LMCC 2018 - Same Great Conference, New Location

After three years in Addison, Texas, LMCC moved to a new location in 2018. We moved all the way from Texas to downtown St. Louis, Missouri at the Hyatt Regency St. Louis Arch on November 13th and 14th. In our continued commitment to accommodate more library marketing pros to attend, our move to St. Louis allowed us to invite over 400 attendees to join us for the conference.

As always, we solicited a wide range of proposals on marketing and communication topics. The sessions on day one covered the areas of PR, graphic design, social media, and marketing strategies. On day two of the conference, we dove into sessions about partnerships, advocacy, focusing on the user, internal marketing, and promoting library programs and services. We once again received a large number of excellent submissions for our conference program team to curate, allowing them to build another educational and inspirational event for library marketing professionals.

Besides moving to a new location, the 2018 conference saw other changes and developments from previous conferences. As the first conference to be held since the announcement at the 2017 event that the Library Marketing Conference Group formed a registered, 501(3)c nonprofit, this brought new opportunities and ideas for future.

The LMC Group actively recruited new volunteers for all positions both during and after the 2017 conference. It was important to bring new perspectives, ideas, and energy to all our teams and let many of our original start-up team of volunteers transition to other roles and opportunities. In 2018 Christina Pryor at the University of Missouri J. Otto Lottes Health Sciences Library agreed to serve as conference chair. Chris was new to LMCC and helped the transition from our original volunteer group. Chris came to her role as chair with decades of experience running conferences and large-scale events. Chris could not have done it without the support of an amazing group of committed volunteers including a top notch conference management team who had several returning LMCC volunteer ‘veterans’ and eager newcomers alike: Rosan Mitola, Maria Atilano, Karen Robinson, Jody Mitori, and Christine Deaver.

Thank you to all of the amazing volunteers who made the 2018 conference an amazing success! LMCC continues to be a volunteer-led event and organization. Logistics, hotel details, food, and so many other details that make an event this size run were handled by our incredibly capable partners, and association manager, Amigos Library Services. We thank all of our generous sponsors and partners too! Our attendees wouldn’t have nearly as much fun without all of this crucial help and support!

Keynotes

The 2018 conference team launched the LMCC Inaugural President’s Program sponsored by Gale, a Cengage Company. Conference attendees were greeted on day one of the 2018 conference with an entertaining and energizing interview of Cordelia Anderson (formerly of the Charlotte Mecklenburg Library) by the LMCC Group’s President Jennifer Burke.

To kickoff the second day of the conference, attendees heard from Todd Baker, Vice President and Senior Strategist at Milwaukee Direct Marketing, who spoke about experiential marketing.

Program

Each day of the conference opened with a keynote session followed by a multi-track lineup of presentations and panels to keep attendees busy. 

2018 Tracks Included:

• Communications and PR
• Graphic desk and technology
• Social media
• Marketing strategies and plans
• Partnerships and advocacy
• Engagement and focus on user
• Internal marketing
•  Promoting library programs and services