[Eg-oversight-board] Final conference thoughts

[Ruth Frasur]

Grace,

I, admittedly, haven't picked through everything in the suggestion
document.  That said, I really like the idea of highlighting the hackfest
more prominently as a part of the conference rather than a "pre-conference"
addendum.

On Tue, May 23, 2017 at 11:39 AM, Grace Dunbar <grace at equinoxinitiative.org>
wrote:

> I thought it might be useful to provide my suggestions for the Evergreen
> conference and changes we may want to consider for the future.  Apologies
> in advance if this is either rambling or redundant, or both.
>
> The conference operates on thin margins.
> Every year the conference committee is confident (perhaps overly
> confident) that this year they will increase attendance numbers and
> increase sponsorships.  The problem is that we can't increase our
> sponsorships without increasing our attendance.  And our attendees who
> increase our numbers are generally just employees of a library in an
> existing consortia.  This exact complaint was brought up by multiple
> vendors - essentially, the Evergreen conference is really only between 8
> and 10 "clients" and having more circ or cataloging staff attendees at the
> conference doesn't increase their ROI.  And that's fair.
>
> And the attendees who can increase our numbers (local staff) seem to want
> very specifically targeted information related to them at the conference.
> The conference surveys have been pretty clear that end-user staff want and
> expect *training* from the conference.  But that hasn't traditionally been
> the aim of the conference, nor can we reliably provide that since the
> programs are solicited from volunteers in the community. Also complicating
> things for "training" on Evergreen features is that Evergreen is so
> customizable that "training" or explanations of how to use certain features
> may not jive with local policy for their consortia or library system.
> Regardless, I believe we can, to some extent, provide that kind of training
> in the pre-conference sessions.  However, we will need to be very selective
> in the process of recruiting the pre-conference presenters (trainers) if
> we're going to try to actively meet that need.
>
> Also, I firmly believe that the conference should make money for the
> project.  With that money, the project can provide outreach, build
> infrastructure, and promote the community.  We want to provide a good
> conference with stellar programs and a welcoming environment.  But the
> conference is also for building relationships, allowing developers and
> community leaders to conduct business and brainstorm, as well as providing
> space for the EOB, committees, and interest groups to meet.  IOW, we're
> trying to meet a lot of needs and there needs to be balance - we can't make
> everyone happy all the time.  If you look at the breakdown of attendees,
> systems administrators and developers are roughly 1/3, end-users are
> roughly 1/3, and admin/consortia leaders are roughly 1/3.  Those are all
> stakeholders that are important but their needs are very different.
>
> To reduce overhead for the conference and to try to give *everyone* the
> best experience we should at least look at making some changes. Based off
> of my experience and the results of conference surveys, I have some
> suggestions for changes to the structure and the sponsorships.
> Note that the proposed reduction of the conference to two tracks had wide
> support in the survey and the track reduction and changes to
> pre-conferences and when/where IGs, etc. meet, should reduce the overhead
> for costs associated with meeting rooms, A/V, signage, labor, etc.
> See attached doc for details.
>
> Thanks for sticking with the rambling...
> And as always, this is just a suggestion based on my experience - I leave
> it to y'all to decide what to take away from the information and what
> direction to go.
>
> Cheers!
> Grace
> p.s. Exhibitor and attendee surveys also attached.  For anyone who prefers
> visual representations, just let me know and I can share the Google form
> with you.
>
>
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>
>


-- 
Ruth Frasur
Director of the Historic(ally Awesome) Hagerstown - Jefferson Township
Library
10 W. College Street in Hagerstown, Indiana (47346)
p (765) 489-5632; f (765) 489-5808

*Our Kickin' Website <http://hagerstownlibrary.org>,  Our Rockin' Facebook
Page <http://facebook.com/hjtplibrary>,  and The Nettle Creek Players
<http://nettlecreekplayers.com>*
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