10. Time in between sessions – 30 whole minutes to get to the next program, wait in line for the restrooms, speak privately with the speakers, or continue the session dialogue with your colleagues.
9. Exhibit-only times every day – 11:45AM-2:00PM to eat lunch, take a nap, walk through the exhibit halls, meet with a vendor, or edit your blog post.
8. Kind & courteous attendees, vendors and coordinators – recycling, holding doors, giving directions, smiling at friends they haven’t yet met.
7. Talk tables for discussions – whole ROOMS set aside for the ongoing talk tables.
6. In-depth blogging coverage of sessions – at It’s All Good, the Laughing Librarian, Librarian.net, Librarian in Black, YALSA Blog, and undoubtably, many others.
5. Handouts available online after the conference soon! – watch http://www.pla.org.
4. Many sessions recorded and available for a one time fee – information in the goodie bag recieved at registration.
3. Excellent content and presentations – from the preconferences and keynote straight through.
2. Several popular sessions repeated – and filled to capacity both times!
and the number one reason PLA rocked my world…
(insert drumroll here)
1. Free Wi-Fi (almost) everywhere – in the conference center and in most of the Sheraton ballrooms.
Suggestions for improvement:
- An official blogger’s alley, where attendees who need to plug in, can. In the large meeting rooms, there are no outlets!
- Greeters at each program that ask librarians to move towards the middle. We all like to sit on the aisle seats (in case we get bored and want to leave? Because we don’t want to sit right next to each other? We need ushers! I saw a LOT of people told they had to find a seat or leave due to fire regulations.)
- Require presenters to post handouts AHEAD of time, and give out the URL where attendees can find the handouts for the session.
- Evaluations for individual programs.
- A “Young Adult” track.
- Every session blogged from several perspectives, and more comments from attendees on the blog.
There are 2 Comments to "Top Ten Reasons Why PLA is the BEST Conference I’ve Ever Attended"
I actually thought they offered a lot of young adult workshops. There were very few times I didn’t go to something specifically about teens, and many of these were easily related to teens (redesigning a library (aka teen room), fantasy/sci-fi for adults and young adults).
I was a little disappointed that the recordings of program sessions are only available at a pretty high fee, probably because my boyfriend just got back from SXSW where most of the sessions are podcast for free on the conference website. That seems like something we should be moving toward if we want to be as progressive and techie as we profess. That might encourage some of the next-gen librarians who don’t know what the conference is all about and are afraid to spend the money to attend next year when they realize just how valuable the experience is.
When will handouts from the sessions be available? When presenters told me not to bother taking notes because the presentations would be available on the PLA web site, I took them at their word. I know it’s a task to get all the presentation files up in a timely way, but it sure would be helpful to review them while the info is fresh in my mind. Thanks for a wonderful conference.
Ellen Gilliam
Lewiston (ME) Public Library