In a message dated 12/10/99 10:54:31 AM Eastern Standard Time,
[log in to unmask] writes:

> I'm please to see further consideration of business topics at IPTW. As you
>  know, I spoke on a business topic for IPTW last year. It seemed like an
>  uphill struggle to get the topic on the agenda.  Leland and I went to quite
>  a bit of effort and expense to bring this topic to the workshop and only
>  about half-a-dozen people came to participate. Now, don't get me wrong, I
>  was please to help them out and felt my efforts were worthwhile.

John,

The documentation track of IPTW, thanks to Bill Gould's diligent voluntary
efforts, has presented, and I hope will continue to present, a very strong
thread of business, ethics, and management issues oriented to the needs of
the preservation trades. Unfortunately, your presentation at IPTW 98 was not
held either in the same area as the documentation track was occuring, or
marketed in line with the several days of the documentation track that the
attendees were anticipating. I realize that the larger area of the main
assembly was appropriate to the physical requirements of your presentation. I
also understand the desire on the part of any of the demonstrators to achieve
a larger audience. Audience size is directly proportional to the amount of
effort that each voluntary demonstrator puts into promoting their sessions to
their peers... beginning from when the door is opened on the workshop with
the coffee and donuts early in the morning. The IPTW is not an event where a
group of event professionals promotes and markets any of the demonstrations,
this is a voluntary organization of the preservation trades. We all show up
at this one place and as the carpenters, masons and builders that we are we
get to work and build an event. As to difficulty in getting your topic into
the program, I was not involved and cannot speak to the events other than to
say that both you and Leland have as much freedom to toot your horns as
anyone else. What cannot occur is an expectation that anyone will be
responsible to toot our horns for us, particularly if the anyone has not seen
why it would be in their interest when they are busy enough tooting other
horns. I don't mean to express that the IPTW is just a bunch of horn tooting,
but I would like to hear more music. The difficulty in getting on the agenda
that you express may have had more to do with timing. Once a motion gets
going in one direction it is difficult to change direction. The emphasis of
IPTW is HANDS-ON demonstrations, not on talking heads. As I see it there are
two reasons for this: 1) anyone is more comfortable giving a presentation in
front of people if they are physically doing a task that they find familiar,
and 2) the non-trades get a kick out of  seeing how things are actually done.
It is inaccurate to assume, though, that because the focus is on the hands-on
presentation that the demonstrators are not communicating business standards,
ethics, or core management skills. If you had attended the opening session of
IPTW 98 you wuld have been exposed to the STORY telling subtheme of the
workshop. We all of us told our stories to each other... that is the core of
the IPTW event. I look forward to your future involvement with the IPTW and
hope that you will take a personal initiative to volunteer your time and
experience to the common welfare of the preservation trades.

][<en Follett