Annual Meeting Recap: A Look Back at SSP’s 37th Annual Meeting

By Heather Flanagan, Communications Committee:

Publishers and vendors, freelancers and editors, all came to Arlington, Virginia, last month for SSP’s 37^th Annual Meeting where the theme was “The New Big Picture: Connecting Diverse Perspectives”. Over several busy days more than 900 attendees and 150 speakers shared ideas, best practices, and the latest news in scholarly publishing.

It was a busy week highlighted by excellent keynote presentations led by librarian Charles Watkinson, writer Ken Auletta, and executive Jennifer Lawton, and engaging panel sessions. New this year was the real-time interaction of graphic reporter Greg Gersch who engaged with the SSP community in person and online to bring the ideas and themes of the meeting to life and color in real time with large graphic murals on public display throughout their creation.

Concurrent Sessions at this year’s annual meeting included such excellent topics as: Zen and the Art of Metadata Maintenance, New Product Development, Choosing the Right Technology, The Researcher’s New Big Picture, and more. In the session on new product development, representatives from several different vendors, societies and journals talked about their processes for determining if and when to add a new title to their product line.

In keeping with the theme of diverse perspective, the question of gender diversity received due attention. The meeting kicked off the diversity discussion with a presentation of the Demographics and Education of Scholarly Publishing and Communication Professionals by Dr. Amy Brand during the opening remarks. The second day of sessions also brought this discussion to a focused point by starting with a keynote from Jennifer Lawton. Lawton talked about her experiences from a career in technology at the executive level and path to career success in a highly entertaining and well-attended keynote session. From there, Mind the Gap brought together a panel of women later that day to talk about the challenges of being a woman in a leadership role in the publishing industry. The panelists discussed their own experiences, and offered advice to help other women find their own success in leadership

Ahead of the meeting several pre-meeting seminars were offered. The seminars included: The Business of Publishing and Journal Publishing — Operational Focus (both business development sessions), as well as Smart Linking and Supplemental Data and Implementing Next Generation ID Standards. Speakers and panelists encouraged frank and open discussion. Each of the seminars were well attended, with Implementing Next Generation ID Standards proving to be the most popular with 46 attendees coming to learn more about an important topic.

Unique to the 2015 Annual Meeting, SSP partnered with NASIG (formerly the North American Serials Interest Group) which delivered a full-day joint program, entitled “Evolving Information Policies & Their Implications: A Conversation for Librarians & Publishers” .   Thanks to good planning, the day-long event began on the morning of May 27 and ended just before the opening remarks of the Annual Meeting. With complementary organizational missions, meeting planners on both sides were excited to create a joint session and shared luncheon for both sets of attendees. It was an informal and informational sharing between librarians and publishers, and raised awareness of both organizations. The joint program was attended by 38 SSP registrants and an additional 200 NASIG meeting attendees.

Next year’s SSP annual meeting will be held from May 31, 2016 through June 3, 2016 in Vancouver, BC. Stay connected to SSP and SSPnet.org to learn more information as it becomes available.