Of shoes and ships and conferences
(Totally unrelated to this post, but I’m also testing out ScribeFire here. What a handy interface!)
Anyway. Again picking up the theme of barriers to physical conference attendance, I’m wondering what impact our craptacular economy will have on this over the next few years, given the rising price of plane tickets, airline consolidations, food, gas, hotels, what have you. In July, I made my annual visit back to Washington State to see my folks. The price of our flight was up $150 over last year’s trip ($250 over the year before). At over $600/person, only two of the four of us traveled — for about the same as it would have cost all of us to go in 2006. When budgets are strapped anyway, it seems unlikely that libraries will be pleased to pick up ever-higher travel tabs for their staff.
Next year’s ALA Annual is in Chicago — now the city with the dubious distinction of having the highest sales tax in the U.S. (Enjoy this fun travel taxes chart from USA Today to see how your conference city stacks up.) You might want to purchase souvenirs for your kids before you go, just be sure to hide them in your luggage. Or, load them up with booth swag! They’ll never know the difference.
librarybob:
Very true.
I expect person-to-person conferences to be *much* smaller, but with a vastly larger virtual component. The latter will seem rather natural to librarians now growing up with Facebook, etc.
(Webjunction has moved that way, fwiw. I’m not sure the new navigation will help discussions, but the friending will seem natural to many.)
4 August 2008, 12:42 pmMarcyB:
Hah! MLA is in *Hawaii* next spring. Now, ask me how many folks to whom I spoke in Chicago this year said they were getting funding to go next year. Go ahead, ask me…
5 August 2008, 7:48 amJoan:
Just returned to Illinois from vacation to Oregon, which has NO sales tax! It’s really weird to buy stuff with no tax. Since you can’t pump your own gasoline either, it’s also weird to have attendants do it for you. I won’t be purchasing anything in Chicago, that’s for sure. Yes, the flights are pricey to Portland, as well.
10 August 2008, 11:05 pmcate the library student:
I don’t know if this would be any help for cash-strapped librarians but I would be happy to put together an informal list of inexpensive, fun, public-transportation-accessible destinations to chicago for conference-goers. I’ll be a first-timer at the conference next year (i’m pretty excited!) so I don’t really know if the people who arrange the conference already distribute this type of info.
I know this won’t help with flight costs (which are crazy), but if I can prevent my fellow ALA members from getting ripped off by the chicago tourism industry, I’d to offer some tips if anyone is interested.
Cate Levinson
20 August 2008, 5:15 pmrachel:
Cate – ALA has been doing a wiki for annual that anyone can contribute to, which contains a section on area attractions, dining etc. — here is the one for 2008:
http://wikis.ala.org/annual2008/index.php/Main_Page
I’d assume they’ll have one up for 2009 at some point which would be a great place to add that kind of info. (Props to Meredith Farkas who started this unofficially some time back, til ALA finally made it “official.”)
Joan – I’d rather go to Portland!
20 August 2008, 6:27 pm