DSOL Conference Blog

The horror!

We're approaching the next milestone in our march towards the annual conference... Early bird registration for members ends on the 1st of April, a scant few days away.  Don't miss this opportunity to save $$$ on your registration costs!

As presenters and as attendees, I'm sure that we've all experienced our share of conference horror stories.  For better or for worse, this is not limited to the world of special libraries.  Case in point - an editorial article on a regional conference from the blog Inside Higher Ed, "Attending a Conference, Looking for an Exit."  Some adjectives used to describe sessions at academic conferences are "muffled," "interiorized," "shrunken."  At the other end of the spectrum, the author described other sessions as "confident," "resonant," "expansive."  Perhaps discussion chairs don't show up on time, or at all.  Sometimes, there's no audience.  Or maybe you have a feeling that you've heard what the presenter's saying before...when they gave the same presentation a couple of years ago.  While here in libraryland we are perhaps a little less subject to the stringent tenure requirements and vicissitudes of the professorial life that bring about these kinds of issues, surely we've all had similar experiences that we are not anxious to repeat, either as a participant or as one who inflicts this special pain on others.

Steering clear of any details that might identify people or places, what have you seen that you do not wish to see again, and what advice do you have to give to presenters and attendees to continue to make our annual conference a valuable and positive experience?  (one that can be had at a discounted price until April 1st!)

How will you keep track of it all?

It's been pretty quiet around this blog for a while, but as the new Solo Division blogmaster (mistress?), I'm hoping to change that... With the Annual Conference sneaking up more quickly than we might like to think, I'd like to resurrect this forum for discussion, creating a Solo-centric companion to the general Seattle conference wiki.

As I was reading through my regular pile of daily e-mail, I came across a CNET blog posting on Twitter and its presence at SXSW entitled "At SXSWi, the new Twitter is ... Twitter." You can read the whole posting yourself at http://www.news.com/8301-13772_3-9890396-52.html, but the gist of it is that this communication tool has proven itself to be more than a passing fad and was put to very good use at this conference - it kept people who were spread out all over Austin connected and aware of events, both spontaneous and planned, and it provided a forum for instant reviews of sessions. One particular quote that stood out for me was,

"Basically, I think a lot of people must be wondering how they managed to get through SXSWi before Twitter came along. It's like trying to imagine the days when there was no email."

At our own SLA conferences, inevitably there are 17 sessions that you would like to attend in the space of 3 hours, there are countless networking events, things sell out and spaces open up, someone decides that it might be nice to go out to dinner... Twitter is one way to keep on top of things. What other tools are you planning to use in order to get the most out of your conference experience?

--Julie