Episode 609: Attending Conferences - Central Minnesota Libraries Exchange

episode 609: conference participation graphic

Welcome back to Season Six of Linking Our Libraries!

We are the Central Minnesota Libraries Exchange. Our members are libraries of all sorts: public, schools, academics, special libraries, archives, and history centers. Join us in working thorough skills library staffers can use to be more successful in their work!

This week we look at a skill that adds fun to your life: attending conferences! There are so many good things out there for you to consider, and attending conferences can be tough. We’ll talk about some strategies for getting the most out of your conference!

This week our Guest Host is Jennifer Hill, who is the St. Michael Elementary School Media Specialist and teaches at St Cloud State University.

The Basics:

Conferences can be a great strategy for learning new skills, meeting new people, and trying out new skills! They can also be exhausting, expensive, and a little terrifying. We want your conference experience to be more of the first group – but it will involve some of the second group too.

If you have not been to a library conference yet, we encourage you to look around for one! Every state will have a variety of different conferences, all aimed at different populations in libraries. Every type of library is represented by conferences, as well as every type of job. If you like big conferences, there are a lot of them happening across the country; and if you would enjoy a smaller group, there are a lot of those as well.

If some of this sounds familiar, we did talk about conferences back in Season Two. And it’s a topic that is always around, so we can keep sharing ideas with you all the time! Review that episode for some suggestions about attending a conference and presenting at one.

We have a few suggestions for making your conference more enjoyable.

Comfortable Shoes: you will be walking a lot; skip the cute shoes and wear a pair designed for hiking; blistered and sore feet do not contribute to conference fun!
Bags: you will probably get one (or a dozen) handed to you; but for big conferences it’s a good idea to bring a bag or a backpack to throw in all the vendor samples, materials, and goodies. Again: think something sturdy and comfortable to carry around for hours
Bring business cards. You will meet dozens of new people; so providing them with a way to know you is so helpful! Maybe jot a quick note on the back of the card you give them: Met at the IFLA conference, send info on Digital Literacy – just to help people remember why they have your card, once they get home.

Make hotel reservations: this sounds obvious, but it happens that people forget! And then the conference rates at the hotels are gone, and the other hotels are expensive. If you are on a budget, you might shop around for non-conference hotels where you can walk from the hotel over to the conference venue. Conferences tend to be at nice hotels, and the prices can be steep; check out hotels.com or some other travel site to see if you can find a bargain.
Register early: hit those early-bird prices! For some conferences, the difference between an early rate and registering the week before the conference can be substantial!
Maybe register just for the exhibits, or just for a day: Think about what you want to get out of the conference. If you have an exhibits pass you cannot go to sessions being presented, but you can go talk to all the vendors and authors. If you want to just focus on chatting with people and meeting people – this can be a substantial cost savings. Likewise, think about registering for only a one-day pass if that makes sense for your budget.

Conferences can be expensive, with registrations at some running into many hundreds of dollars. But your fees are not going to line the pockets of some fat-cat library cartel though; they are used to provide a good conference experience for you and everyone else! Attending an entire conference may be the best way to get the experience you want, and to be able to bring back everything you need for your library. So, be thoughtful about costs – but when possible try to support the conference and the profession with your dollars as well as with your attendance! CMLE members: we have scholarship money available for you, to help defray the cost of attending a conference!

Resources for you to consult:

Okay, we’ve shared a few background ideas and strategies here. Let’s talk with Jennifer to get some ideas for making these theories a reality!

Books Read

And now we have one of our favorite parts of each episode: sharing books! Each of us will share a book we are reading. Links to each book will be on our show notes page, with a link to Amazon.com. If you buy a nice book – or anything else – Amazon will give us a small percent of their profits. Thanks in advance!!