P2P

54 P E E R T O P E E R : I L T A ' S Q U A R T E R L Y M A G A Z I N E | S P R I N G 2 0 2 3 M E M B E R R E S O U R C E S ILTACON: Behind the Scenes I t's time for the back of house lights to slowly start to come on again! For those of you who are new ILTAns, the first time the general public will see the list of ILTACON sessions for 2023 is on March 20 when speaker applications open. In reality, though, the planning officially began months before the 2022 conference even started! We start each year's ILTACON planning with a search for a co- chair in the spring of the previous year. Each co-chair serves a two- year term, but they begin shadowing the other co-chairs in June of the previous year. After that, we select our Team Coordinators in October. Each of these coordinators leads a team of 6-7 people. Later in October, applications open for session coordinators; these interviews happen in November. The full conference planning team usually meets once in December and then start their work (and weekly meetings) in January. December and January are also the months where we solicit session ideas from the ILTA-verse. This year, we received a record number of session suggestions – 339. The teams each select 12 sessions (for a total of 84 this year) to bring forward to ILTACON.After the sessions are selected, team members work to perfect the titles, descriptions, and speaker profiles of their assigned sessions. Then in mid-March, the fun really begins when speaker applications open. Last year, we had over 500 speakers apply (another record number) for slightly over 200 speaking slots. Session coordinators interview speakers and then they start working with the speakers to create educational memorable sessions starting in April and May. Teams and speaker teams continue to meet up until ILTACON begins. Most ILTACON volunteers come to conference a day early, help with any last-minute tasks, and attend a networking dinner the night before conference begins. The next morning, we meet as an entire team and get ready to watch all of our hard work come to fruition. Our committee meets at the end of each day to review wins and challenges. I was curious as to how much time (between ILTA staff and volunteers) is putting into preparing for the educational content at ILTACON, so I made some CONSERVATIVE estimates in Excel. by Denise Ash

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