Conference Planning: What Does it Take?

by Cathy Gray

 

 

In July 2007, I was asked to be the conference chair for the 2008 Idaho Library Association Annual Conference, which would be held in Idaho Falls at the Shilo Inn. I was excited and honored, since I love library conferences. The first thing I did was to talk to some library employees in the area and reflect about who would be willing to serve on the conference committee. I needed library professionals and paraprofessionals, administrators, cataloguers, instructors, and public service staff that were from public, school, academic and special libraries to make sure the overall program addressed the needs of library workers of all levels in most libraries in Idaho. All that in about eight people wow! And they needed to have a variety of skills to coordinate exhibiting vendors, facilitate local arrangements with the catering company and conference facility, design logos, conference materials, and a website, and locate and set up audio-visual equipment for the conference. I knew that the ILA treasurer would take care of all income, including registration and fees, after the registration form was developed. He would also take care of all expenses, as he received the invoices and receipts for reimbursements. In addition to leading the committee, I took on the responsibility of contacting speakers and developing their contracts with them, and manipulating the conference schedule so each time slot had something of interest to each type of library or job responsibilities.

 

As I contacted each potential member of the committee, I asked them to reflect on a theme, possible keynote speakers, and workshop ideas, and to bring their ideas to the first meeting, along with their planning calendars. The first meeting was planned for November 2007 (although it was postponed to early December), just after the ILA Executive Board meeting. Since the conference would be held in Idaho Falls, most of the committee members were from libraries within 30 miles. The conference site contract had been negotiated three years previously by the ILA Conference Site Selection Committee, so I would just provide updates about meeting room and catering needs.

 

In November, I was to present the preliminary ideas and a budget to the ILA Executive Board, but the committee hadn't met yet so the budget was based on the average expenses from the previous five years of ILA conferences. In addition, the division chairs representing Public Libraries, Educational Media, Academic and Special Libraries, and Trustees shared workshop ideas from their members, although few of these requests came with suggested presenter names. At this meeting, I asked if the conference attendees could earn college credit through the conference. I had talked to Lori Medellin of ISU and found out the requirements: for one credit, I would have to submit a proposal that included activities for at least 16 hours of work, including time to attend workshops and develop projects that reflected what they learned. The ILA Executive Board approved this idea, with me as the "instructor" for the course. I also had to submit a conference schedule and an "assignment" for the ISU Continuing Education office to approve, before the conference would be listed on the class schedule. I returned to the committee with a "wish list" of great ideas.

 

I visited the Shilo Inn and O'Callahan's catering director in late November and the conference committee met in early December. At that first meeting, I reviewed the workshop suggestions from the divisions and the committee members offered more. As we thought about the workshops, we shared theme ideas, and the theme was chosen: "Ahhthe Magic of Libraries!" We chose the theme because librarians are perceived by some patrons to have magical powers that enable us to know where everything is and adapt easily to new technology. Plus libraries are magical places that take imaginative patrons wherever they want to go. Everyone felt this would be a fun theme around which to develop workshop titles and graphics; we could have a couple fantasy authors for lunch speakers, and we would try to find a magician to perform or do a workshop.

 

In January, I drove to Boise to meet with the ILA Executive Board again. I had contacted several potential workshop presenters and had room for more, but still needed a keynote speaker. Someone suggested Joan Frye Williams, a professional library consultant with futuristic ideas. Also, the Museum of Idaho was suggested for the Welcome Reception on Wednesday evening, as people arrived for the conference. The Academic and Special Libraries division asked for workshops from current students or recent graduates of MLS programs on trends and issues that have developed within the last five years. So, I posted an e-mail call for proposals on their listserv and also sent it to the University of Washington's I-School, and asked two students in cohorts of online MLS programs to forward it to students in their programs. We hoped to have two workshops develop from this "call for proposals."

