Library Camp NYC news

I've been busy planning Library Camp NYC with my colleagues Steven Kaye and Rachel Watstein. Last month, we had to close registration after we maxed out the number of registrants (150); we're now in the process of confirming those registrations to get a more accurate head count.

There's been a lot of work on the event wiki lately, including:

• a News page (get the RSS feed here or sign up here for email delivery)
• a What To Expect page that will offer some details on how our unconference will actually run
  
• a History page that tries to capture the planning work that went into the conference (in case anyone else is planning a similar event and wants to see what we were thinking about)

Lately, we've been ironing out the details about how the final program will be developed during the first hour in the morning. Right now, what we'll probably do is ask attendees who would like to lead a discussion session to write on a sheet of paper what that session will be about. Then, the event facilitators will gather all these suggestions, merge or split session ideas as needed, and then show all the ideas on a projected screen. After getting some rough estimates from the attendees about the number of people likely to attend each session--attendees will give a show a hands for each session--the event facilitators will place the sessions in the schedule grid, thereby creating the final program.

As I've been preparing for Library Camp NYC, I've been scouring the web for resources on the subject of unconferences generally. I was pleasantly surprised recently to learn about a pair of library-themed unconferences in Australia:

• l2 conference Melbourne was held on March 2, 2007, at the Yarra Plenty Regional Library
• Library2.o on the Loose will be held on August 2, 2007, at the State Library of Western Australia

It was also interesting to hear people referring to the BIGWIG Social Software Showcase as a sort of unconference. I wish I had been at the ALA annual conference last month and able to attend, as it sounded like a great forum.