LSA/SSILA 2005

[Heidi Johnson]

The consensus seems to be that a booth in the publisher's area is the
best bet. I just wrote to the LSA Secretariat asking for some info; we'll
see what that produces.

There are lots of us, actually - probably at least 5 who would be want
to display posters and handouts and maybe give demos (AILLA, ANLC maybe,
PARADISEC maybe, Rausing probably, LINGUIST/EMELD certainly, and then
all those big fancy speech recognition databases - they must have money :-).
I can't be sure until I see what we get back in indirect costs this year,
but AILLA could probably scrape up a couple of hundred bucks. Or, if it's
like thousands and we figure it out soon enough, we might be able to get
a little grant from somewhere.  NSF has various special pockets for symposia
and suchlike.

Maybe we could persuade someone at Berkeley, through someone who recently
went to Berkeley (Jeff), to lend us things like a projector and screen.
We could have an OLAC banner as primary identifier, and then posters +
handouts for all the other participating groups.

Is it done to schedule specific sorts of demos, say AILLA 2-4 Sat. and
PARADISEC 1-3 Fri.? We could put flyers with the schedule and general
info on the registration table.

I really think it's worth trying to pull this together. It's important to
keep sending the message, to get the whole idea of archiving into people's
heads. We need to effect a sea-change in our field, especially among
documentary linguists.

I'll post whatever I learn from the Secretariat.

Heidi

> I keep meaning to mention to the list about how LSA went. I can echo
> Steven's comment about getting a room being a hit or miss affair. It
> seems to me that this year's LinguistList room was more miss than
> hit--a bit too small and off the beaten track to be as useful as it
> might have been. However, it did seem that, in the future, it made
> sense for OLAC to team up in some way with Linguist because the average
> linguist won't know to differentiate between the two enough to know
> where to go.
>
> As for setting up in the publisher's area, I have a vague recollection
> of talking about this with Jim Mason and Doug Whalen, and they said it
> was fairly expensive. So, if we want to do this, we probably should
> plan ahead, see if we can get some non-profit discount, and then try to
> get as broad participation as possible to spread costs.
>
> I do think, by the way, the publisher's room will be worth the money,
> assuming it can be raised. The level of visibility far exceeds perhaps
> anything outside of a keynote address.
>
> Jeff
>
> On Feb 18, 2004, at 5:48 PM, Steven Bird wrote:
>
>> On Thu, 2004-02-19 at 06:29, Heidi Johnson wrote:
>>> Dear folks,
>>> I've been thinking a little about what we can do to make a
>>> splash at next year's annual meeting in San Francisco. We
>>> talked a bit about the possibility of renting a room for demos and
>>> workshops once upon a time. I still think this is a good idea. Does
>>> anyone know how this room-renting business works or who I could
>>> write to? It's early, but probably we have to plan well ahead to make
>>> the deadline.
>>
>> The LSA secretariat handles room renting.  In the past I've found this
>> to be a bit of a hit-and-miss affair concerning location (you could end
>> up tucked away in a corner) and concerning price (once I was billed
>> double the amount quoted).
>>
>> I think the book exhibit room is a preferrable location.  I've seen
>> both
>> SIL and Rosetta demonstrate software in this room.  SIL had a projector
>> and screen set up, so that several people could observe a demonstration
>> at once.  Since OLAC is non-profit, perhaps the LSA will give us a
>> discount on the price they charge print publishers.  Further
>> justification for choosing this location is that we represent a
>> consortium of archives, each publishing language resources on the web.
>>
>> If we were successful in getting such a booth, we'd also need to think
>> about some kind of banner to help our visibility alongside the
>> publishers.
>>
>> -Steven
>>