used. Probably it's
> impossible to make proposals completely anonymous, but it would be an
> interesting experiment to leave off the names.
> >>
> >> Kelley
> >>
> >> PS Interestingly, I wouldn't instinctively self-identify as a member of
> the Code4Lib community, although my first thought is that that has more to
> do with not being a coder than with being a woman.
> >>
> >>
> >> **************************
> >> Kelley McGrath
> >> Metadata Management Librarian
> >> University of Oregon Libraries
> >> 1299 University of Oregon
> >> Eugene, OR 97403
> >>
> >> 541-346-8232
> >> [log in to unmask]
>