Courtney Young linked to the “White Paper on the ALA Midwinter Meeting.” And she asked for feedback on the document and on what we wanted to see ALA Midwinter become. Being me, I had a very strong (and rather strongly-worded) opinion, which I thought I’d repost here, for your reading enjoyment. Please, if you have further comments, feel free to leave them here, but also go tell Courtney. She is a great listener (even to text ;)) and really wants to hear what people think.
As you know, I’m an extra $400+ in plane tickets away from EVERY conference (except those that actually happen in Alaska, which is never ALA), but the Internet works just fine up here. I would strongly support dropping to one physical conference a year, but maybe making that conference a day longer, to allow for more in-person meetings–maybe a dedicated “meeting” day, even.
I’m luckier than some: my workplace can support my attendance–or at least the bulk of it–to one ALA a year, though they certainly can’t do two. I only have to pay part of the first and all of the second out of pocket. But the public librarians, or librarians at smaller colleges, are prevented from full participation (or at least the credit for full participation, as I discuss below) in ALA because they must pay for *both* conferences out of pocket. I hate to frame it in the light of a class issue, but I think it is: the people advocating for two conferences must somehow be able to afford them. How many of us can’t do two conferences a year, or would have to undergo significant financial hardship to do so? (We have great scholarship programs. But there are so few scholarships, split between so many potential participants.)
It would be easy to do: each teleconferenced* program could have a sponsor, and that sponsor could be allowed to talk for a couple of minutes at the beginning, sort of like Mango did in the Midwinter Tech Wrapup. Similarly, committee meetings could also be run that way–maybe without sponsors–but with less active moderation. It’s not 100% as efficient as an in-person meeting, but, having worked with both kinds of committees at work, I think it’s around 80% as good. What are we asking people to pay, for that 20%? Is that reasonable?
*It’s important that we do NOT go with passive streaming! Something like WebEx or Elluminate Live would work nicely, because in both programs the moderator can control the “noise”–people can type questions into the chat window, or even be allowed by the moderator to discuss with microphones, but it’s all at the moderator’s discretion. Pure streaming is awful, because, unless someone’s monitoring the Twitter backchannel or something, the distance “participants” aren’t really participating.
I disagree about the “smaller” Midwinters, on the grounds of fairness: those of us in Alaska, Hawaii, and other states without large enough population centers to house everyone for ALA Annual or Midwinter will never be close enough to participate cheaply just by virtue of being “regional.” But we pay the same dues to the organization. And we’re held to the same expectations as our peers.
More to the point: as long as conference has a physical component, the virtual will be a side offering, not as useful or fun an experience. The push to improve it will never be all that strong, so distance attendees will continue to be a second class of citizen. We see it in library schools (at least at Pitt), and I can definitely see those same people who advocate for two physical conferences saying “if you don’t care enough to participate in person, you shouldn’t complain that the virtual side isn’t perfect.” Even if they don’t say it out loud, I feel pretty sure some people already think that way: we seem to hold conference attendance up as the standard of how committed someone is to ALA, and, as a new [read: still paying off student loans] librarian from an outlying state, I think that’s unreasonable. Let’s modernize, respect people’s financial and locational situations, and offer a strong virtual conference, instead of doing it in a (please forgive me) half-assed way.
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