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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)