May/June 2005
Cold-Blooded Conference Strategies, with Thanks to Many
Debbie Abilock, Editor
Hundreds of badges cascade haphazardly from a louvered door in my office. They remind me of many conferences—for school librarians; for college librarians; for archivists; for teachers of social studies, language arts, media studies, science, and technology; and for school administrators. During these conferences, I’ve perfected some bizarre tactics to extract the most learning from them—not always a pretty process, I might add. Sometimes I feel like a cold-blooded Skekses from Jim Henson’s Dark Crystal movie who strapped that cute little Muppet Kira to a chair and drained her life essence. Needless to say, you’re free to reject any of my ruthless conference strategies.
1. “Rip, mix, burn, and share.” (With thanks to Larry Lessig, professor of law at Stanford and the brainchild of the Creative Commons Project, which is running full-tilt against the excessive copyright restrictions on creative work.)
I’m a voracious reader. I collect catalogs and software from exhibits, copies of journals and magazines, handouts from workshops, brochures from site visits and the hospitality booth, even press releases from the slots next to the registration area and the press center. However, I never bring them home. In fact, I think of “I’ll look at these when I have time at home” as a death threat. In my hotel over a cup of coffee, I rip out items I want to save, label them with an instruction (for example, “see this site,” “show to . . .” or “read this book”) and sort them by action (such as e-mail, snail mail, look on the Web, order). Occasionally I allow myself to hold an item for several days during the conference if I have a hunch that I might want it but can’t quite identify why, but I never bring anything home unsorted and unlabeled.
2. “Keep your sap running.” (A quote from one of my favorite speaker’s resources, the Quotation Index to Children’s Literature by Melanie Axel-Lute [Englewood, Colo.: Libraries Unlimited, 2001], with thanks to Crow in Miss Hickory).
For all meetings, workshops, talks, events, and tours I use a double-wire spiral notebook (5" x 7" or 9" x 7") with a header for date and title on each page. Either I fold the page in half and take notes on the right, or use a project notebook preprinted with such labels as “Action Notes” or “Project Planning Notes.” I take my notes in the planning column. I’ve experimented with notetaking on my laptop, but it’s heavier than a notebook, and the process of launching programs, typing, filing, reopening, and so on is more cumbersome than a pad and pen. I expect this will change as lightweight, wireless devices improve and my handwriting deteriorates further. I go through my notes, adding comments on the left, soon afterward. Sometimes I add questions or responses to what I’ve heard. Sometimes I add action steps. When I promise to contact someone, send something, or complete a task, I circle and star that item. The back pages of my notebook are saved for a creativity sandbox, such as ongoing lists of ideas I want to think about, brainstorming, clustering, questions. When I get home I check off items promptly and rip pages out after I’ve completed items.
3. “Reward ignorance.” (This Henry Miller quote is taken from The New Penguin Dictionary of Modern Quotations by Robert Andrews (New York: Penguin, 2001), a compendium of interesting quotes that often spurs me into buying books.)
In The Wisdom of the Heart, Miller writes “In expanding the field of knowledge, we but increase the horizon of ignorance.” In response to this we can surround ourselves with the familiar. Any conference can become a hall of mirrors—you speak to your friends and attend workshops that reinforce what you believe. While it is affirming and energizing to be comfortable, it carries the danger of reinforcing your prejudices and insulating you from new ideas. One way I try to counteract the networking echo chamber is to engage in a conversation with a complete stranger—either in a booth, or at a session or meeting. This is hard for me—I feel shy. But each time I’ve taken the risk, it has been gratifying. Another strategy is to prioritize ruthlessly. At the exhibits, I go first to organizations I don’t know or would like to learn more about or investigate software and books I’ve never seen. In deciding which sesson to attend, I look for speakers I haven’t heard before.
4. No lines (with thanks to New York where I grew up).
I don’t wait in lines, nor do I have much patience for standing room . . . which leads to #5.
5. “Make like a tree and leave.” (With thanks to Paula Danziger; I’ve always liked Danziger’s witty puns, this one in the title of a book by the same name from Putnam [1998].)
I never remain in a presentation that isn’t useful—whether it’s because I made a poor choice (the down side of risk-taking), because the room is jammed and I can’t see or hear, or because the speaker is ineffective or unprepared. I have been told it’s rude to leave a session—it’s also discourteous to be poorly prepared and rambling, an experience I’ve had with a handful of speakers. On rare occasions I need to leave a meeting or session before it ends. If the group is small, I apologize privately to the speaker before the session begins. I sit at the end of a row or in the back, as a courtesy to normal people. (I’ve got long legs, I’m tall, and I wiggle.) Then I can exit quickly without disturbing others.
