I'm in Lancaster, PA at the Pennsylvania Library Association Conference observing and gathering good ideas to bring back to Maryland for MLA where I will have the pleasure of being the conference director in 2012.
Marylanders spotted/chatted-up: John Vendittta, former associate director of WMRL, Bob Baldwin, director of Allegany Community College, and Laura Greenlee who used to work in adult reference and is now at the head librarian in Greencastle.
Conference 101
3 Things I Learned
1. Start on time and proceed as though the room is packed, even if there are only 10 people there
2. PA has a new member reception -- what if we have a non-member reception and use it as a way to recruit new members? I think that might be an idea that is best not thought too hard about...but the idea of not inviting non-members to the party seemed wrong, if non-members can't see why the association is fun and worthwhile, why would they join?
3.Since PA has a much longer conference, every meal is not booked at the hotel and accompanied by a speaker -- they do dine-outs, some with speakers/authors and others with interest groups at area restaurants.
Great side benefit-- Had a chance to talk with Paula Gilbert, their conference chair and hawker of PA illustrator raffle tickets, Rob Lesher, their 1st VP, and Glenn Miller their exec director.
Something that I Squared Away - my AHA! Moment:
PA also does a raffle for vendor prizes, but instead of giving everyone one ticket in their registration packet the way we do in MD, they give tickets to the vendors who can give them out to people who stop and talk to them. It's another way of encouraging interaction with the vendors which is rather brilliant. In MD we collect stamps from the vendors, that can be entered for a prize, but I like the raffle tickets, it's pretty straight forward.
Something I need to learn more about:
PA has something called PALS - Pennsylvania Academy for Leadership Studies - track down the chair of that program, Tina Hertel and see what can be learned and turned into a MLA pre-conference
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