In professional marketing-oriented focus groups, the composition of the group is critically important and is usually determined by what sort of results you want from the research. For example, focus groups are often used to compare the opinions of different constituencies, which means you need keep the constituences separated in the groups. For example, when we used focus groups to help plan our new cafe, we used separate groups for on- and off-campus groups so we could see where their opinions coincided and where they differed.

The woman who managed our groups for us always did separate groups for men and women on the grounds that men and women give different opinions when they are in separate groups than when they are together. This didn't seem very PC, but after reviewing the difference between our women's groups and men's groups I ended up strongly endorsing the practice.

I'm not totally clear on the funciton of CAA groups so I can really make recommendations for them. But I can think of a number of constituencies for AMICO that might attend CAA and would probably have very different approaches to AMICO. Here are some possible sub-groups to explore with my own observations of them:

1. Senior art history faculty. These people tend to be computer-phobic and more sceptical of using new technologies in teaching but are often the very influential in art history departments and with library administrators.

2. Junior art history faculty. These faculty members often do not have tenure and are less influential, but are much more interested in using technology in creative ways and more likely to consider such uses a plus in forwarding their careers.

3. Visual Collections Librarians. These people are often very progressive about using technology but have big issues about copyright and budget that will almost certainly have a strong impact on AMICO. They tend to be at the radical extreme of fair use issues, holding that all educational uses of visual images is fair use and outside copyright. They also are very concerned about costs as the cost of AMICO will impact them much more directly than groups 1 and 2.

4. Slide Librarians and Slide Curators. The difference between groups 3 and 4 is often coded in their titles and can indicate a dividing line in the profession. Group 3 sees digitization and computerization as a means to advance their profession; group 4 is much more likely to see it as a threat to their jobs and status.

5. Academic artists. Although they often teach in the same departments as 1 and 2, they shouldn't be lumped together with them. Their interest in something like AMICO is very different as they are often involved in the computer manipulaiton of images in their own art work. This is very hot in the field these days.

6. Museum people. A bit of an out-group at CAA. Academics still tend to look down on museum curators as intellectually inferior, which creates some tension and resentment that go back decades. Things that museum professionals embrace often look "intellectually soft" or even corrupt to academics. For example, academics tend to think of museum publishing as a kind of vanity press for work that wouldn't make it in the world of academia.

The political splits in CAA tend to be between traditional connosseurship and the kind of post-modern heavily political Frence-influenced approach when dominates the conference. Other strong splits are between groups 1 and 2 and 5 on the one hand and 1,2, and 5 and 6 on the other. We should keep in mind that the political differences will strong influence the discussions in some situations.