AMIA’s Annual Conference brings together media professionals from around the world to address the best ways to preserve and provide access to our media heritage.

More than 650 professionals representing the world’s major media institutions gather each year for AMIA’s annual conference.  Attendees represent all areas of the community-corporate and national archives, media companies, libraries, historical societies, service providers, universities, and more.  Workshops, screenings, and more than 60 sessions programmed by working archivists to address the best ways to preserve and provide access to our media.

2020 Conference:  Online, November 17-20

While everyone’s first choice would be to meet in person, the pandemic makes a virtual event the safest way to be together this year. As we celebrate our 30th anniversary, starting in November this year, we do believe this is an opportunity to reimagine the conference as an online event that allows broader participation and new voices, is more affordable to attend, and can help us model ways of keeping what we learn as part of our next in-person experience.

The conference will be restructured a bit to make sure that content is delivered in digestible segments, with a real focus on offering opportunities to participate virtually in conversations with colleagues. Networking and personal interaction is a cornerstone of the conference and we want to provide as many opportunities as we can for attendees to connect over the emerging and salient topics in our field.

This is a test

As we’ve all attended more virtual events this year, one of the biggest lessons we’ve learned is that our in-person schedule doesn’t always translate well into a virtual event. It’s not uncommon at AMIA to start at 8am and leave our last event after 10pm – it’s a hard schedule to follow in front of a screen! It’s impossible when you factor in different time zones, work locations, and balancing new demands on your time.

Even more than the difficulty in scheduling, though, is wanting to connect more with colleagues we won’t be able to see this year! With everyone in differing (and often changing) stages of returning to the workplace, and new challenges coming at us every day, the ability to learn from and communicate with each other is paramount.

So, we are very happy to announce that in addition to the conference coming November 17-20, AMIA will have another virtual event in April, 2021 leading up (we hope!) to an in-person conference in November, 2021.  The April conference will be similar to the November conference with sessions, workshops, and screenings and the CFP will go out the first week in December.

More details about these events will follow shortly.

ARSC's 55th Annual Conference will be virtual!

ARSC is pleased to announce that it will host a virtual conference, May 13-15, 2021.
The virtual conference will include live presentations in an online conference platform, and recorded presentations made available for on-demand viewing in the Aviary online platform.

The call for virtual presentations is now open until January 4, 2021.

Please stay tuned for additional information.

We look forward to seeing you online in 2021!