Internet Librarian Preliminary Report

Yes, I know, IL08 is over, but I haven't blogged it at all. Mostly because it wasn't worth fighting over the one cord in the hotel room (really, Monterey Marriott? No wireless for customers? And charging for the 'net? Fail) and the wireless at the conference was patchy, and I rarely carry my laptop with me.


Initial report? Huge success. Our preconference workshop went over pretty well to the 10-12 participants, though they were sort of quiet (as opposed to us raucous presenters. Put Kenley Neufeld, Courtney Stephens, myself, Laura Carscaddon and Jezmynne Westcott on the same panel and you get so much energy it makes the rest few the planet look like they're on Valium). The presentation Rudy Leon and I gave on bridging the gap between the 1.8 user and the 2.0 world got good reviews (at least from the folks I met), and some lovely observer left me a note full of nice feedback that I now have tacked up on my office wall. Given that these were my very first actual speaking presentations on a national scale (I don't count the poster session at ALA), I think I did pretty well. Hooray for not falling on my face in front of the people I respect most in LibraryLand!


The best part of the conference for me, aside from all of these brilliant, active librarians in one spot, was getting to "meat" my online network. Believe it or not, my witty, brilliant, funny, inspiring and productive people are even more spectacular in person. Social networks like twitter and friendfeed made me much less shy about approaching people and saying hello and lent a great personality aspect to the conference where folks showcased their professional talents.


More from me on IL later, but if you run a search on Flickr for IL08 or IL2008 (and various variations of Internet Librarian 2008), you'll get a good feel for how things went down in Monterey.

Comments

lnorvig said…
So sorry I didn't get to meet you - I was only there on Wednesday. Is your 1.8 to 2.0 talk on slideshare? Would like to hear more about that - our patron base is a strange mix of luddites and millenials and I need to be spearheading a lot of 2.0 stuff STAT.

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