For years professional societies, in behalf of their members, have been probing the many and varied information sources relevant to the purposes of the society and its membership. And having ingested and digested the information gleaned from that probing, they have packaged their findings and regurgitated same to their members. And, although that regurgitation is now a mix of paper and bytes, the central idea of association ingestion and regurgitation remains. And I would suggest that it is time to revisit that idea.

What validates the revisitation is the fact that the individual professional, whether in solo or departmental practice, can now directly access the same informational sources which feed the association's investigations. More important, the individual researcher can follow the links exactly as suggested by the specific research question. The association is obliged to generalize.

Furthermore, that individual can add links to websites reflecting whatever may come from his/her research. Thus our collective sense of what is current is almost instantly transcribed to researcher's keyboard. Professional societies on the other hand, are geared to a fixed schedule of the production and distribution of paper/bytes which are, ipso facto, outdated on the first day after publication.

This technology-generated change has enormous implications for the function of professional societies. For years they have, in their various journals and technical reports, served an informational need. Created for that purpose, they have gathered and distributed information which the individual professional could not do, or perhaps more accurately, did not have the time to do. The historical need for information still exists, but the manner in which that need can be served has been transmorgrified.

Another traditional function of our professional societies is the Annual Conference. Typically this is a huge part of the budget of almost any kind of association, professional or otherwise. Again, the new technology obliges us to examine the conference, as well as the publications.

We need to start with a look at WHY we gather together annually. Why do professional societies and trade associations, and their members, spend millions upon millions of dollars gathered together in some city for a period of three or four days, every year?

Our first answer is that we meet to learn. From their very beginnings our societies and associations have brought members together periodically to learn from the experiences of others - so that we might apply that learning to our own professional practice. And we will continue to "meet to learn" for, indeed, we do learn from one another. A second answer, nearly as important as the first, is that we meet to affirm the reality of our "community". The sense of belonging is a basic element of all social structure.

But now comes the next question: with the advances in computer technology, and the rapid growth in the use of such systems as the internet, newsgroups, and listservers, have we not now reached the point where we need to re-examine the whole expensive apparatus of the "national conference"?

First, the number, and character, of places where we can "meet to learn" has grown exponentially. We now have audio conferencing, and teleconferencing. We have limited term listserves created for the purpose of brainstorming specific subjects in great detail. One technical paper, authored by one professional, can be uploaded to one website. And should readers find it of major utility, other webmasters could, and do, link that one page to their own website. Thus in matter of two days, or even two hours, this new contribution will have been shared by many more people than can possibly gather together physically in one city at one time.

But there remains, of course, a powerful reason for gathering that has relatively little to do with learning. We gather to affirm and celebrate our professional community. Indeed, this may be the major reason.

It is possible that people attending conferences do, in fact, learn from the presentation of papers, but increasingly conference attendees learn from the sources now available to them on the world wide web. And as they do, they come to look more for the informal socializing opportunity than for the simulated classroom where papers, often previously seen online, are read. What sustains this format is the fact that many attendees are funded by their companies, or departments, and the auditors need evidence that four sessions on Subject A, and three sessions on Subject B were attened.

I'm not especially sanguine that professional societies, within the constraints of their own decision making processes, can make the changes that will reflect and utilize our new means of communication. All such institutions as society creates come into being as a response to a need, or an oppotunity. They grow and they flourish. But over time, the needs and opportunities change, usually faster than the societies can adjust. And the societies, absent significant structural change, wither to the level of ceremony and habit.