by We can now announce it! The first-ever Evergreen Conference will be May 20-22, 2009 at the Classic Center in Athens, Georgia, following the Georgia PINES annual meeting. The Classic Center is commodiou
s and lovely, and Athens, just an hour from Atlanta, is a fun place with a nice downtown just in walking distance from the Center.
The Evergreen Conference is being planned by Georgia Public Library Service, SOLINET, and Equinox Software.
What to expect
The details are still being worked out, but expect a lively mix of speakers, lightning talks, Birds of a Feather (topic discussions organized on-site), and of course, a hackfest! To encourage mingling and sharing, plenty of time will be factored in for breaks and meals.
Hackfest joy!
Hackfest-types: it’s reasonable to assume that May 20 will be a full-day hackfest opportunity. (For those unfamiliar with this term, a “hackfest” is a time for developers to get together and work like mad on projects, like the Evergreen SOPAC and LibX projects worked on at Access 2008.) The hackfest may overlap with PINES meeting activities on the 20th, but we’re anticipating that’s not an issue.
Lightning Strikes — Twice, Thrice, Many Times!
The Evergreen Conference will also likely feature the increasingly-popular lightning talks (sometimes called Thunder Talks or Five-Minute Madness). This weekend at LITA Forum someone commented that she learned more from lightning talks than from longer sessions. Perhaps when people only have 5 minutes to present, they get focused.
The conference might also solicit lightning-talk topics online in advance, or offer a mix of pre-submitted topics and on-site reports. (Access 2008 did a particularly nice job of incorporating Hackfest reports into its schedule.)
What else? Questions? Suggestions? Ideas? Pecha Kucha? Time set aside for an Evergreen Maypole Dance?
Congratulations on the upcoming conference! I’m not doing much with Evergreen right now, but I’m glad to see this is happening. BTW: I did a Pecha Kucha this past summer and it was a load of fun. I think doing it at the Evergreen conference would be great idea!
Thanks, Ed! I attended a Pecha Kucha at Computers in Libraries this spring and it was a stitch — there were 7 in a row, and at the end the audience voted on the best one.
(And yes, I’ve fixed my spelling for “lightning,” duh… 😉 )
And the best thing about the conference date is that May 18th is Victoria Day, so those of us from the northern bits of the Commonwealth have a short week to start with.
Assuming the 19th is a travel day, the Canadians in the audience don’t have to go to the office at all!
Time permitting, I would suggest that this may be a good opportunity to offer up an Evergreen system administration course of some kind, especially for those sys admins new to Evergreen. Morning of hackfest or some alternate time?
George, there has been more and more discussion about short courses on Evergreen administration. A very solid suggestion!
was going to add this to the facebook but apparently you have to be an admin. may be worthwhile for someone to add it to there
Being at an academic institution waiting for acquisitions and serials in Evergreen before I’m able to look seriously at it, what level of academic participation do you expect at this conference? I assume Conifer folks will be there, but I’d like to have an idea of how many academics plan to attend. Possible to post a reg list as it grows?
Scott, that’s a great idea (I don’t know why I missed this comment before — that’s like, eesh, two weeks ago).