How does one get to participate?

One thing we might do this year is try to formalize the virtual discussion part of the Showcase better. Ie have people virtual meetup using something like TalkShoe to conference call and participate in discussion. This is how Uncontrollable Vocabulary podcast is done by Greg Schwartz and having participated in it last night it is truly a blast.

The point of the Showcase last year was to illustrate that you could do a program at a National even that didn't require 12 months of lead time AND could involve some virtual participation.

So we solicited from people we knew, and who would be cool with the idea, and had them populate the wiki with their information. At ALA Annual, we had a meeting room and a couple of hours, so we had everyone introduce themselves, their presentation, and then we threw them at tables and let the audience talk to whomever they wanted. It was designed to be about conversations about the presentations or topics. It was great fun.

This year, we can do things differently...or not. The general idea was to solicit topics, people interested in the topics, and people that were going to be at ALA Annual. The BIGWIG membership can vote on the topics they are most interested in hearing about. Or we can choose to solicit again, and bully people into showing up. But the idea is to have interesting technical topics, that people are genuinely passionate about, and then have lots of smart people in the room talking. That's about it...sort of a slightly-organized unconference.

I didn't realize that it was more of a meetup until I read about it on Twitter. Can we also get an explaination of how it works as well?

Thanks!!