Changes for the 2011 Annual Meeting Blog

The theme for the 2011 Annual Meeting is Rethink and Molly Knapp, 2010 Annual Meeting blog administrator and 2011 member of the National Program Committee, writes in the MLA News about rethinking the Annual Meeting Blog (full text available to MLA members). 

The Annual Meeting blog has evolved significantly over the years.  In the beginning it was just a few people who submitted some posts that were aggregated on the blog site.  Now people apply to be bloggers and write on various aspects of the meeting, those who are accepted get AHIP points and possibly free wifi courtesy of MLA.  I managed the 2009 Annual Meeting Blog and I told Molly when she was handed the reigns to the 2010 blog, that we might be growing a little big to be randomly writing on topics and that we may need to think about how we organize things.

Well, based off of the 2009 Annual Meeting blog and 2010 Annual Meeting blog, Molly decided to rethink the way the 2011 meeting blog will be handled.  During the last two annual meetings we sometimes had multiple people blog about the same thing, and while it was nice to get two different perspectives on an event, we really didn’t need four posts summarizing the Presidential Address.  I wasn’t just the only one who felt this way, based on the 2009 Annual Meeting blog survey I conducted, members wanted more variety and coverage of different events.  In years past when there was only 4-5 bloggers it was difficult/impossible to cover that much stuff.  But in 2009 we had approximately 20 bloggers and in 2010 there were 17 bloggers. 

With that many bloggers, there are certainly opportunity to change things so that the blog can be more relevant to members.  One of the ways is to have a little more structure as to who will be blogging and what they will be blogging about. 

In the MLA News, Molly writes there will be section and special interest group (SIG) themed bloggers who will cover sponsored programs, interesting papers, highlights of section business meetings, and other section/SIG related programming.  There will be perspectives bloggers, people who write about the meeting from their professional perspective whether as a new MLA member (0-5 yrs membership) or distinguished MLA member (10+ yrs membership). 

Other types of bloggers will include:

  • Plenary session blogger (post about the plenary sessions)
  • Poster/Rethink blogger (post items of interest within the poster sessions)
  • Exhibits blogger (items of interest from exhibitors and the exhibit hall)
  • Early Riser blogger (events like the Sunrise Seminar and Major’s Walk)
  • Social Butterfly blogger (parties, Bearded Pigs, receptions)
  • Dedicated Student blogger (post on continuing education courses taken at meeting)
  • NLM blogger (NLM update, Friends of NLM reception and other NLM news)

MLA will continue to sponsor some of the blogger’s wifi access by issuing wifi cards but those who don’t have a wifi card don’t have to worry.  This year the Hilton Minneapolis will provide complimentary guestroom Internet access for MLA ’11.  (Yippeeeee!)

Look for the official call for bloggers in February 2011, but if you have any questions about the 2011 blog or blogging the meeting contact Molly at mknapp(atsign)lsuhsc(dot)edu.

2 thoughts on “Changes for the 2011 Annual Meeting Blog”

  1. Indeed there are SIG’s with blogs. I am maintaining the OCLCSIG Blog (see: http://oclcsig.mlanet.org/blog/ ) which has been opened up on the web since several months ago. Let me know how we SIG blogs can blend in better with this effort!

    Thanks, Nadine

  2. This sounds great! I loved being a blogger last year, but it was hard to go through and check everyone else’s posts to make sure I wasn’t covering something already covered or worrying about not having anything to post about because I was doing it at the end of the day.

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