[Eg-oversight-board] Final conference thoughts

[scott.thomas at sparkpa.org]

Regarding consortia, I have a few thoughts about this. First, money is obviously the first barrier to attendance, but we offer scholarships that have paid for all of the costs (previous years) or a fixed amount to go towards the cost (this year), and we advertised for applicants across all of our listservs which takes us down deeply into our 104 members. Every year we only get a handful of applicants, and they are always from the larger, well-staffed libraries who could actually afford to send their staff without consortium assistance. Why? In the smaller libraries, the majority of our 104, they simply can’t spare the time commitment. Bodies are needed at the desk. The other, darker issue is that some consortia may not encourage wider attendance from members because they then go to the conference, learn things, and start asking for things that you may not want to give. You do lose a bit of control. These things are hard to overcome.

I think we just need to stress, as the conference approaches, that there is something for everyone not just administrators and coders and that it is a great experience for anyone who uses Evergreen. I have a few folks who would be willing to give testimonials on You Tube.

Scott

From: Grace Dunbar [mailto:grace at equinoxinitiative.org]
Sent: Wednesday, May 24, 2017 12:13 PM
To: scott.thomas at sparkpa.org
Cc: Amy Terlaga <terlaga at biblio.org>; Kathy Lussier <klussier at masslnc.org>; Oversight Board <eg-oversight-board at list.evergreen-ils.org>
Subject: Re: [Eg-oversight-board] Final conference thoughts

Hi,
Diane, I'm glad you asked your question... and I'm glad Kathy answered.  :)  It really is a very broad conference that's trying to meet a lot of needs.  But, realistically, I think we have to look at it like any other similar conference.  For example, when I would go to NCLA when I worked at a library in North Carolina, I went with the expectation of networking, being exposed to new and innovative ideas, and collaborating with colleagues.  The Evergreen conference is organized by the community itself, with all the work and content being provided by community volunteers - and we are at the mercy of that wonderful and talented group of people who all have other responsibilities.  Even if we wanted to provide more/different programming at the conference, can we realistically deliver on that?  What *do* people expect from the conference?

But that brings us neatly into what Scott asked...
Do we know why people don't attend?  I think the obvious one is money.  The "hidden" reason is that Evergreen is adopted largely by consortia.  People in branch libraries often feel that the Evergreen conference is for the people "at the top" and not for them.  If we want to increase the Evergreen conference numbers then we need to figure out how to promote more outside the Evergreen community and how the community and consortia using Evergreen can better promote the conference to their members.  Evergreen Indiana and NC Cardinal did great jobs in that regard and the conference attendance numbers reflected that.

I do think it's absolutely worth surveying the broader community to find out what would encourage them to come to the conference.  As an interesting data point, there are just over 700 subscribers to the Evergreen General Mailing List.  So, all 700 of those folks ought to have been aware that there was a conference...

Thanks!
Grace


On Wed, May 24, 2017 at 8:20 AM, scott.thomas at sparkpa.org<mailto:scott.thomas at sparkpa.org> <scott.thomas at sparkpa.org<mailto:scott.thomas at sparkpa.org>> wrote:
I am sorry I’m weighing a bit late. Yesterday was our Users Group conference. Thank you, Grace, for sharing your thoughts. I also appreciated hearing everyone’s responses. As a newbie on the board, I need to ask a few questions, and I apologize in advance if this was already been discussed numerous times. Given the size of the Evergreen community, do we think 140 is a reasonable number of attendees? Also, do we have any theories as to why we did not see an increase from last year given that the Evergreen community is growing and not shrinking? Prior to putting out a Call for Proposals for 2019 (and I am all in favor of Kathy’s suggestion of advancing the deadline), should we survey the community about the conference? It can start with a Did you attend? Y/N and, if N, we can try to find out why. We can also ask them to rate what is most and least important in terms of the conference experience. If you are all amenable to this, I will volunteer to take the lead with the survey.

Scott

From: eg-oversight-board [mailto:eg-oversight-board-bounces at list.evergreen-ils.org<mailto:eg-oversight-board-bounces at list.evergreen-ils.org>] On Behalf Of Amy Terlaga
Sent: Tuesday, May 23, 2017 12:49 PM
To: Kathy Lussier <klussier at masslnc.org<mailto:klussier at masslnc.org>>
Cc: Grace Dunbar <grace at equinoxinitiative.org<mailto:grace at equinoxinitiative.org>>; Oversight Board <eg-oversight-board at list.evergreen-ils.org<mailto:eg-oversight-board at list.evergreen-ils.org>>
Subject: Re: [Eg-oversight-board] Final conference thoughts

All good suggestions, Kathy!

Amy

On Tue, May 23, 2017 at 12:43 PM, Kathy Lussier <klussier at masslnc.org<mailto:klussier at masslnc.org>> wrote:

Hi,

I haven't read the document closely, but some pieces (new sponsor/exhibitor rates) may be something we can implement sooner while # of rooms, food expenditures, and other contract items can be planned out for 2019. Another thought I've had is that we might want to consider putting out the call for the 2019 conference earlier this year. Although we put out the call about 16 months ahead of time, I know some locations are already fully booked by that time. Maybe we can plan for putting the next Call for Proposals out in August / September and plan on resolving these questions by then so that the 2019 planners know what the new requirements are.

In addition to reducing costs, the other advantage to reducing the number of rooms is that it increases the number of conference hotels that can accommodate us.

Kathy

On 05/23/2017 12:28 PM, Amy Terlaga wrote:
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<mailto: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<tel:(203)%20577-4070>
terlaga at biblio.org<mailto:terlaga at biblio.org>


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Kathy Lussier

Project Coordinator

Massachusetts Library Network Cooperative

(508) 343-0128<tel:(508)%20343-0128>

klussier at masslnc.org<mailto:klussier at masslnc.org>

Twitter: http://www.twitter.com/kmlussier



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Amy Terlaga
Director of Member Services
Bibliomation, Inc.
24 Wooster Avenue
Waterbury, CT  06708
(203)577-4070 x101<tel:(203)%20577-4070>
terlaga at biblio.org<mailto:terlaga at biblio.org>

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