In the Middle: The Best MLA is the One I Didn't Attend: Tweeting the Conference

JJ Cohen writes,

Because I'm on fellowship leave, and because I'm committed to an extraordinary amount of travel in the semester ahead, I didn't attend the MLA conference in Seattle.

I followed the event at a distance through friends on FB and the occasional text message or phone chat. I know a few people who are on the job market, and a delegation of GW English faculty were conducting interviews for our Romanticist position. And maybe that says it: the MLA convention is easy shorthand for the US academic hiring process in literature, since in hotel rooms at that conference most of the interviewing is undertaken.

This year, though, I also experienced the unfolding of the meeting via Twitter.

In the Middle: The Best MLA is the One I Didn't Attend: Tweeting the Conference

Same here and we're not alone. Lee Skallerup tweeted and Storified MLA12 and  AHA2012 without attending either. Brian Croxall tweeted both but attending just MLA12. Haystackers in Seattle and Chicago kept the back channels busy. Later, John A Casey Jr, who presented at AHA, posted thoughts on the current conference system, its frustrations, high costs and possible changes:

Yet another way that non-elite faculty are prevented from full participation in the discipline they help sustain.

Among the many changes that I hope will take place as the discipline of English is forced to evolve or disappear is a reexamination of the annual convention model....changes are all desperately needed.  Maybe regional conferences affiliated with national ones could pick up the slack.  Or perhaps a lot of the work needed could be done online.

In any event, if we want all the members of the profession to have a say in its future, we need something better than the traditional annual convention.  The premium for attendance is too steep.

Taking it Digital: Nice Introduction to Social Media (Ferlazzo)

The current News from New Faculty Majority newsletter includes an overview of the social media NFM uses to connect with members and site visitors. It may or may not continue as a newsletter regular feature. In any case, I'll continue it here under the same name.

Digital covers a lot of territory, even more than "social media," itself rather a baggy monster category. Obviously, the focus will be oriented to academia and advocacy, with a decided emphasis on what might of interest or use to adjunct/contingent faculty. I've got my own ideas but would also appreciate reader input. Tentative topics include social media, online social networks, e-advocacy, web 2.0 applications for organizing, blogging (including academic blogs), platforms, plug-ins, webpage annotation, email, netiquette, tech-speak, Digital Humanities, ed tech, Webheads, online and hybrid teaching, personal computing, new applications, and even silly stuff for fun. I have a weakness for applications and text generators (i.e. surrealist insults, poetry, mock academic essays) that make me smile... 

Take what you need, think you can or would just like to try out and don't worry about the rest. Remember that standby, the handbook titled "The Least You Should Know about English"?  Let me know what's the least you need to know. Come to think of it, that would make a series.