[78-L] concurrent presentations

[Michael Biel]

Speaking as someone who has attended all but two ARSC Conferences since
1971, has been the program chair for five of them, and was also
president of ARSC, I fought tooth and nail against concurrent programs
because they go against the founding principle of ARSC -- bringing the
diverse areas of archiving and collecting together.  The technicians,
catalogers, archive managers, beginning collectors, advanced collectors,
researchers, performers, etc. would all be attending the sessions which
were not only aimed at them but aimed at the others.  It worked well for
over 30 years.  And it could still work well.  

Grouping the presentations into sessions of an assumed similar topic was
the first step backwards.  I, and the other 2nd VP/Program Chairs, had
run the conference themselves, introduced every talk, and kept things
going.  Bringing in session coordinators slowed things down because of
inconsistencies in how the different sessions were run. This system of
scheduling requires lengthy coffee breaks which take up time that
otherwise would be handled by those who might step out for one of the
individual talks whereas the grouping of talks inhibit that.  

Twice I had Sunday morning sessions which were very well attended, and
the banquets always had a speaker.  These were often the highlight of
the conference.  (We all remember the one at the Chinese restaurant in
Toronto where we shared the room with a Chinese birthday party. 
Sometime after we rented the place they had torn the wall down which
separated the second floor into two rooms.)  

But most important is the length of the conference.  The major expense
for most people is transportation to the location.  That cost is the
same for one day, three days, or five days.  Our conference is two days
shorter than IASA is, and I have been urging starting fully on Wednesday
for years.  If the pre-session can be on Wednesday, so could a regular
day of sessions.  I believe we used to have the board meeting after the
conference in the early days, although that might be during the days
when we needed two days for the board meetings when things were tougher.
 Some people are taking a vacation credit which often is a week anyway. 
Others might be deciding that an extra day would make the trip more
worthwhile.  For those on the board who arrive on Tuesday evening, they
had to take work off on Tuesday.  Was the Monday at work worth
it????????  It would make more sense to be out the whole week.  For
those who just come for two workdays, Thursday and Friday, they probably
had to miss Wednesday anyway.  For those who the weekends are better for
them, the Saturday schedule is a LOSER for them, with so much of the
afternoon taken up with the members meeting and the expensive banquet in
the evening that the single-day attendees would rarely attend.   

As this format evolved, some of us were accused of being in a rut.  I
say that the recent boards have been in a rut, and have not seemingly
seriously considered the alternatives.  I know they will say that two
concurrent sessions is very minor compared with some organizations that
have dozens or even scores of concurrent sessions.  I was SHOCKED when I
gave a presentation at the Popular Culture Association 20 years ago
(after long urging by Bill Schurk) and I found there were TWENTY EIGHT
concurrent sessions.  There were 5,000 attendees, and 4,950 of them were
giving a presentation.  The same thing happened to the group I went to
early in my teaching career, the Speech Communication Association (or
whatever fad name they call themselves this year.) One of Leah's
teachers was absent to give a presentation, and I discovered his talk
was opposite sixty concurrent sessions.  These places are zoos, designed
for the publish-or-perish professorships, not for presenting information
or creating a cohesive group which is what ARSC's purpose is. Two
sessions aren't too bad, but they have caused a noticable reduction in
the unity of knowledge of the group. 

Mike Biel  mbiel at mbiel.com     


-------- Original Message --------
Subject: [78-L] concurrent presentations
From: DAVID BURNHAM <burnhamd at rogers.com>
Date: Fri, May 28, 2010 10:48 pm
To: 78-L at 78online.com

Steve Ramm wrote:

Well We had concurrent sessions and still had to cut some papers! And if
we didn't have them, the papers - including Mike's - which wasn't NOLa
specific- might have been moved to next year. The GOOD NEWS is that ALL
of the papers - including related powerpoint presentations will be
available by mid to late summer FREE as streams or downloads on the ARSC
WEbsite. So those that couldn't get to NOLa can warm up some gumbo or
jambalaya and listen and watch - and then play some NOLA jazz and visit
your local topless bar - and get the closest you can get to being there.



I have learned to accept the sessions competing and plan to hear the
others when they are posted

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

I'm just a newbie on the ARSC block.  I didn't realize that it was a
requirement that presentations should be locale related.  The ones I
particularly enjoyed were the ones on Jussi Bjorling, Rennaisance music
recordings, Wonder Records, phase problems related to reverse copying,
record collectors round table and, of course, Mike Biel's on cover art;
these presentations did not have any relationship to NOLA.  I also
attended a number which were NOLA related, like Phantoms at the New
Orleans opera and several jazz related ones.  I was actually considering
putting a presentation together for next year but it would have nothing
to do with Los Angeles, I'm thinking about one related to perceptions of
sound, audio recording techniques, the role of the Phonograph in the
home in the early days or something along those lines but perhaps I'll
wait until I have more experience with ARSC.

db
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