NASIG Newsletter

PROFILES

CONFERENCE PLANNING COMMITTEE
Maggie Rioux, Profiles Editor 

If someone were to ask you what the most important thing is that NASIG does, it’s highly probable that you’d answer, “Well, the annual conference, of course.” (Unless you think NASIG is a networking node for folks who love corn flakes, but if that’s the case, you should take a closer look at the S in our name.) For most of us, the annual get-together in May or June is a highlight of our professional year and one of the things we appreciate most about the organization. But … this conference doesn’t happen magically by itself. It takes a lot of people, working really hard for pretty much the whole year preceding it, to make it happen.  

There are actually two committees involved in bringing the conference to fruition. The Program Planning Committee is in charge of arranging inspiring vision session speakers, sorting out the more practical tactics sessions and organizing the various sessions where NASIG members can discuss the whichness of what. The Conference Planning Committee is in charge of everything else. You know, minor stuff like where do we sleep, where and what do we eat, where do we have all those sessions that PPC has put together, what do we do to have fun when we’ve had enough inspiration for the day, how do we get to all those places, and most of all, do we have enough coffee ordered in to keep us going (a notorious NASIG need). 

If you’ve been a member for more than a couple of years, you’ll know that the way a NASIG conference plays out has changed over the years and the CPC structure and function have evolved to accommodate this. Although the number of attendees has remained at between 600 and 700 for most of its history, the venue changed drastically beginning in 2003. Prior to this, NASIG conferences were held on college campuses with most of us “camping out” in dorm rooms which ranged over the years from Spartan to wicked cool. Our last dorm experience was at the College of William and Mary in 2002. For 2003, Portland State University in Oregon was the host institution, but they didn’t have any dormitory rooms we could use; however there were several hotels nearby their downtown Portland location. So we did a hybrid conference as an experiment – staying in hotels and meeting mostly on the campus. It worked well and beginning with the 2004 conference in Milwaukee we went to an all-hotel conference. It’s opened up new locations for us (for example, the University of Louisville could never have hosted a 600-attendee conference on their campus) and has forever changed the way that CPC does its work. Also, even though I enjoyed the dorms, I must admit that I like the hotel-based conference too – I have my very own bathroom, my very own big soft bed, and since we’re all staying in the same place once again (the wimps among us had long ago fled the dorms for hotels), I once again get to see everyone over breakfast.  

One thing that has changed for the CPC is the way they’re chosen. Back in the campus-based days, the CPC had to do most of the detail work of planning and organizing things. This meant that they had to be physically present at the conference site in order to oversee a lot of the planning and deal with about a gazillion different people. So the easiest way to appoint a CPC was first to find a chair (easy to do since (s)he had probably volunteered the campus in the first place) and then have him/her dragoon as many warm bodies as possible (preferably NASIG members or at least serialists) who lived/worked within about 25 miles of the site. Now, the NASIG Site Selection Committee tends to choose a site first and then recruit CPC co-chairs from the area chosen. The CPC also gets to work with a hotel event planner, a city visitors’ bureau contact and other commercial entities rather than, at most, a college events coordinator. Instead of “being volunteered,” most committee members actually volunteer themselves by filling out the regular NASIG volunteer form. They may even live quite a distance away from the conference site. Although most of this year’s CPC members are from within a hundred miles or so of Louisville, the committee also includes Kat McGrath from Vancouver, British Columbia, and Steve Kelley from Winston-Salem, North Carolina. Steve is in charge of A-V arrangements and has been able to work via email and phone with an A-V provider who services the Galt House Hotel. And, thanks to the wonders of conference calling, both Kat and Steve have been able to “attend” committee meetings (of course conference calling does have its drawbacks – it seems there was one meeting where the university suffered a campus-wide power outage, causing all the virtual attendees to miss the meeting). 

A good deal of what CPC does hasn’t changed. They still have to make arrangements for social events, Sunday tours, transportation to off-site (campus or hotel) events, make sure the hotel (or campus) has enough meeting rooms set aside, arrange meals, etc.  Having local folks on the committee really helps with the social events since they know what visitors want to see and also what visitors would want to see if they knew it existed. In Louisville, the first category includes Churchill Downs, while I’m told the second category includes a dinner cruise on the Ohio River. Committee members are also working on a dine-around evening (by sampling the cuisine?) and making sure we’ll all have breakfast and lunch. It’s hard putting together all the innumerable details, especially since a lot of the decisions have to be referred to the Executive Board, which has its own ideas about how things should be done (always has, always will). It’s also a little scary signing big contracts for lots of money and hoping everything goes well. And then there’s the interesting task of picking an “official airline” for the conference. Co-chair Tyler Goldberg says that they thought of picking UPS, about the only air transportation company for which Louisville is a major hub, but then they didn’t think many NASIGers would be interested in shipping themselves to the conference in cartons. 

If all this sounds daunting, it is, but the feedback I’ve gotten from committee members for this profile tells me that while it’s a lot of work, they wouldn’t have missed it for the world.  Deberah England in particular said she has most enjoyed meeting and getting to know the other committee members and also learning a lot about the heart of Louisville. Deberah also mentioned the drive to meetings in Louisville as being beautiful, especially the stretch from Covington on down the Ohio River. 

One thing that might help future committees in their work is more continuity between successive conference-years. Unlike most other NASIG committees, CPC is a one-year appointment instead of a two-year one. The logic behind this is that this committee does as much work in its single year as your average (albeit hard-working) NASIG group does in two. Also, in the past, when committee membership was closely tied to conference site, it would have been difficult for someone to work on, e.g., a conference in San Antonio and then stay on the committee to plan the next year’s conference in Williamsburg, Virginia. The Board has attempted to work around this by encouraging past CPCs to produce a very complete committee handbook and also by having as many of the incoming CPC members as possible attend the current year’s conference and shadow their counterparts around during the event in order to get an idea of what needs to be done. Now that we’re doing things differently, the Board has begun re-appointing some past CPC folks to the committee (like Kat McGrath who was CPC chair for the 1994 conference at the University of British Columbia). Also, the Board tries to find consultant-members and Board liaisons with CPC experience (Joyce Tenney, Consultant to this year’s CPC was co-chair for the 2002 conference and has also served as a consultant and Board Liaison in past years). However, the Board might want to consider asking members of this year’s CPC if any of them would be willing to serve on next year’s committee as well. I’d wait until a good month after the conference to ask them though – let them have a little time for recovery. 

So, your CPC continues hard at work. If I can borrow an analogy from a committee member who said that bringing a conference to fruition is somewhat like giving birth, the committee is currently in hard labor. I fully expect we’ll all experience the birth of a wonderful, healthy, beautiful conference in just a few months. I certainly am looking forward to enjoying the fruits of all the hard work these folks have put in over the past year. Oh – one last thing – Deberah England says that one important thing she’s learned is the correct way to pronounce Louisville and she promises to teach it to all of you too.