{"id":74286,"date":"2014-06-11T13:45:34","date_gmt":"2014-06-11T18:45:34","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/inalj.com\/?p=74286"},"modified":"2014-06-10T15:42:14","modified_gmt":"2014-06-10T20:42:14","slug":"conference-session-proposals-and-presentations-less-complicated-than-youd-think","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/inalj.com\/?p=74286","title":{"rendered":"Conference Session Proposals and Presentations: Less Complicated than You\u2019d Think"},"content":{"rendered":"

by Claire Schmieder, Head Editor,\u00a0INALJ New Jersey<\/a><\/em><\/p>\n

Conference Session Proposals and Presentations: Less Complicated than You\u2019d Think<\/span><\/h3>\n

\"Claire.Schmieder\"<\/a>During the first week of June, I attended my third New Jersey Library Association annual\u00a0conference. The first time I went, I was a student; the second time, I was a job seeker; and this\u00a0time, I was a gainfully employed person.<\/p>\n

One thing I noticed during my first two NJLA conferences, and pretty much any other\u00a0conference I\u2019ve attended, is that they\u2019re primarily for people who are already working. This\u00a0makes perfect sense, of course, but it can leave student and unemployed attendees feel a little\u00a0bit…lost or out of place. Happily, (please excuse the broad generalization here) librarians are\u00a0some of the friendliest people out there, and that helps considerably. And, the NJLA conference\u00a0is a fairly student\/new professional friendly event with scheduled evening meetups specifically\u00a0for those folks.<\/p>\n

Even so, I really wanted to see an actual session for students\/new professionals that wasn\u2019t\u00a0centered on interviewing or resumes. Not that those sessions aren\u2019t helpful – they certainly\u00a0are. But, given that there can be a fairly wide gap in between earning an MLIS and full-time\u00a0employment, those session often provide advice that\u2019s been heard over and over again. That\u2019s\u00a0why I decided to propose, and then co-present, a session on professional development for people\u00a0on the job hunt.<\/p>\n

Getting a proposal in was the first step. This was a little less mysterious since I am currently\u00a0an active member of NJLA\u2019s Professional Development Committee (PDC). Each of the NJLA\u00a0committees submits conference proposals to yet another committee; this final committee reviews\u00a0each proposal and then accepts or passes on it. I had the support of the PDC\u2013 the group helped\u00a0me fine-tune my initial idea through in-person discussion, provided feedback on a couple drafts\u00a0of my proposal, suggested I find a co-presenter, and officially sponsored my session proposal\u00a0before it went to review.<\/p>\n

Before the proposal was truly written, I found a co-presenter \u2013 former INALJ Head Editor and\u00a0ALA Emerging Leader<\/a> Julie Watson<\/a>. I put out a call on Twitter and Facebook about looking for\u00a0a session partner and Julie responded right away. We created an outline of session topics, wrote\u00a0and reviewed the actual proposal, and submitted it to the PDC. Then we waited. Review took a\u00a0couple of months and we found out in late winter that our session was accepted.<\/p>\n

Over the spring, we used Google Drive documents to make notes, divide the topics, and\u00a0stay organized. We emailed a handful of times over the spring about the presentation \u2013 I\u00a0set a deadline to have the actual presentation drafts done since I was in charge of having\u00a0the presentation ready and on-site during the conference. We worked remotely, which went\u00a0smoothly; it wasn\u2019t necessary for us to sit down face to face and work on the presentation,\u00a0although we certainly could have if we lived closer to one another. On the day of the\u00a0presentation, I made sure I had the presentation saved on my computer and on a USB drive (just\u00a0in case) and I printed out our handout<\/a>. We planned and prepared well in advance, so everything\u00a0went smoothly on the day of. Overall, my very first conference presentation was a positive\u00a0experience and I\u2019m looking forward to future sessions.<\/p>\n

The two takeaways here are:<\/p>\n

You can (and should) propose sessions for professional conferences.<\/strong> If you have something\u00a0valuable to contribute and\/or if you spot a gap in topics being covered that you\u2019re able to fill,\u00a0then you should propose a session. The worst thing that can happen is that your session won\u2019t\u00a0be accepted. If that happens, learn from the experience and try again at another time. Also,\u00a0keep in mind that speaker selection for individual conferences can vary widely \u2013 those run by\u00a0professional organizations (e.g. ALA, NJLA) sometimes (but not always) require that you be a\u00a0member; more general conferences (e.g. Computers in Libraries, Internet Librarian) do not have\u00a0any such requirement.<\/p>\n

Presenting at conferences isn\u2019t necessarily complicated or scary.<\/strong> If you are speaking at a\u00a0conference, then prepare gradually in advance. By the time you\u2019re up in front of a room full of\u00a0people, you\u2019ll know the presentation cold. Use the opportunity to work on your public speaking\u00a0skills and ask for feedback when your presentation is over. Prepare for potential technical\u00a0difficulties by saving any files in various places (email attachments, on your desktop, on a USB\u00a0drive) and familiarizing yourself with the technology you\u2019ll be using during the presentation\u00a0(projectors, remotes, laptops that don\u2019t belong to you).<\/p>\n

Go forth, propose, and present!<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

by Claire Schmieder, Head Editor,\u00a0INALJ New Jersey Conference Session Proposals and Presentations: Less Complicated than You\u2019d Think During the first week of June, I attended my third New Jersey Library Association annual\u00a0conference. The first time I went, I was a student; the second time, I was a job seeker; and this\u00a0time, I was a gainfully…<\/p>\n

Read more \u2192<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":9,"featured_media":57897,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[145],"tags":[69,3592,3858,4238,3632,4512,4476,5470,6297],"class_list":["post-74286","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-articles","tag-article","tag-blog","tag-claire-schmieder","tag-conferences","tag-inalj-new-jersey","tag-library-conferences","tag-presentations","tag-presenting","tag-proposals"],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"https:\/\/inalj.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2014\/01\/Claire.Schmieder.jpg","jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/p1WoMK-jka","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/inalj.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/74286","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/inalj.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/inalj.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/inalj.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/9"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/inalj.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=74286"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/inalj.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/74286\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/inalj.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/media\/57897"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/inalj.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=74286"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/inalj.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=74286"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/inalj.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=74286"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}