[evergreen-outreach] Evergreen at ALA Annual Conference

[Lussier, Kathy]

Good morning Outreach Committee!

For many years, the Evergreen Outreach Committee organized meetups and
programs at the ALA MidWinter meeting and Annual Conference to try to raise
the visibility of the project to the larger library community. I would like
to suggest that we consider sponsoring a program again for this year's
conference in San Diego. The deadline to submit a meeting room request is a
week from today, so if we were to proceed, we would need to figure out a
few details and get Board approval over the next week. Fortunately, since
the Board is meeting Thursday, Outreach could bring the request for funding
in plenty of time to get the request submitted.

Since there are so many new community members on the Outreach Committee,
I'll provide some background. When the Outreach Committee was first formed
on a trial basis back in the spring of 2015, its primary charge was to
increase the visibility of Evergreen in the larger library community.
Establishing a presence at library conferences was a critical component of
the charge. In May, 2017, the charge was expanded to incorporate more
internal-facing activities in the committee's area of responsibility.
References to conference activities were removed from the charge, but the
committee continued to host Evergreen programs at ALA through the 2019
annual conference. I don't need to explain what happened in 2020 to curtail
those activities.

The cost of booking a meeting room these days is $225. I'm looking into the
cost of a/v equipment right now. I know it's pricey, but the programs also
tend to be better when we can project to a screen.

A compiled a list of previous ALA activities on the wiki -
https://wiki.evergreen-ils.org/doku.php?id=outreach:ala

A few questions for the group:

   - Would the committee support this effort?
   - Would you be okay with me organizing it even though I am not an
   official member?
   - Would anyone from Outreach be interested in helping?

You don't need to attend ALA to help with plans for the program, but it
helps to include people who will be available to help with the
presentations. I know Debbie Luchenbill has been involved in planning
during past years. I also have a couple of people in mind who I will
directly invite, and I can also put a call out to the general list.

Given the deadline, I'm hoping people are around to give feedback today so
that I can put a call out to the general list on Monday. We need to have a
solid idea of what we're doing at the time we request the room so that we
can have a proper setup. Program descriptions can be updated later in the
process, if I remember correctly, but they may not make it into the printed
program (if they still have one.)

Let me know if you have any questions!

Kathy
--
Kathy Lussier
she/her
Executive Director
NOBLE: North of Boston Library Exchange
Danvers, MA
978-777-8844 x201
www.noblenet.org
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