ALA Virtual, SLA InfoTrends, and the ICTeSSH Inaugural Conference

摘要

YES, THE NEW WORLD of conferences is virtual. And info pros have a lot of conferences to choose from now that they don't have to travel to them. In the past few months, I've avoided travel to Chicago and Amsterdam, plus attended a conference that was never intended to be in-person. ALA's annual conference, originally scheduled for Chicago this June, anticipated more than 20,000 attendees. Obviously, the pandemic changed those expectations. ALA moved swiftly to convert its in-person conference to a scaled-down, virtual event, with a price tag for members reduced to $60 (2020.alavirtualevent.org). Although it appeared that sessions were live, with beginning and ending times listed in the agenda, all of them were prerecorded, some several weeks in advance. The Q&A portions were live, but written in a chat box. The advantage to prerecorded sessions is that you can go back and watch them at your convenience.