6. “The Boy Scout’s Marching Song.” (With thanks to Tom Lehrer; when I was growing up, Tom Lehrer was considered risqué, but on listening to his lyrics now on a record(!), he sounds politically incorrect, even pathetic.)
I’ve always associated the phrase “Be prepared!” with Tom Lehrer’s lyrics, which suggest that you should anticipate and take advantage of opportunities. I suppose I should have put this point first, since preparation begins before the conference. It’s next to last because it’s the take-away message. I’ve found that the more I prepare for the conference, the more interesting it becomes when I’m there. For example, I’m rereading Whale Talk before One Book One Conference and plan to check back to see who will be at the Chat and Chew. I following the thread of the discussion, so I will read the novels before the conference. After scoping out the conference offerings, I also skim or read books written by speakers I plan on hearing—inviting myself to frame a question for the author about something that puzzles me. Likewise, as a speaker, I prepare for my presentation by looking for a provocative idea or fresh way of approaching a common problem. I push myself to send home some new idea every time I speak to an audience. And I don’t bore myself, either.
7. Say “thank you.” (With thanks to Alice Yucht, who has written a thorough and perhaps less offensive set of conference-going strategies on pages 19–21.)
In this issue Yucht suggests that you send thank-you notes to vendors who treat you nicely, letters of appreciation to speakers, and short follow-ups to new contacts after the conference. I’ve never done this systematically, but her article convinced me that I should. To begin my commitment, here are some public thank yous to people I didn’t know who have enriched my conference learning. The range suggests the “life essence” that every conference can offer you. So, in the spirit of a Skekses, drain it!
Thank you...
To Jan Segerstrom, a library media specialist “stranger” I approached, who shared her plagiarism training process and staff professional development materials. In several long e-mails after she returned to Jackson Hole (Wyo.) High School, she described her district’s training process and provided her PowerPoint inservice presentation and bookmark handout of “Top 10 Privileges in Copyright and the Top 10 Copyright Infringements.”
To Steven Hall, senior vice president of ProQuest in the UK, who devoted well over an hour in ProQuest’s busy booth patiently explaining each of the databases, identifying which were full-text, which were indices or abstracts, and what they contained. When my follow-up e-mail questions were about United States newspaper bundles, he referred me to Gloria Lam, the product manager for ProQuest’s current newspapers, who clarified the contents of each news database and subset.
To Charlie Harmon, a terrific writer and editor I met at the Neal-Schuman booth, who pointed me to The Plagiarism Plague: A Resource Guide and CD-ROM Tutorial for Educators, ed. Vibiana Bowman (2004), an intelligent set of essays with wide-ranging strategies for proactively teaching intellectual honesty. I refer to this meaty book often when I speak about teaching information ethics.
To Mark Cooper of the Consumer Federation of America and Lucy Dalglish of the Reporters Committee for Freedom of the Press, who roused me from lethargy about the dangers of media consolidation during an Intellectual Freedom Committee open hearing. It is much clearer to me how market forces and public policies shrink the diversity of information, drive news programs toward increased commercialism and edutainment, and increase monopolistic consolidation of media companies—all threats to intellectual freedom.
To Mary Marshall at the Web Feat booth and Eddie Neuwirth via e-mail updates, who have been educating me for the past few years about federated searching. And to Todd Miller, president of WebFeat, who outlined the critical questions to ask about any federated searching product: database compatibility, ease of updates, and what he called the potential library staff “hassle factor.” He explained that “Each time a [federated search] content provider makes a substantive change to its search interface or engine, the corresponding translator must be upgraded. This happens, on average, two to three times per year per data database. The best federated search providers monitor translators on a twenty-four/seven basis and swap translators transparently without any involvement from library staff.” I had assumed that federated search products were shrink-wrap software that you install and run. In fact, it’s a service, like an antivirus program, which means that updating is critical.
To John Royce, library director at Robert College in Istanbul, whose stimulating presentation about critical thinking at an international conference has been a source of inspiration. He has since shared a paper he wrote for another conference, offered strategies for teaching authority and credibility and provided a stream of information he believed I might find interesting.
And, finally, “thank you” to everyone on the conference committee and the AASL staff who are working hard to make this an enriching conference. Best wishes!
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