The call for abstracts has gone out for the ALIA National Conference in 2020. Been a long time since I wrote a conference paper, a proper paper that is. I’ve presented occasionally, here and there, love the performance of presenting. Doing the work for the paper not so much. Papers tend to be like essays for uni: take forever, full of distraction, procrastination, anything but focus. Presenting also takes work; building a presentation for me is as much about developing the concept and the flow as it is about the appearance and the words.

Hmmm…a thought bubble: perhaps I should prepare the presentation, then write the paper, updating the presentation as the paper progresses. Things progress, new things are learnt, ideas change.

I have a bunch of things I do, and are in my head. Some of those are long overdue for broader exposure. I keep missing, or perhaps avoiding, conference deadlines. I missed the deadline for Information Online which was earlier this year, I have missed the deadline for VALA 2020 next Feb. ALIA 2020 is end of August and Information Online 2021 will put out their call mid 2020ish.

Today I made a list of things that could generate a bunch of papers. Rather than aiming for one conference, aim for several over the next couple of years. I need to push out and engage. Make myself visible again. Play with ideas again. Open up again.