publisher's booth - long

[Heidi Johnson]

We have registered for a booth in the publisher's room on behalf of
OLAC. The goal here is
to have a stable place to be, where we can pass out brochures and give
demos, where we
will get a large part of the conference attendees passing by at some
point or another. We'll
have a sign that says Open Language Archives Community and we should be
able to display
some other posters on some kind of back drop as well. Whoever mans the
booth at any given
time should be able to at least give a short encouraging talk about why
archiving and OLAC
are both Good Things. And we can stack all of our brochures and papers
and handouts on
the tables. And, last but not least, we can schedule demos of our
various projects.

It isn't free, and we are going to need contributions from all who can
afford to contribute
to cover the costs. For simplicity, I am paying for things from AILLA's
slush fund as the deadlines
come up (like for registration). People can pay me back  to cover my
travel costs, which I can
then not charge to AILLA - it seems to be the best method of dealing
with this, since UT won't
allow odd parties to deposit funds to its accounts :-).

Registration was $600.  We can expect to need another ~ $300 for
furniture, which we order
from the exposition company that the conference contracts with. They'll
send us info on that
in November. For demos, we will want a high-speed Internet connection,
which we can share
with the Rosetta Project/ELF booth. We'll make sure we can set up next
door to one another,
and then Jim Mason says we can connect a wireless hub to the Internet
connection and thus
have several laptops connected at once. Excellent idea!  The hotel's AV
guy guestimated $750
hookup, $125/day for that; so, another $1000 split two ways.

This adds up to a grand total of around $1500 for OLAC.  So far, Steven
Bird and Helen Dry
have gallantly offered to contribute part of the needed funds. The more
the merrier! Please
consider kicking in $100 or two to the kitty. I can also post a plea
for funds to OLAC-GENERAL,
what do y'all think? It might be best to wait until November, when we
know what the actual costs
are going to be.

I just got a letter from Mary Niebuhr, the Exhibits Coordinator, with
the schedule info:
Set up:  		Thurs. Jan 6.	 1:00 PM -  5:00 PM
Exhibit hours: 	Fri. Jan 7		10:00 AM - 1:00 PM
						  2:00 PM - 5:30 PM
			Sat. Jan 8		10:00 AM - 1:00 PM
						  2:00 PM - 5:30 PM
			Sun. Jan 9	  8:30 AM - 11:00 AM
Break down:	Sun			  11:30 AM - 2:00 PM

We're going to need people to help with all of this, especially
Thursday afternoon,
when Jeff and I have to attend a "conversation about archiving and
endangered
languages"  until 3:00 PM. We're going to have to have at least one
person in the
booth during all these hours, and we'll probably need several to help
set up and
break down. We should all try to get as many people as we can,
especially people
who can talk sensibly about OLAC, to commit to an hour or two in our
booth. Nobody
minds being relieved of duty at the last minute, but it'll be
impossible to find extras at
the last minute. Any local people on this list? Berkeley?

Also, Jim Mason had a number of helpful hints, from his prior
experience with LSA booths:
- projector & screen demos were not a hit, people would rather sit in
front of a computer
   and try things themselves;
- we can steal chairs from surrounding rooms after 5:00 PM and save
some bucks;
- we must be sure to specify bare tables (no ruffly table cloths?).

To sum up: This booth should be a great opportunity to reach lots of
linguists with
information about OLAC and our multifarous projects. To make it a hit,
we need:
- money!
- volunteers to staff the booth during all the exhibit hours
- brochures, fliers, handouts, papers, etc etc to distribute
- posters? Some eye-catching background stuff would be nice
- a schedule of demonstrations, which we can work out in detail in
December.

If this works as well as we hope it will, we can make it a regular
institution and do it
every year. It will only get easier, surely.

Last and definitely least: The info sheet says that "In November, we
will provide a
service kit including drayage information." The OED defines drayage
thus: "(a.) Conveyance
by dray. (b) the charge for this." I am not getting any closer to
knowing what the dickens
"drayage" is. They're not going to bring horses into the hotel, surely.
Can anyone out there
enlighten me?

Heidi

Heidi Johnson, PhD					ailla at ailla.org
Project Manager					www.ailla.utexas.org
The Archive of the Indigenous Languages of Latin America
Dept. of Anthropology, EPS 1.130
1 University Station C3200
University of Texas at Austin
Austin, Texas 78712
U.S.A.