I read two things today (well, really lots more than that, but I digress) that come from extremely different areas of my scope, yet are related:
- Karen Schneider’s ALA: What is to be done post;
- The SXSWorld magazine’s announcement that SXSWi panel proposals will be accepted starting June 1.
So how are those two things related? One of Karen’s points was to “Make conferences greener and more lithe.” She made some good points about ALA conferences and changes that could be made to make them better.
And then, when reading the SXSWi panel application thing, here’s what they do: “As with the 2007 event, much of the 2008 programming will come directly from ideas from the SXSW Interactive community.” For the 2007 conference, SXSW collected ideas for programs, and then let visitors to the SXSW site vote on which programs they found worthy… and the conference was made up primarily of those user-chosen panels.
Generally, I think ALA programs are chosen by individual program committees (of which there are many, if I’m not mistaken). Why not ask ALA members what they want to see?
that’s just one way among decidedly many … other ideas?