Ladies and Gentlemen, I have been to the best conference in my expierience.
Unfortunately, I missed the first day due to my travel insanity (thank you Delta & Hartsfield-Jackson). I arrived late Monday night and was up early the next morning to dive in. I attended:
Challenges of Cyberinfrastructre & Choices for Libraries
Podcasting & Videocasting
MySpace & Facebook (presented)
Partnerships in Archiving
Web Presence for Internet Librarians
Technology Training in a Library 2.0 World
Training Tutorial Tour & Tips
Comparing Book Search Engines
Social Computing & the Info Pro
Rather than do a blow-by-blow of all the sessions I attended, let me tell you what I gleaned from this experience:
- If possible, plan out every last little detail of your trip the moment you know you’re going. Get flights, hotels, restaurants, wifi access, and all that jazz done as soon as possible. And then immediately throw out all the plans (emotionally, at least), because it will all change the moment you leave your house.
- The conference is about learning things, yes. But more important than that is meeting cool people–of which there were an abundance at this conference. I was able to walk up to any group of people and immediately start carrying on conversation about what we are doing well, what we want to change, and where we think all this stuff is going.
- I’m not the only one with my attitudes/thoughts/opinions. A lot of folks share the same ideals about usability, accessibility, user-centered service, and the future of technology in libraries.
- The vendor representatives will listen if you gripe about their databases–most of them gave me their cards and an opportunity to contact them for more support. They should be listening to us, their users, for what would be useful in their databases, and which parts of their interfaces suck.
- There are a lot of non-librarians who are interested in our work, our needs, and our services.
- There are a lot of awesome librarians doing some amazing things to provide users with tools and services that they need in innovative ways.
Videos are up on YouTube and pics are on flickr.
Everyone smile and say “Promotion & Tenure!” Go to flickr and note yourself in this photo!
