Archive for December, 2011

The conference scene is well into its annual holiday shutdown, and The Conference Circuit is following suit.  This posting (the 180th of the year) will be the last until 2012.

It is my pleasure to wish everyone a Happy Holiday and a healthy and successful New Year!

Don Hawkins
Columnist, Information Today and Conference Circuit Blog Editor

Slides and audio files from all 21 presentations at the International UDC Seminar 2011 “Classification and Ontology: Formal Approaches and Access to Knowledge” are now available on the conference website. In addition, complete proceedings can be purchased.

Don Hawkins
Columnist, Information Today and Conference Circuit Blog Editor

IFLACamp is the first ever “unconference” to be held in conjunction with an IFLA conference.  The 2012 IFLACamp will be structured as a satellite meeting just prior to the main conference in Helsinki, Finland on August 11-17.  It will meet in Hämeenlinna (about 100 km north of Helsinki) on August 9-10 and is being organized by IFLA’s New Professionals Special Interest Group (NPSIG).  The theme will be “New Professionals Now”.  Proposals for topics are being solicited in video format and are due by the end of 2011.  Submissions will be available on NPSIG’s blog and comments and votes may be freely made.  Prospective attendees will welcome the news that there will be no registration fee.

I look forward to following this fascinating development and bringing you periodic updates.

Don Hawkins
Columnist, Information Today and Conference Circuit Blog Editor

Preliminary activities related to the 2012 IFLA conference (Helsinki Finland, August 11-17) are heating up.  A total of 17 satellite meetings have been approved; calls for papers from the various sections are regularly arriving in my e-mail inbox; and online registration is available.  An intriguing new feature, IFLA Camp, the first ever “unconference” to be held at an IFLA conference, is soliciting proposals for discussion topics.  (A subsequent post appearing shortly here will go into more detail on IFLA Camp.)

So if you’re interested in IFLA and its annual conference, check out one of the websites with links above.

Don Hawkins
Columnist, Information Today and Conference Circuit Blog Editor

I listed 684 conferences held in 2011 (up from 653 in 2010) on the ITI Conference Calendar, and mentioned 241 of them in my 11 monthly columns.  As shown in the figure below, 2011 followed the usual pattern, with the busiest periods of the year in the spring and fall. The spring period, April through June, had 192 conferences, and the fall period, September through November, had 240.  Each of these periods accounts for approximately 1/3 of the yearly total.  And also as usual, dips were observed in the year-end months and in July.

Conferences were held in 209 different cities in 21 countries.  Here are the cities in which 5 or more conferences were held.

London heads the list, as it usually does, followed by Washington and New York.  The reason San Juan, PR appears is that it was the location of the IFLA annual conference and its associated meetings.

On a country basis, the US had the most conferences, with 313.  Countries hosting 6 or more conferences are shown below.  Eight conferences were virtual—held online only.

The states where 7 or more conferences were held are shown below.

Here are the organizers of 5 or more conferences in 2011.

These data are similar to those of 2010, showing that the information industry conference scene has remained healthy, despite the difficult economic conditions.

Don Hawkins
Columnist, Information Today and Conference Circuit Blog Editor