 

Two weeks after the January ILA Executive Board meeting, I met with the conference committee and presented the suggestions from the ILA Executive Board. None of the committee members were familiar with Joan Frye Williams, but I presented a printout of her website and they were satisfied. I shared the workshop ideas and presenters the board expressed interest in, and asked for speaker ideas for the remaining workshops. Now I could fill in the rest of the workshop schedule as I contacted speakers. My goal was to have a draft schedule of workshops and speakers by the end of February. The committee eagerly welcomed the idea of the Wednesday evening reception at the Museum of Idaho, which had just opened an exhibit on the Pharaohs of Egypt. I met with Glenda, a museum staff member and we worked out an agreement that detailed where food would be prepared and served, and other details of the reception. The local arrangements committee members would take care of selecting food and its preparation. We talked to the caterers for most events at the museum and decided their prices were too high, especially if they served wine, so we would provide the food and wine.

 

Throughout February and March I contacted people by phone, hoping they would be willing to present workshops on topics they had been suggested for. After the schedule was full, I sent each speaker a contract and workshop information form to complete, so we would have their equipment needs, a description of their presentation and biographical information for the conference booklet. The magic idea was working well with creative workshop titles, the graphic artists developed a logo of a genie-librarian and decoration ideas with magic lamps were leaping out of the minds of the librarian committee members. The exhibits coordinator sent letters to prospective exhibitors and vendors in early February, with rates for display tables and a list of conference events that could be sponsored by these supportive agencies.

 

Our goal was to have conference website ready by mid-March with registration information and a tentative conference schedule that would be updated as plans developed or changed. The registration form needed to include meal options, so the caterer's menus were reviewed and items chosen for Thursday breakfast, lunch and dinner, Friday breakfast and lunch, and snacks both days. Additional meals were chosen for the Executive Board on Wednesday dinner and Saturday breakfast. We adapted the registration form from last year's conference and it was posted on the ILA Conference website with the tentative schedule by the end of March.

 

I met with the ILA Executive Board again in April and presented the draft conference schedule, which included two pre-conferences: map cataloguing by Cathy Gerhart and Matt Parsons of the University of Washington, and health resources and health fair by representatives from the Northwest Regional Medical Libraries, as coordinated by the Idaho Commission for Libraries (ICFL). The board seemed pleased with how the conference was developing. Due to the increasing cost of postage, the ILA Executive Board encouraged the committee to just send a postcard that provided the website URL that would include the schedule and registration information. I used the genie-librarian logo and drafted a postcard teaser about the conference to be sent to ILA members and libraries in Idaho. As I was leaving to take the postcard to the printers, I realized I had never confirmed my estimate of how many to print and send. I had guessed that we would send 500 postcards, but the membership list for last year and the current year had 700 names! Then I would need to get the list of Idaho libraries from the ICFL website, and that listed 1300 libraries! Yikes!

 

I checked the postal rates on the USPS webpage (they are constantly going up, it seems), and the current cost was 26 cents each. I calmed myself down with a hint of optimism that the conference would be a real success to make this extra expense worthwhile. Then I reviewed the mailing list of Idaho libraries, deleted some that I felt were highly unlikely to send someone to the conference, and had 1,300 postcards printed. I asked a computer-savvy committee member to format labels from the composite lists of Idaho libraries and ILA members while the postcards were being printed, and that was not as easy as we had hoped. Finally we were able to print mailing labels and get the postcards in the mail in early May (although we planned to have them sent by April 15). About 30 were returned, and most of those were small private schools that were probably out of school for the summer.

