[Eg-oversight-board] Final conference thoughts

[Amy Terlaga]

These are some very intriguing suggestions for future conferences.  I'm all
for reducing the overall cost to help the project make money.
Unfortunately, contract signing with the conference venue for 2018 is
wrapping up today or tomorrow.  I followed this year's plan.  I stuck with
the formula.  I needed something to go on and felt the pressure of locking
in the venue as the local committee has been working out a plan with them
since before the 2017 conference.

I'm sorry some of this can't be executed for 2018, but the work has been
laid out for 2019.

Grace, you've done so much work - it is much appreciated.  Your insights
and expertise are invaluable..

Amy

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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Amy Terlaga
Director of Member Services
Bibliomation, Inc.
24 Wooster Avenue
Waterbury, CT  06708
(203)577-4070 x101
terlaga at biblio.org
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