The Vindaloo Agenda

[Heidi Johnson]

A while back Jeff Good wrote:
> Several options were brought up, and these are the ones I remember:
>
> 1. A "symposium", a.k.a. organized session, which had a deadline of
> abstract submission of April 15 this year. I think, in general, this
> was not thought to be the option of choice (or, at least, the only way
> to go) since it would not generate much traffic. This shouldn't cost
> anything extra.

>
> 2. A pre-conference meeting before the official LSA conference begins.
> This could probably be done under the partial auspices of the LSA, but,
> presumably, we'd have to pay for the room ahead of time. The 1999(?)
> proto-OLAC meeting did something like this, and, apparently, attendance
> was good.
This would only attract people who are already interested, though,
wouldn't it? I don't imagine herds of people will be wanting to spend
extra days in Dallas just for the scenery.

>
> 3. A LinguistList style room and "office hours". I don't know if this
> costs anything or if the LSA just gives Linguist a spare room. The
> disadvantage to this is that we'd be sequestered and people would have
> to come find us (we could, perhaps, alleviate this somewhat by teaming
> up with Linguist and sharing a room).
>
If we could be in a room that's right in the midst of some session rooms,
especially the SSILA sessions, we could potentially attract people who
are skipping a few talks.

I like this idea the best. I'm starting to think about something kind of
like a science fair, with computers and stuff where people could have
some hands-on interaction with software, OLAC searches, the EMELD site,
other archives, etc. I'll be driving, as will numerous people from UT,
so we could bring all sorts of equipment from AILLA's lab. We might be
able to generate traffic by good old-fashioned sales techniques, like a
colorful banner and free coffee & cookies. People will do a lot for a
cookie at 3:00 in the afternoon.

Can't someone from LINGUIST (hint hint) tell us what it costs to have
a room? And we should definitely share, since there would be a lot of
overlap in theme, wouldn't there? Maybe we could start a new tradition,
of having a Computer Tools and Services room or something like that.

> 4. Space in a high-traffic area, like the publisher's room. Publishers
> pay to be in that room--but maybe the LSA would let us do it free of
> charge?
I just scouted around the LSA web site, which says that there will be
information about publisher's booths in the October LSA Bulletin. We should
check that out & see what the cost is.

Is anyone from this group going to Boston? I'm still agonizing about whether
or not I should go. Giving a talk at SSILA last year was completely
ineffective, but I hate to let a year go by with no archiving presence
whatsoever. If anyone has any bright ideas for some kind of ad hoc
something, I might could be persuaded.

Heidi