Reflections on Internet Librarian 2008

I’ve now been home from IL2008 for about four days and I’m finally caught up with everything. Well, everything except for the much-needed blog post about the trip. I didn’t blog much while there, but I did Twitter a bunch. So, as a result, here’s the one long blog post about the experience this time around. So, in no particular order:

Michael’s engaged?

No, I’m not engaged. At least, not officially. For those of you that have been wondering here’s the story: My girlfriend Mary jokes with me that she’s "too old" to call me her "boyfriend" so when she introduces me she calls me her fiance. I have absolutely no problem with this at all. Eventually, we do plan on getting married but we figure we should at least live in the same state first. (She’s still in Colorado for reasons I won’t be getting into but it looks like she should be in Nebraska no later than this coming summer.)

During my Creative Commons presentation last Monday I, for a reason completely unknown to me, instead of saying what I usually say, "Mary, my girlfriend does the cataloging for this project," I instead said, "Mary, my fiance does the cataloging for this project." Honestly, I didn’t even think about it, it just happened.

Well, Iris and Cindi were in the audience and immediately did a double-take. Cindi then got on the Twitter. Here’s the result. (Read from the bottom up.) All happening while I’m still on stage completely unaware of what I’d done. While answering questions after my presentation someone cam up to me, put his hand on my shoulder and said, "I just wanted to let you know you’re the talk of Twitter right now." "For what?" I asked. "For announcing your engagement. Congratulations!" I paused and then started laughing.

So, that’s basically the story. I ended up explaining it to many people the rest of the conference and had people I didn’t know congratulating me on my engagement the rest of the week. Christa and I even ended up working the story into our Twitter presentation on Wednesday.

Moderating the Social Web track

At CIL2008 I had my speakers write their bios as haikus. This time, LOLCats. You can view them on SlideShare. ‘Nuff said.

FriendFeed & SlideShare

Due to changes in how Twitter worked I ended up having to pretty much move the tracking of the tweets from the conference to a FriendFeed room. Overall I think it was a success. Any future tweets labeled with the #il2008 hashtag will appear there but the individual twitter accounts that were there during the conference will no longer appear since future content will be irrelevant.

While at the conference I created a SlideShare event to group the presentations. No, I’m not trying to replace the collecting of presentations on the conference site, I just thought it would be fun to play with. Folks have added some presentations and I’ve added a few others that I found.

BTW: There’s already a FriendFeed room and SlideShare event for CIL2009.

Two links from Liz Lawley’s presentation

During Liz’s presentation she mentioned my Library Signage flickr group and I mentioned the AirPower wiki. You now have links to those resources.

Small groups & conversations

In the past I’ve done the huge groups of people taking over a restaurant thing and have enjoyed it. However, this time I thought the group just just getting a little too big. So, despite doing that one (as the previously linked photo shows) I instead decided to try to stick to groups of six or less. Generally this was a success and I think I had a better conference because of it. I was actually able to talk with people for long periods of time instead of shouting toward people for short periods of time. During one conversation topics ranged from changes at OCLC to saving civilization as we know it via libraries. Now that’s good conference conversation. Yes, karaoke looks like it was a lot of fun but I think I got more out of keeping it small.

Thank you note

During Colleen and Rudy‘s presentation I was handed this note. Wow! I never did get you name but thank you very much. You don’t know how much us presenters wonder some times just how much of an impact we’re making and something like this can make someone’s conference. It made mine.

Lunch with my publisher

On Tuesday I had lunch with Charles Harmon of Neal-Schuman, Inc. and received some great news: there will be a UK edition of Searching 2.0. Also, since returning I’ve received the author queries (notes from the copy editor asking for clarifications,) and have returned most of them to her. Just two more chapters to accept/edit the edits and then it’ll be off to layout and typesetting. At this point it’s scheduled to be released in February 2009.

On the sofa

Tuesday evening I was interview by the Shanachies on their sofa before 400+ people. I has happy to finally have this opportunity but I was not prepared for it. (All the other interviewees were given advance warning.) In the end I was a little too pessimistic when asked about the future of libraries. I’d like to take this opportunity to clarify what I said.

First of all, I don’t like predicting the future so I always freeze a little when asked to do so. Second, I don’t think libraries are ever going to disappear. Change, yes. but not go away all together. However, with the economy heading in the direction it is right now I think we may need to take a second look at much of what we’re doing right now and regroup to defend ourselves against the cuts that are sure to come. Grand ideas are good and needed but we must not forget the small/rural libraries that are already under-funded if we are to survive. I just don’t want us to loose sight of reality when dreaming the big dreams. The next few years will be tough ones for libraries and we shouldn’t forget that.

Suggestions for future conferences

You probably don’t know this but moderators get to have lunch with conference chair Jane Dysart on the day they’re moderating. The topics of discussion is usually what we think of the conference this time around, what speakers have done great and should be invited back, and who, maybe, should not. She also wants to know what we think should be dine differently in the future. I had two suggestions.

First, schedule a live recording of Uncontrolled Vocabulary as an actual conference event. Set up a table and some microphones and do it live a la a live recording of TWiT or Diggnation. Maybe even take questions and comments from the audience. I think it would be a blast.

Second, panels. On each day, in each track, have one of the sessions be a three- to four-person panel on a topic. The moderator would ask the questions and the panel can answer. Also, be sure to leave enough time for the audience to ask some questions and maybe have the panelists ask questions of each other. Be sure to not schedule panels in two tracks at the same time so someone could, should they choose to do so, just attend panel-based sessions all day.

Both ideas seemed to be liked by Jane. We’ll see what happens at CIL2009.

CC needs 45 minutes

Speaking of ideas for Jane, I keep pushing her that I need a full 45-minute session to explain the importance of Creative Commons. Both my previous 15 minute cybertour and the 20 minutes I had this time around were well received but I didn’t have enough time. Jane thinks that the session needs a "better title" than "Participating in the Creative Commons" before that will happen. Please post any and all suggestions in the comments. Better yet, e-mail Jane and let her know I deserve a full session. 😉

Hey, that’s me

My photos from the conference have been posted to flickr. IMHO some of them were spectacular. Particularly this one and this one. While on the plane from Monterey to Denver I was sorting through them and heard from across the aisle "hey, that’s me." I’ll just add that as a result of that conversation us folks running Nebraska Learns 2.0 now know that we’re not the only ones with particular problems.

Final thoughts

This conference was just as much fun, and as much work, as it has been in the past. However, I can see that my focus and what I’m trying to get out of conference is changing slightly. The smaller groups were definitely a plus. I’m also noticing that it seems like I’m moving from being there for myself to being there to help others get as much out of the conference as they can. Wether it’s presenting, moderating, or meeting with new people and turning them into new friends and new colleagues.

I believe that each of us gets what we need out of a conference such as Internet Librarian. If you don’t feel you did, think about what you did and didn’t do while you were there and try a different way of looking at things and participating next time. Eventually you’ll find your groove.