 

In May I began checking to see which speakers had returned forms and noticed a few that had not, so I began making phone calls. It took me two weeks to connect with our keynote speaker, Joan Frye Williams, only to discover that she didn't think we could afford her fee of $2,000 plus travel expenses, so she had scheduled something else that weekend. I panicked--by this time it was early June, and we had been promised $500 to sponsor a speaker who wasn't coming! I begged for help from the committee, the ICFL and many others for a suggestion. Joan Frye Williams said she would help us find someone else, and she suggested George Needham of OCLC, a speaker she had co-presented with several times. That same day someone from the ICFL also suggested George Needham, so I contacted him immediately. He was available and excited to come, and asked only to be reimbursed his travel and lodging expenses. There was a chance he would even be able to arrange a trip to speak in Oregon, so his expenses would be shared between the two organizations. And he sounded like a great speaker who wanted to emphasize that the magic of libraries is in the librarians. it's the staff that make libraries magical. Oh, this would be inspiring!

 

In the meantime, my contact at O'Callahan's catering office at the Shilo Inn told us that only 20 computers could be online in the hotel at a time, but the system would be upgraded in September and would be able to accommodate more. She also said they only have one unreliable computer they could rent out, so suggested we find them elsewhere. Veicom had provided computers for the conference in Nampa the previous year, so I contacted them to provide four computers for an internet caf. On the same day, in discussing the layout of the vendor area with our vendor coordinator, our Shilo Inn contact said that to accommodate the 30 exhibit tables we had planned, four to six tables would have to be set up in the hallway, which would block the flow of traffic through the area. We already had 28 vendor tables registered, so we would decided not to accept any new vendor registrations.

 

I met with one of the equipment coordinators in July and I helped her make the room assignments for the workshops. She also asked for help with the equipment set up at the conference, so I found another equipment technician. We tried to keep projectors in the same rooms all day, rather than moving them around. Then we contacted area libraries to see if they had projectors to loan for the conference, and in two phone calls, we had everything we needed. That was nice!

 

In July the conference bags had arrived, so the week before ISU's semester began, the local arrangements coordinators brought the tourism brochures they had gathered and we stuffed the bags. Everyone updated the committee about the progress they had made and we filled out schedules of helping at the registration desk, setting up and helping at the Welcome Reception at the Museum of Idaho. I compiled all the speaker and workshop information in the conference booklets, asked the ILA president and mayor of Idaho Falls for letters to the attendees and responded to e-mails and phone calls about the conference. At the September committee meeting, I asked for volunteers to proofread the conference booklet, and it was at the printers within a few days. The printers needed about ten days to do a job that big, and we made that deadline. I was confident the committee had done an excellent job pulling it all together.

 

Just after the conference committee meeting in September, I received a message from the Museum of Idaho, and they needed to meet to finalize some details. Apparently Glenda, the person I met with in February, had left the museum staff and I reviewed the contract with her replacement, Karin. However, this time there was a clause about "no alcohol", which could be a problem because we were planning on serving wine at the request of several members of the ILA Executive Board. Karin consulted her boss and he said that since Glenda had approved serving wine, we could serve it on the condition that we could obtain some type of temporary permit, and it was my job to find it. When I returned to work, I asked my co-worker to help find information about a temporary permit to serve wine. She was able to find it, but the website said the application usually takes two weeks to process it was two weeks until the reception! I called the office number listed on the website and the said if it was in the mail that day, they should be able to process the license in time. I was very relieved when it arrived in the mail on the Monday before the conference.

 

The preconferences began Wednesday, and while they were going, one of the equipment coordinators worked most of the afternoon trying to set up the computers Veicom had sent for the internet caf. However, part of the "upgrades" the Shilo Inn did in September was to change from hard-wired Internet service to wireless, and the Veicom computers were for hard-wired access. O'Callahan's computer technician then made the offer to provide laptop computers for the Internet Caf and we ended up using those. This was frustrating because we already had to pay almost $1000 for the Veicom computers, now we had to pay $350 for additional computers they were not willing to make available a few months ago. Ugh!

