Caveat Lector

Back in May, I went out to the Midwest Library Technology Conference, at my own expense and on vacation time. The week after, I was headed to UIUC’s Data Curation Institute, again at my own expense and using vacation time. What with the eScience colloquium and Project Bamboo, both of which MPOW sponsored me to attend, I just didn’t feel I could push my luck, given that MPOW has had word from On High to cut travel as much as feasible.

Two lessons here. One, that I get way more vacation time than I can actually find ways to use. (I had a lot held over from early 2007, and… look, it’s a long story, okay?) Two… the library conference and continuing-ed scene may have an interesting shakeup coming because of travel restrictions.

The LibrarianInBlack spoke cogently about refusing even to consider an important ALA program because of the travel requirements involved, travel that her workplace can’t fund. There’s always been a travel divide in librarianship—that’s part of why Five Weeks happened—so what she says is really nothing new. What’s new is that the circle of non-travellers, if MPOW is any indication, may be expanding quite a bit in the near future.

There are more-or-less blanket exemptions to MPOW’s new semi-official, not-exactly-set-in-stone travel policy. If it’s more or less local, you’re probably okay. If you’re presenting, you’re probably okay. If you’re on a committee that’s meeting, you’re probably okay. Everything else, you better be prepared to make a good case.

Partisans of electronic participation in ALA may want to consider what incentives the above policy (which I sincerely doubt is unique) gives conference organizers. If I were organizing Midwinter or Annual with a view toward revenue maximization, I’d push as many committees as I possibly could to insist on face-to-face meetings; it’s only sensible. Partisans may also want to consider incentives for librarians: I can’t be the only one who believes that some librarians join committees so they have an irrefutable excuse to go to Midwinter/Annual. It might even be true, despite my believing it!

Personally, I think the sifting and winnowing of ALA committee members that would occur if electronic participation became a standard option would be earthshaking—and highly salutary for ALA. I am, of course, notably and notoriously jaundiced, so I will leave further opining on this question to others.

The next question is what happens to conferences in general. I’ll tell you my answer: I dunno. I do, however, have some guesses, which all and sundry are welcome to test.

The smart nationwide conference will try to be one that large circles of friends go to. Many, many librarians I know seem to make this a key determiner in which BigCons they go to—and, crucially, return to, even when they themselves admit the conference content isn’t terribly compelling. I find this weird—look, as much as I love my far-flung librarian friends, there ain’t enough incentive in the world for me to endure an otherwise-useless BigCon—but I accept that I’m atypical. So that same smart conference will try to find the Gladwell connectors among its target audience and invite them to speak. Information Today seems to do this very effectively.

If you’re looking to speak at a BigCon, it is probably worthwhile to evaluate your own market value in terms of the number of people you would bring with you, and to increase that value if you can. I’m just ornery enough an iconoclast that I don’t care, which is doubtless why BigCons pass me over despite my good qualities as a presenter. I see indications, however, that Repository Fringe may have made a smart bet on me. Whether I knock the ball out of the park or lay an egg (and hell, I don’t know which I’ll do) is irrelevant to this analysis. What matters is that I’ve seen signs that my participation is helping raise awareness of and interest in Repo Fringe. Which is great, and I’ll take it—while trying not to lay an egg on the day, of course.

I anticipate a stable niche also for targeted regional conferences, the key word being “targeted.” These conferences are smaller, obviously, so they can’t try to be one-size-fits-all or there won’t be enough for anyone and therefore no one will come. These are shorter than BigCons (two days, typically), they often depend on local talent, and if they find the right local talent, they can give phenomenal bang for the buck. What I saw of MidLibTechCon (which I admit wasn’t much) indicated that it was a paradigm for the genre. Our local WiLSWorld conference runs along similar lines.

So who loses? Well, I think there’ll only be room for one national conference in many niche areas, a simple matter of critical mass. In my own niche, for example, I’m not worried for Open Repositories, but I don’t think DASER will ever be back, and I’ll be interested to see what happens with some of the stuff SPARC sponsors. JCDL and ASIST Annual will survive, but anyone trying to compete with them should rethink.

Some of the BigCons may be in trouble, especially those that are default conferences for a lot of relatively less-engaged librarians, just because the BigCons need such huge attendee numbers to remain viable. I know that MPOW isn’t sending the numbers to default BigCons that it has in previous years. I doubt MPOW is alone. ACRL, PLA, even Midwinter/Annual may see some falling-off. Ordinarily, I would think that any dropoff would be cushioned by people eliminating other conferences in favor of a BigCon. Money is getting so tight, though, that I’m honestly not sure which way that coin will fall. State library conferences may benefit, if the BigCons have indeed managed to price themselves out of the market.

The most interesting opportunity I see is for BarCamp-style participatory conferences both virtual and face-to-face, because these leverage the circle-of-friends model. But more on that in another post, because I have quite a bit on my mind about them.