Gathering at LSA 2007

I propose we have another get-together of linguistics and language bloggers at LSA this year.  That would make it the Third Annual Linguist Blogger Social, and since previous installments have been wildly popular, with literally halves of dozens of attendees, I think we'd better start getting organized.  I put these three questions to you:

1. What kind of gathering?  The last couple of years we've done dinner, which I'm certainly amenable to doing again, but I know dinner can be hard to schedule around.  Should we make it drinks in the hotel bar instead?
2. Where?  This obviously depends on the answer to the previous question.
3. When?  A glance at the LSA 2007 schedule shows that conference events finish at 8:30 on Thursday the 4th and at 8:00 on Saturday the 6th.  Sunday is presumably out because everyone will be gone.  Friday seems pretty full: a plenary address at 7:00, a grad student panel at 8:00, and a student mixer at 9:30; however, if you/we aren't planning to attend the business meeting, there is a window between 5:00 and 7:00.

The sooner we can decide on these details, the better we'll be able to plan.  Who's in?

Comments

[includedmiddle]

Well, I'll be at the LSA this year, and this certainly sounds more fun than the business meeting.

[Claire]

I'm in, and I'd vote for drinks instead of dinner (just because the number of dinners I've said I'd go to already outnumbers the number of days in the conference). Friday 5-7 sounds good to me.

[Grant Barrett]

I vote drinks, too. I believe last year the get-together was scheduled at the time of the American Dialect Society's words-of-the-year vote. If this could be avoided this time, that would be great. The event is broken up into two parts on two days this year, which makes it a bit more difficult. The nominating meeting for WOTYs will be held from 5:15 to 6:45 p.m. on Thursday, Jan. 4. The final votes will be held from 5:30 to 6:30 p.m. on Friday, Jan. 5.

Maybe we could also have a "spot." A hotel bar, a corner of a room, a seat in the lobby, a dark staircase, a bridge in Berlin, some place where all the lang bloggers can go at any time with a good chance of finding other lang bloggers just killing some time.

[polyglot conspiracy]

One of these days, man. One of these days. Have fun!

[Neal Whitman]

Count me in. The 5-7 time on Friday is OK for me, but I agree with Grant that it'd be good to have a time when ADS bloggers wouldn't have a conflict. Perhaps lunch in the hotel restaurant in between the morning session and the 12:30 plenary on Friday or Saturday? His idea of a bloggers' hot spot sounds good, too.

[Russell]

I think the clear choice is to meet for a morning jog at around 6:30a on Saturday. =)

I'll second Neal's lunchtime suggestion. A bad point might be that some sessions do go until 12:00, and the poster session goes right up until the plenary. But hey, gotta make sacrifices somewhere. Also, Mark Liberman's plenary is on Satuday, so if he's joining in then I'm guessing Satuday is out (even though I'm sure his presentation was already finished two weeks ago...).

(5-7p on Friday is also good; I'll also toss in Satuday 4:30-5:30, though seems an odd time for a get-together.)

(I was going through our department's library for a big cleaning event, and found the program for the winter meeting from some year in the mid-60s. There were, IIRC, 7 sessions over three days.)

[The Tensor]

Hmm, it looks like we're going to have trouble accommodating everybody's schedule. I think Saturday lunch is out—it conflicts with Mark Liberman's Everything You Know About Linguistics Is Wrong speech. Workable suggestions so far are:

• Lunch Friday (but this conflicts with Carol Padden's plenary, which looks interesting)
• Drinks Friday 5-7 (but this conflicts with the word-of-the-year event)
• A designated lingblogger "spot". I think we should do this even if we also manage to have a scheduled get-together. Last year there was some extended hanging-out that took place in the hotel bar one evening and which I quite enjoyed.

The fact is, I don't have any plans for lunchtimes and evenings during the conference. My talk is on Thursday afternoon, so I'll be panicking until then, but after that I'll be free as a bird. If there end up being two lunches and a corner of the bar where whoever's free hangs out in the evenings, that'd work for me.

[Claire]

Are you in the session I'm moderating? That's on Thursday afternoon ...
Looks like the 6:30 jog is the best time :) I'm up for that if we don't go for more than an hour and the pollution isn't too bad. I'm not a big fan of jogging with beer, though.
Or we meet latish on Saturday night, ie after dinner, plenaries, etc. Would that work?

[The Tensor]

I'm in the "Modelling [sic] Phonological Learning" session (the phonesthemes talk).

I stand foursquare against jogging in all its forms, but I'd come to a late Saturday gathering.

[Semantic Compositions]

Shockingly, I'll be at LSA 2007 myself (I know, where I have I been for months?). Anaheim is in my backyard, and I'd be happy to help you plan this; drop me an e-mail.

[The Tensor]

Shockingly, I'll be at LSA 2007 myself (I know, where I have I been for months?)

Cool! You can tell us all your jury duty stories.