Yesterday was just as fun as the rest of the conference. I started with my usual coffee and WiFi at Plumes followed quickly by the credit card crisis. The opening keynote with Clifford Lynch was not nearly as entertaining as the one with J.A. Jance was but, despite some people finding him predictable and boring, I enjoyed it. (That’s my story and I’m sticking to it.)
Two sessions later I was off to a very quick lunch fish & chips at Britannia Arms with Karen and Michelle. The rush was due to the fact that I needed to be back for my Flickr presentation with Michael Porter. Turns out that our three non-US co-presenters were not just from out of the country but were actually out of the country. They all had sent in pre-recorded talks during which Michael changed the slides at pre-determined times. Yes folks, this was a surprise even to me! However, it all worked out great and, since I was the last in line for actually presenting, it did make sure that three of the five of us didn’t go over their allotted time. 😉
Michael and the others did the high-level stuff about flickr and I did the “fluff”. But all my stuff wasn’t total fluff. There was an audible “wow” when I showed what the Westmont Public Library was doing with flickr and their new acquisitions.
I then attended the MySpace & Facebook session in which I learned a few new things that I’ll be checking out when I get back. (Maybe I’ll even get a Facebook account…) I had my power strip with me today and at one point there were eleven laptops in the room’s front row with seven of them plugged into my powerstrip. I was planning on attending Meridith’s RSS & Javascript Cookbook session but it turned out that most of what she was covering I’d done in my pre-conference so I decided to go back and collapse in my room for a while.
From 6-8pm was the speaker’s reception up on the top floor of the Marriott. Great nibbles and conversation were had by (I assume) all. I did get a short vid of the Monterey Bay while the sun was still up. (The narration turned out horribly but I didn’t want to bother to redo it.)
After the reception many of us ended up back at the Crown & Anchor for dinner, libations, and conversation. I finally gave up at about 11:30 and crashed back in the room about 12:30am.
As exhausted as I am this morning, I can’t stress how much I enjoy going out with everyone. On one level, networking with everyone here and meeting new people makes the conference more worthwhile than the official sessions. For those of you that are here through tonight and haven’t gone out with others yet, please do so. Despite how tired you’ll be tomorrow, it is definitely worth it.
It was so excellent to be able to share flickr stuff at IL! I’m happy to report that I’ve had several folks contact me using their new accounts. We done good!
Now, dude, the description said from day one that the kind folks from The National Library of Australia and The University of Barcelona were contributing “Entertaining recorded stories”. You read that before our presentation, right? Nobody was misleading as far as I can tell.
http://www.flickr.com/photos/libraryman/172103267/
Also, I was watching the clock during my bit. The recorded sessions were shorter than expected as well. Sooo… you actually had more than your alloted time by my calculations.
Be cool, man! I guess if that was all meant to be funny and I just missed it, sorry. I worked my hump off putting this one together, the crowd response was so positive and it worked so well that I may be a little careful to gaurd it. How un-2.0 of that is me? 🙂
Whoops! I didn’t sign that last comment, my bad. It’s me, Michael Porter. 🙂
Michael, I wasn’t upset at all. I found it all fun and interesting. I did miss the “recorded stories” bit but even so, I don’t feel anyone was misled, especially not me as I found it a welcome surprise. It was meant to be funny, there was a 😉 at the end of that paragraph…