ISSN 1039-3498 | no. 44 | April 2000
Kinetica Annual Users Meeting
This years Kinetica Annual Users Meeting will be held in the Hotel Sofitel, Melbourne, on 28 and 29 August. It will be chaired by Steve OConnor of CAVAL, who accepted the invitation of the Kinetica Advisory Committee (KAC) to perform this task.
Arrangements for the meeting were discussed at the February meeting of the KAC. In formulating advice on the structure and agenda of this years meeting, KAC members considered feedback on the 1999 Kinetica Annual Users Meeting. Overall feedback was positive, with some specific comments providing useful guidance for the planning of this years meeting.
The following comments taken from the survey of attendees of the 1999 meeting will be particularly valuable in developing the final agenda: cataloguing issues dominated, not enough time was devoted to Kinetica Document Delivery; less presentations by Kinetica staff and more opportunity for customers to ask questions; less background information about Kineticausers should know all this if they have been keeping up to date with the discussion list; too much emphasis placed on the Client; more time devoted to parallel sessions since a lot of our users got a lot out of it; and agenda is balanced so that all three services have equal weighting.
Some 1999 meeting attendees also commented on the general conduct of the meeting, and these points will be noted for this year: chairperson to insist that people use microphone or Kinetica staff to walk around with microphones (sometimes difficult when few Kinetica staff are available); possibility of Kinetica staff to be present during parallel sessions to answer questions; weed out questions on notice so that only general questions are presented; and possibility of questions on notice to be available at the registration desk.
In planning the meeting, KAC members provided some suggestions for incorporating this user feedback. These included inviting members of Expert Advisory Groups and state and territory user groups to report on major issues for their groups, so as to reduce the part played by Kinetica staff in reporting activities. Parallel sessions will continue to discuss the same topics, although more time will be allowed for preparation and discussion of their reports. This year there will be four parallel sessions, which should result in smaller groups, making it easier for people to participate in the discussions.
More information about the meeting and an invitation to nominate agenda items will be distributed via Kinetica-L.
Please address any comments and enquiries to The Editor, Gateways: tford@nla.gov.au