LSA booth report

[Heidi Johnson]

I thought I'd post a review of how things went with the booth, both to
inform those who couldn't be there and to give us a foundation for
thinking about next year (Jan 5-8, 2006, Albuquerque, New Mexico).

My general conclusion is that this pilot booth was a success
and that we should improve our program and do it every year
henceforward.

First, total expenses for the booth were $1036.00:
Registration: $600
Furniture:    $350 (2 tables, 2 chairs, 2 easels)
Electrical:   $ 86

We had wireless Internet access throughout the Exhibit Hall,
so we were spared the $760/day for Internet connections.

We had 7 contributing organizations: EMELD, Berkeley Language
Center, MPI-Leipzig, ANLC, AILLA, UCLA Phonetics, and Steven
Bird's outfit, whichever one it is that is contributing for
OLAC. Contributions were not quite evenly distributed, but
not widely disparate either. Helen ended up with the lion's
share at $260, her penalty for being so well-organized that
she got it taken care of before we knew the final figure.

I think we can expect similar costs in the future, assuming
LSA negotiates the wireless option with the hotel. So, if we
do the same thing next year with the same number of participants,
it'd be just ~$150 each.

We had 4 other projects contributing persons and/or leaflets:
ELAR, Texas Dialect of German Project, Academica Sinica, and
DOBES/IMDI via MPI-Nijmegen.

Our leaflet table was jammed full - we should have more leaflet
space in the future. Perhaps a 2x8 table for leaflets, and a
2x6 turned sideways for projector and laptop.

We had two sorts of "events": the slide show, organized by
Peter Ladefoged, which ran continously, and scheduled demos.

The slide show was a great success, imho, and should be developed
and repeated every year. I saw lots of people stopping to read
the slides as they went by. I took some notes about what worked
and what didn't on these slides for future reference. I've also
designed a portable cloth screen that I'm going to get my mother
the quilter to help me implement :-). It is worth putting some
time into developing a spiffy "poster" for your organization,
for next year. We could feature more of OLAC's members this way -
even all of them, if possible - making each one a bit shorter
(3 secs each, say).

The demos were not a success. People didn't know about them and
we didn't get that much passing traffic. Jim Mason thought there
were many fewer people in the hall than last year. But, I still
think it's a good idea: we just need to plot a schedule well
in advance and publicize it. If we're early enough, we may even
be able to get it in the handbook; at the very least, we should
get signs up all over on the first day. We should book sort of
mini "office hours" for our participants, in 30-60 minute slots,
during which people can come by to ask questions of that person
and/or see a one-on-one demo.

Traffic patterns are a little ragged for doing a demo using
a projector and a screen at the back of the booth. The best method
seemed to be to sit at one of the extra tables scattered around in
front of us. (We were at the end of the publisher's booths, facing
the large open poster session area.) These extra tables were a
gift - very useful! We need to make sure we have that again, somehow.

Probably since I was there most of the time, I did get 3-4 good
chances to talk about AILLA, one of which has already resulted in
someone sending stuff to be archived. Also a few people wanting
to talk about things from the tutorial. I think the interest is
there, we just need to organize a little better to capture it.

The alternative, the real LSA office hours, remains unsatisfactory.
The office hours rooms were on the fourth floor, miles away
from everything else.

In conclusion: let's do it again next year, but with more slides
for the show and better advance planning for the demo/office hours
schedule.

I'd be very happy to hear other people's reflections on how this
went, ideas for improvements or alternatives...

Heidi