Conference Wrap

Many totally awesome and cool people attended the conference. It was actually two conferences in one, two conference back to back, with 6 hours of overlap. Between class time and other activities they were in attendance between 9 and 14 hours a day. Most of the attendees work in libraries but do not have a Master’s in librarianship. They need all the basics and that’s what this conference is about.

I presented for an hour on E-rate, two hours on Library 2.0 (RSS, blogs, podcasting [I played GrammarGirl for them], YouTube [I played Mentos and Diet Coke for them], Flickr, a lot of MySpace, a little Facebook [i played TextTwirl for them]) – i.e. an intro to the Cool Cat stuff and specifically how libraries can, have and are using those technologies to meet patrons where they are and deliver services, and how librarians can use these technologies to keep themselves informed on professional matters. Seriously, it was useful, I didn’t just play up there – except maybe for the TextTwirl part. Also, I spoke on the library for the blind.

One thing, it was cold in the reception area where we conference planners spent most of our days. At the last second walking out the door at home I took a black wrap that some friends living in Kuwait had brought to my mother as a gift, just in case. I needed it every day. By the end of the week I’d figured out this sexy little sophisticated way to wing it over my shoulder.

One attendee whom I shall call Astute and Brilliant (AB) talked to me throughout the conference about various topics, like she grabbed me after the Cool Cat presentation to ask “Just what IS del.icio.us?” She had this totally awesome pin she’d make herself out of dyed alpaca wool. At the end of the conference she came up to me, told me I was the best thing that happened to her all week, and pinned the pin on my sexy sophisticated black wrap where it totally made the outfit. AB rocks. If she joins Facebook I will totally be sending her muppets and waiting to see what dictator she is.

This makes up for the guy who, when I was in the middle of a 2-hour presentation to 120 people, pointed at the screen and said, with no humor whatsoever, loud enough so that everyone could hear, “You misspelled copyright.”