Unconferences Rock!

Two days ago I spent an amazing day in Manhattan, KS with about 99 of the most amazing professional colleagues at the Library Camp Kansas unconference. What's an unconference you ask, it's the best parts of the conference and nothing but. There are no presentations, there are no people spending a half-hour just talking about what they do at their library, just conversation, conversation, and more conversation. Topics were suggested by the attendees in advance but the first business of the day was to decide, on the spot, what we wanted to talk about. There were three sessions, morning, lunch, and afternoon and in each case there were 5-7 topics to pick from. As a topic suggester, I got to be the leader of the morning talk about "cheap and inexpensive tools" (unofficially known as "cheap & inexpensive with Michael") and the lunchtime discussion of Creative Commons. In the afternoon I participated in the discussion of "2.0" issues. For those that didn't attend, most of the notes from the sessions have been posted on the unconference's wiki I've already linked to. Photos from the event can be found in flickr of course. If you're looking for other blog posts and media from attendees search your favorite places for the tag "libcampks2008".

There is no real way to express how fun this was and how re-energizing the whole experience was for me. For my readers in Nebraska, keep an eye on the NLC blog as there's already a small group working on bringing such and unconference to the state in the Fall. Once it's announced sign up fast as space will be limited.