 

Since early May when we sent out the postcards, I had posted a teaser about the conference on the LIBIDAHO listserv monthly, then twice in September, hoping to pique the interest of potential attendees. However, when I asked for updates on the number of registrations received, I was more than disappointed when there were only 40 in early September. However, the final count was 174 at the conference, with 31 vendors in the exhibits area. At the conference there was a vendor that had missed sending in their registration, but decided to send representatives anyway, hoping to still work the conference. Since all the tables were taken, we could not offer them a space, but they were agreeable to paying the vendor fee and just roaming. The next morning, the vendor coordinator told them that a vendor cancelled at the last minute and they took that table. Phew, that turned out swell!

 

The reception at the Museum of Idaho was wonderful! The committee members had purchased the food, arranged it beautifully on trays, made punch, decorated the serving table, and kept things moving, and Phil Homan served wine. At 6:30 and 7:30, art historian/library director Martin Raish led tours around the exhibits, providing charming anecdotes about the artifacts from Egyptian pyramids. After the conference, I received a note from the museum staff that this was the best group they had worked with, especially since there were no problems with people taking food into the exhibits, and there were no cleaning issues afterwards. It was great to have such a successful beginning for the conference!

 

The next morning things were moving quickly when I arrived. I checked on the vendors and breakfast buffet, found a few speakers and dealt with a few small glitches. I had the privilege of introducing Mayor Jared Furhiman and the keynote speaker, George Needham, and enjoyed them both, although I was called away during the keynote. I also introduced the lunch speakers, Gary Hogg on Thursday and Heather Tomlinson on Friday.

 

After the keynote, I went to each workshop room and made sure the speaker was there, had the equipment they requested and it was working, there were enough chairs and evaluations for those attending that session. Then, I returned to the registration table and responded to any problems that developed and talked with vendors. About 15 minutes before the workshops ended, I again quietly stepped into each workshop and delivered a small gift for the speakers and counted attendance. I kept very busy throughout both days, and was able to hear just a few minutes from each speaker, although there were several I wanted to listen to longer. It was exciting to hear the speakers I contacted several months before, and they were all so interesting.

 

At the end of the conference on Friday, I met with the next year's conference committee. We did a quick review of what went well and what did not, then talked about possibilities for the conference at the Burley Inn, which is a smaller facility. I went home that night feeling like the conference went well, and I started going through the evaluations. Everyone loved the reception at the Museum of Idaho, George Needham was an inspiring keynote speaker, and all the workshops were great, there were no duds where nobody attended or the speaker received low scores. Yippee! However, there were several negative comments some attendees felt that the magician at the banquet wasn't polished and professional, the vendor area was too crowded, and many people had problems with the internet caf. I had to take a deep breath to deal with the intensity of the negative comments, as some were quite harsh. At the Executive Board meeting the next morning, the members declared the conference a success, although they did agree generally with the evaluations about the vendor area.

 

When I returned to work Monday morning, I began going through the evaluations for each workshop and they were all positive. It took me a week to compile the results, then I sent the speakers the average ratings for each of the questions. They were grateful for the feedback. I realized that overall the conference was a success, although there were some rough issues to deal with. I felt that the O'Callahan's staff added to the problems, especially with the computers for the internet caf and internet access for the exhibitors, but we coped well. I congratulate the conference committee for their hard work and positive attitudes. Despite all the difficulties, I still love conference planning and look forward to more fun!

 

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Cathy Gray began conference planning with two very successful spring ILA regional conferences in Idaho Falls in 2003 and 2004. Later in 2004, Cathy served on the equipment committee for the 2004 ILA Annual Conference in Boise. By then Cathy was in full swing of conference planning, as co-chair of the 2005 ILA Annual Conference in Pocatello, Conference Chair for the 2006 ILA Annual Conference in Moscow, and the 2008 ILA Conference in Idaho Falls.  She has also served on the planning and advisory committee for the Off-Campus Library Services Conference held in March 2008 in Salt Lake City, UT.  Her professional title is University Library Center Librarian for the ISU-Idaho Falls campus, where distance students and faculty are provided library services and instruction.