Attending a SLIS How To Panel

Posted November 12, 2015 by Tara Pealer

I’ve been to conferences before, so when one of my friends expressed an interest in going to the How To Attend a Conference event put on by SLIS groups, I was a little hesitant. It wasn’t that I didn’t find the topic interesting. It’s that when you do something once, you kind of assume you know how to do it.

I went to a national conference. I presented for a whole fifteen minutes. I had it down pat.

But I’m a sucker for peer pressure and free food, so I went with her.

I’m so glad I went. It made me address some of my preconceived notions.

One, there’s a difference between attending a National Conference as an undergraduate. When you go to a conference as an undergraduate, no one really expects anything out of you. You’re like a little baby to people who are Professionals In Their Field. They love that you’re so excited but they know that you don’t know half as much as them.

Two, there’s a difference between an academic conference and a professional conference. At PCA/ACA, the focus was on sharing your findings and putting your work out there, and learning about what other people are doing, but not necessarily in your field. Professional Conferences, I found out, have workshops, and sessions about what the LIS field is doing. There’s a focus on professional development of skills.

Three, networking is easy at a professional conference, because everyone is there to network, and everyone at an LIS conference is in the LIS field. It’s easy, the presenters promised, to hand out business cards.

Oh, and apparently shipping books from San Fransico to Boston isn’t that expensive. Who knew?