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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