Committee Spotlight: 2024 Conference Program Committee
September 4, 2024
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ILA’s conference program doesn’t just magically come together. Every year, a dedicated group of library workers volunteer their time and talents to help ILA staff make the annual conference happen. It is truly The Best Committee Assignment Ever.
Because the committee’s singular goal is to develop the program and activities for the annual conference, the members’ terms are for a single conference cycle, in this case July 2023-October 2024. In June, the ILA President-elect selects the committee co-chairs and members. In previous years, the committee turned over all members at the end of the cycle. However, this year’s committee includes people who also served on the 2023 committee. This continuity has been incredibly useful because they’ve been able to give us feedback on what did and didn’t work previously.
At the first meeting in July, the committee reviews the overall schedule; identifies subcommittees and asks for volunteers; and brainstorms topics and trends that eventually coalesce into the conference theme and tagline. The committee meets monthly in the fall of the year preceding the conference to discuss ideas for keynote speakers, choose the logo, and plan conference activities, including evening events, the community project, the poster sessions, and overall conference ambiance. During this process, members of the committee carefully consider feedback from immediate past conferences, as well as current issues facing Illinois libraries and potential future trends. One of these meetings is usually in-person at the annual conference where the committee discusses things that they like about the event and things they can improve for next year.
After the committee members have decided on the theme and logo and identified who to approach as keynote speakers, the full committee adjourns until early spring when the deadline for conference program proposals passes. During this lull, the subcommittees continue to meet to develop the call for programs and poster sessions, speaker education and support, conference ambiance, the community project, and evening programming.
When the call for conference program proposals closes, each committee member evaluates all the submissions according to the evaluation rubric, then meets to decide which programs will be accepted.
This committee met via Zoom to make decisions about the proposals on which there appeared to be a consensus. We followed up with an in-person meeting in Peoria to do a walk-through of the venue and finalize the program. During these meetings, committee members volunteer to contact speakers for programs that need follow up, suggest proposal combinations, refine focus, and identify proposals that might make good posters. This year, we had twice as many program proposals as we had program slots, so the evaluation process included considerations about the balance of programs by library type or function. We also wanted to ensure that programs were relevant to all sizes of libraries. Our overall goal was to create a conference program that has broad appeal to all members of the Illinois library community.
ILA staff does the work of communicating with the venue, finalizing the keynote speakers, and all of the other million and one details that come with planning an event of this size. The co-chairs work with the incoming ILA President, who is also the committee’s Board Liaison, to write the theme description and call for program proposals. They also submit the quarterly reports to the ILA Board.
By this time of year (late August), the committee has finished most of its tasks and will meet once or twice more to finalize plans. Members will attend and be visible at conference sessions and events, then hand the baton off to the 2025 Conference Committee, which is already getting to work on the Rosemont conference.
This committee spotlight was written by Laura L. Barnes and Veronica DeFazio, Co-chairs of the Conference Program Committee, 2024 . Laura is the Sustainability Information Curator at the Illinois Sustainable Technology Center, a unit of the University of Illinois Urbana-Champaign’s Prairie Research Institute. Veronica is the Deputy Director of the Peoria Public Library.
Learn more about the 2024 ILA Annual Conference and register to attend here. If you're interested in joining the committee, submit a committee interest form!
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