Tawk Amongst Yourselves: the ConverStation

Speakers presenting at the front of the room.  Audience members in chairs facing the presenters.  Does this say "Annual Meeting" to you?  As the members of the Task Force investigate new and non-traditional approaches to conducting a conference, we are also taking advantage of opportunities to experience these different ways of meeting.  This post reports back on my (Kathy Marquis, AMTF co-chair) experiences with informal sessions called “ConverStations” at my *second* favorite national conference, the Public Library Association, held in mid-March in Philadelphia.  It’s a mammoth group:  around 8400 attendees.  Their size is probably one of the reasons they thought of trying two new methods (our next post will be on PLA’s Unconference):  both capitalize on the interactions between attendees, rather than on formal presentations by a panel of experts.

The meeting program noted that “ConverStations, formerly known as Talk Tables, are engaging forums on timely issues and concerns for public library professionals. Following brief presentations, attendees are encouraged to join in engaging and relevant discussions.”  I’d been to talk tables before and they were not (in my opinion) well organized.  They ended up being pretty much undirected “tawk amongst yourselves” periods.  The ConverStations, nearly half of the sessions offered, boasted named facilitators and session-like descriptions.  They actually ended up going in the other direction from the Talk Tables.  The facilitators gave presentations that couldn’t be described as brief, though they still allowed for a longer audience participation period.  And we were seated at round tables, which led to more interaction amongst audience members.  At a conference where the largest sessions can have 500-1000 attendees, this definitely leant intimacy to the discussion.  And, it naturally limited the attendance size, as many fewer of us could be seated in these rooms, which meant that attendees could be turned away.

As a matter of fact, after the meeting, I attended an online discussion forum on PLA’s Facebook about the conference.  There weren’t a lot of comments, unfortunately, but one, seconded by more than one attendee, was that they were shut out of a session they especially wanted to attend because it was a ConverStation.  They noted that it probably should have been a regular/larger session because of its popularity (or repeated another day – something PLA also does with high interest topics.)  I was also closed out of a ConverStation, as it had reached its maximum attendance.  So I went to another session (disruptive patrons or helping community entrepreneurs?  A hard choice!) and serendipitously ended up being energized to start a new programming stream at my public library…  This is a fairly common occurrence at PLA (and ALA) I find.  Attendees plan for early arrival for especially crucial sessions.

So, what did I like about the ConverStations?  When they worked well, and the ones I attended did, they were a nice combination of overviews of practice (by the facilitators) and exchange of information (by the attendees and the facilitators.)   They were more focused on a particular topic than the kind of networking possible in hallway conversations, or even roundtable or section meetings.  But, they gave more than the perfunctory five to ten minutes to the audience.  Someone would raise a question and the responses would include lots of citations, URLs, “our handouts are on our website,” names and emails, and general networking content.  For example, I went to one on Technology Petting Zoos and got lots of good advice on funding options, equipment recommendations, handouts, p.r., collaborations with local businesses, things to avoid, useful blogs, and “feel free to call us and ask us how we did it.”

Should SAA consider this type of session?  What do you think?  Are we small enough that traditional session discussion periods accomplish the same thing?  Or, would a table arrangement and a mandate to make the discussions the focus help for some topics?  Let’s tawk!