Fail
I keep wanting to write spiffy post-Denver posts and rambling-yet-fascinating commentaries about the state of the profession and everything else. The reality is that I just don’t have time. Fail.
Well, I do have a little time, so let me say a few things. Midwinter meeting is boring. If no one has come out and told you that yet, let me be the first. It’s expensive and boring and unless you’re on some committee I really wouldn’t bother. At least not for the time being. Because I am on a committee I can tell you that the people at ALA are well aware of our feelings about Midwinter. I think if more of us express ourselves and push for innovation things might change. Either Midwinter will become even less important, relevant, and mandatory or it will open up a space for (more) meaningful dialogue amongst colleagues who seldom get together en masse (for a smaller price, one hopes).
Speaking of meaningful dialogue, I was at several discussion groups at Midwinter. One of them shines in my memory as a glowing example of everything right about discussion groups (more like that and Midwinter might start earning some redemption)—so kudos to Merinda Hensley, Wendy Holliday, and any other ACRL Instruction Section Folks involved in the Pedagogy & Social Technologies (essentially Teaching 2.0) discussion.
2 of the discussions I attended weren’t so special for me. CJCLS Hot Topics is always a good discussion for me, but this time I got an irritating phone call and had to bail to deal with some stuff. Boo. The other discussion I dropped in on after taking care of my phone call really bummed me out. Without getting into funky detail, let’s say that I think the facilitators had a very rigid understanding of the proposed discussion topic and in an attempt to corral people into discussing exactly what they wanted (some survey results) they belittled and restrained the participants.
I could go into greater detail because one of the people made me very cranky, but that really isn’t the point. My point is that the best conversations are organic. Throw a topic out there and see where your participants go with it. That’s how everyone gets to learn something. I hope I remember this when I take over as convener for the ACRL New Members discussion group—this year we discussed the pros and cons of tenure and the various tenure granting institutions. I always love ACRL NMDG, but maybe that’s because I’m a new academic librarian. Relevance is tasty.
Anyway. Today I taught for four hours, had ninety minutes worth of meetings, failed to eat any food whatsoever, drank three cups of tea and a diet Dr. Pepper, and um…some other stuff I can’t recall.
Lather, rinse, repeat. That’s pretty much how it goes most days. I’ll try to come up with a more interesting way to frame that next time.
I frequently end up having a better time at Midwinter than at Annual, but it is always accompanied by a strong sense of not really needing to be there. If I wasn’t on a committee that plans events that actually happen AT midwinter, it would be worse. As it is, I’ve become one of those people that only goes to committee meetings, which always leaves me feeling odd and out of sorts. I hear you about the discussion groups thing – it’s the only kind of content-focused programming allowed at MW so sometimes it works, and sometimes groups try to shoehorn another kind of program into a discussion – or at least I think that’s what’s going on. Doomed to failure, those sessions are.