Let's Talk About the Annual Meeting

Others have mentioned the costs and the problems that many of our employing institutions cannot afford to help provide travel.   As a hearing-handicapped individual, SAA has been helpful in the past with arranging headsets for me, but these only work from the sessions that are being recorded.  So one of the biggest benefits for me has been videoconferences where I can view and see sessions in realtime and boost sound.   I noticed that one of the comments was about pre-recoded sessions; the more I think about this, the more attractive it is.    Many sessions have three people essentiall reading papers or following along a powerpoint presentation; that could easilly be pre-recorded, or online for downloading and the session could be question and answer, moderator, etc.   The heart of many conferences is education in addition to networking.   Many of our sessions have appeal to other occupations (museums, historical societies, oral hitorians, etc.) and a rich annual meeting website would be extremely useful.

Dean DeBolt, University Archivist/University Librarian, University Archives and West Florida History Center, University of West Florida, Pensacola.

U

Venues always seem to be in the same cities.  Chicago, Washington, New Orleans, etc., at the same old chain Hotels- Hyatt, Hilton, Sheraton, etc. 

Would highly recommend that some thought be given to having conferences in other smaller cities- Portland, Sacremento, Albuqueque, Kansas City, Des Moines, Providence, Buffalo, etc.  Just about all mid-size Cities have some sort of mid-level convention meeting facilities.  The use of smaller hotels- some local, some economc chain hotels (Holiday Inn Express, Hampton, etc.), perhaps "spoked" to a central meeting center would certainly help to reduce costs.  It's amazing the comfortable sleeping facilities one can obtain- with free wifi, and free breakfast, for relatively low cost (sometimes less than a $100 for a double).

If we are using smaller venues and cities, then certainly I suspect that City officials would be happy to participate.  Certainly SAA member dollars would be more widely disbursed throughout these towns rather than the neo-colonial, extractive, "all inclusive" hotels.  Cheaper for SAA members, more dollars for local cities and venues.

As previously noted- it's time to have some sort of Protective language for SAA, here's an example-http://www.hotelworkersrising.org/media/modelprotectivelanguage.pdf

There are a large number of Meeting Planning Services or help pages- I can list a few- http://conferencing.uwex.edu/confplan.cfm, http://www.inmex.org/, http://meetingsnet.com/green/ (Has a search engines for conference facilities in various cities, etc.)

It's a tough job to plan SAA's annual meeting.  But I am looking forward to hearing about what comes up.

Best,

JC

I have found as my budget diminishes for conferences that the recent costs for the conference hotel, as mentioned already, are a problem.  Many of my colleagues have stopped attending, making it harder for me personally to find a roommate. 

I'd prefer meeting in smaller cities in parts of the country where we have never met, where there may be a cluster of big-enough hotels, and people could stay within walking distance of the conference venue.  I understand some of the downsides: it may be more difficult to put together a host committee, it may be more difficult to find direct flights (and flights might therefore be more expensive), it may mean the finances of how SAA pays for the conference rooms have to change, but ultimately I agree that attending in person is critical to getting the most out of the conference in every way - the sessions, the networking, and the spontaneous connections that happen in your brain when there's great input at a conference.

Thanks for your work on this committee!

Susan Woodland

Senior Archivist, American Jewish Historical Society

This is off topic, but I'd like to encourage, wait, no, plead, with you to try to make lowering the cost of attending the meeting a priority. This year's "special" rate for SAA members at the confernce hotel is $199 a night (not including additional taxes). For most members and their institutions, that's pretty damn expensive, and is even more so if you want or need to attend any of the events that take place before the offical start of the conference, such as the Research Forum or Roundtable meetings. I've been told the government per diem rate for hotels in San Diego is $130. 

I know we all have the option to stay at other hotels but many people prefer the convenience and comraderie of staying at the conference hotel. But $200 a night is getting just too crazy expensive for most of us to do that. 

I know there are a lot of issues to juggle, but please don't forget how important this one is. 

My name is James Cartwright. I do not like that my login is displayed as my name. I want my name used.

First item, I find the annual meeting to be worth so much more than the sessions, even when they are very good. I enjoy meeting with everyone and having the opportunity of contacts. My situation is unusual in that we are so isolated in Hawaii, without SAA I would get very few--or none--opportunities of meeting archivists from the Mainland. So I made it a matter of negotiations when I started here in 1988, that I be given professional leave to attend SAA every year. Frequently, the institution has not helped other than to give me my regular pay, though of course in many years it has granted up to $1,000 toward my expenses. That sometimes does not cover anything beyond airfare. I appreciate the fact of an annual meeting. I really miss not meeting with you.

That leads to the second issue. I did not attend in Chicago because there was a call for a boycott of the hotel over a labor issue. I decided I would not attend in those circumstances. I did attend when SAA held the meeting at the Adams Mark in Denver many years ago while a strike was in effect against the hotel. I reconciled my attendance by staying in the other hotel with which SAA made arrangements. That arrangement made the experience disappinting. I missed the socializing of being in the hotel where everyone stayed. 

There was so much negative feedback because SAA continued the meeting at the Adams Mark that I assumed that SAA would avoid this mistake in the future by drawing up escape clause(s) in the event of a labor issue. Obviously, I assumed incorrectly.

Now it is past time to address this issue. The organization is umbrella to several groups which either hold beliefs similar to labor groups or represent labor groups. To name some: Human Rights Roundtable, Issues and Advocacy Roundtable, LAGAR, and Labor Archives Roundtable. Members of SAA within these groups should not be asked to put aside convictions in order to attend the annual meeting. Likewise other hotels could easily have owner/ management decisions which would impinge on the rights of individuals, not just the laborers. What would be the effect upon attendance if the owners of a hotel in which we scheduled an annual meeting gave a large donation to an organization determined to prevent any abortions in the nation? How many women members of SAA would feel comfortable attending the conference and thereby increasing the profits of the hotel? What if the hotel owners contributed a large sum to white supremacy groups? What would the majority of SAA members ask of the Society? In either of these two hypothetical situations, I would vocally object to continuing the meeting and would refuse to attend if the Society did not alter the arrangments.

James F. Cartwright

University Archivist

University of Hawaii

Last year was the first time I had attended an SAA Meeting, so I wasn't sure what to expect.  I found the sessions to be the biggest thing that I could say I was looking forward to, as it was explicitly described in the publications.  I didn't realize there would be so many organic networking opportunities that would come out of physically being at the Meeting.  Perhaps it is a stronger justification to cite sessions and educational opportunities, as they are clearly promoted and explained within the mailers.  If there was a bigger section on the networking that can happen at the Meeting, a better explanation of the networking events that were planned, and maybe an article or two about the importance of networking within the field, maybe it would make a stronger funding argument.

I think it would be difficult to make the networking argument.  For what it's worth, at a local organization I was involved in, we decided to provide more content-driven meetings (rather than purely social occasions), and we found that the types and size of our attendees grew substantially.  A colleague quipped that before we started doing this, "it was hard to ask for time off to go eat cookies with my friends."