Michael’s Great List and Some Comments
April 23rd, 2004I would like to give Michael a standing ovation for his post on the 10 Things I’ve Learned Presenting at Library Conferences, especially number 6: Be mindful of acronyms.
After doing an entire 45 minute presentation on tips for keeping up at CIL this year (in which RSS was mentioned many times throughout), one attendee asked, “What is RSS?” An applause burst out from the entire room. Oops. I got out of my chair and did a quick shpeal on RSS, then reminded them of the next day’s presentation on RSS (which Jenny wound up doing alone - bless her heart) which, I’m told, was very successful.
Also, my take on self-promotion: consider it marketing and you can get passed the whole ego thing. During my “Fall Speaking Tour” last year, I pushed my book because I wanted it to sell a lot of copies, and so did the publisher. Karen is right in that library publishers don’t market as much as they could, but this could be due to limited funding. So,I figured it was up to me. Actually, I asked the person monitoring the talk to mention the book in my introduction and I mentioned it briefly at the end. It was no big deal. If the marketing parallels the talk, why not provide more resources, and if those resources happen to be something you wrote, than so be it. Don’t forget that people get the opportunity to speak at conferences because they are good at what they do and others know about it, most likely due to good marketing on a weblog, Listervs, etc. I’m not saying that it’s all Me Me Me (and I agree with Michael here), but a small bit of ego-pushing at a talk is a good thing.
If you present (or are going to present) at conference, keep in mind Michael’s list (as well as additions by Jessamyn and Karen).