While I am happy to be tip, tap, typing from my computer at home, largely because the screen is much bigger than my laptop and easier on my eyes, I also feel so lucky to have been given the opportunity to travel north. Our Alaska colleagues were gracious and welcoming, obviously proud to share their wonderful collections and beautiful home with us. It's hard to avoid cliches when writing about the trip, but the power of those mountains and the enchantment you feel when watching a young moose chomp on a bush is second to none.
Of course, I wasn't there for sight-seeing, and I spent most of the trip home yesterday scribbling notes for the 2009 NWA/OR Heritage Comm joint conference on my Anchorage Convention & Visitors Bureau notepad.
I'd like to share some percolations before returning to my morning java, though I must fully disclose that these aren't actually all my own-- great conversations make great ideas!
- Various Google map mash-ups with restaurants, activities, and shopping
- "Angel" project to link early archival arrivers with local repositories/historical societies to work on projects (i.e. one-day blitz processing)
- "Crawls": jazz clubs, coffee houses, bookstores, brew pubs
- Poster sessions: grad sutdents from a variety of programs (Western WA, Emporia State, WSU, distance/online) and disciplines (Urban Planning, Public History), panelists without a panel (the great ideas for presentations that don't quite gel into a session), high school students (History Day)
- Ning.com site for connecting people before, during, and after the conference (I've set up a "beta" site and will send out the link when I am aesthetically satisfied)
- Silent auction: this time including framed prints of images from repositories
- Sign up for local archivists to arrange dinner outings to their favorite Portland restaurants for meals
- Message board ("real" and virtual ) to link people, post notes, ask questions
- Navigator program: including a program that would link an archivist to a heritage participant
4 comments:
The message board is an excellent idea for getting groups together for dinner, crawls, etc.
I also liked the hosted dinners and the silent auction a lot.
What I'd like to see in 2009 -
+ some way of getting conference presentations out to folks. Like attaching them to the conference website as early as possible, but certainly after the meeting
+ And we might want to look at a way of greening up the conference; I have a great picture.
+ Getting flickr and blogging going *during* the conference. We got this a little this year, but more and earlier would be better.
Excellent ideas Terry! I have pasted them onto my ever growing Google doc list!
I'd like to investigate taping the sessions as a means for sharing with those who can't attend [or those who have to make that difficult choice when the program is too full of great presenters]!
speaking of flickr--is there a site up and running for people to post pics? i'd like to get some up there before the conference is but a distant memory :)
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