ALA Midwinter 2007 @ Seattle

Well, I’m back from Seattle. I was sick the whole time, but that didn’t stop me from having a wonderful time. I’ve been to many conferences so far since being a librarian now for almost 5 years, and I have to say that this was one of the most positive, uplifting conferences I have attended. Here are some notes, pictures, and more than you could probably ever want to know about my Midwinter experience.

Friday, January 19

1) Emerging Leaders Program @ the Seattle Public Library.

The program was a full day packed with speakers, small and large group discussions, and several receptions. We met with:

• Leslie Burger, ALA President
• Connie Paul, Executive Director of the Central Jersey Regional Library Cooperative. She’s the one pretty much running this whole thing.
• Pat Tumulty, Executive Director of the New Jersey Library Association. She spoke about getting involved in local chapters.
• Emily Sheketoff, ALA Washington Office Director. She provided us wtih an overview of the ALA Governance Sturcture and Organization
• Maureen Sullivan, Leadership Consultant. She’s working with all the teams and providing support.
• Jenny Levine, The Shifted Librarian and in ALA’s Office of IT Policy (OITP). Jenny set up the Emerging Leaders’ wiki and is providing technical support as needed.
• Our own teams. I am on Project M. Most of our work will be done within some online project management software called BaseCamp. Updates will get posted from time to time on the wiki for anyone to follow. We will be doing a poster session at ALA Annual in Washington DC, and will be working on our project through fruition.

Michelle Boule, a friend of mine and one of the Emerging Leaders, wrote an article about the program for the ALA Tech Source blog.

2) LITA Happy Hour – This was a fun event as usual. It took place at the Six Arms on 300 E. Pike Street. I saw lots of folks I knew and met new people. Networking with LITA folks is always great.

Saturday, January 20

1) “Stay Ahead of the Curve: Keeping the Job You Love”, sponsored by the ALA HRDR Placement Center. This session discussed how we all spend time and energy trying to land the perfect job, but we don’t always focus on keeping the job we worked so hard to get. We were presented with a road map for staying on track and given information on

• Being a team player
• Learning how to keep track of your learning, contributions and accomplishments
• Marketing yourself
• Handling performance reviews
• Learning when to ask questions and when to just listen to others
• Learning how to ask for feedback
• Surviving the politics
• Making yourself a valuable asset to the organization, and becoming indispensable!

One piece of valuable information in particular that I took away from this session was to try and look at things differently. For example, in WML, we have had LOTS of staff turnover. Instead of worrying about all the extra work I am going to have to pick up while we try to fill that person’s position, look at it as I am learning some new skills that will make me more marketable. I also won a book as a door prize: Sink or Swim.

2) “The Social Library 2.0 in Action” – I saw Stephen Abram, Vice President Innovation at SirsiDynix, speak at the mini “SirsiDynix Institute” booth in the vendors area. I’ve heard him speak before, and it’s always engaging and motivating. His talk was podcasted and is available online. There are supplemental materials as well.

3) Ebsco Academic Librarian Luncheon – The food was great and I learned a few things about Business Source Premier vs. Complete. They talked about many new features coming soon.

4) Advocacy Institute Followup: Creating Advocacy Leaders – This session was one that I wasn’t sure if I wanted to attend, but am glad that I did. I learned about a variety of ways to promote the library, library services, and more. The focus did seem to be on public libraries, but I had a great opportunity to meet with some other academic librarians and hear what they were doing. I have tons of notes in this huge advocacy folder they gave us. I hope to share them with Celia Walker at some point.

5) David Pogue on Windows Vista – This was probably one of the things that made the trip and conference so special. David Pogue, a technology columnist for the New York Times, spoke about Windows Vista, the new OS that will be available at the end of January for home use. I have been reading Circuits for many years and have more recently been enjoying David Pogue’s blog postings and hilarious and informative podcasts.

He showed us his Windows Vista podacst (and I have to mention that he was running Vista on his Mac). Very funny stuff! It was great to hear him speak – he could have spoken on almost any topic and I would have showed up. And then he sang for us. That’s right. He sang for us many of his spoof songs. There was wine and cheese and fruit, and then we got free autographed copies of his latest book, Windows Vista: The Missing Manual by O’Reilly Press. Here is a great interview between Tom Peters and David Pogue, on ALA TechSource.

Things I learned about Vista:

• It took 15 million lines of code and 5 years to build.
• Security is much improved, and there is a thing called Windows Defender, a built-in spyware protector. It’s a bit annoying, but it does protect your computer from being taken over by evil spyware. For example, anytime you try to change the settings to your computer, the screen grays out and a window pops up asking you if you really want to do this (that is, it’s making sure you are a real person and not some spyware).
• David talked a bit about spam and hackers, and how they find out what the vulnerabilities are, and that 87% of all email today is spam.
• Address space randomization (ASR)
• He commented often on its beauty and elegance, and how he felt it ripped off Mac OSX. (Daivd is an avid Mac user so he might be just a tad biased. ;-)
• There are 9 editions of Vista, 5 of which are in the US: Basic, Premium, Home, Business, and Ultimate. The other 4 versions are being sold overseas.
• Aero
• Vista has huge horsepower – it’s not for the computers weak of heart. Requires 2GB of memory, and users will need a state of the art graphics card (I need this stuff for World of Warcraft already, otherwise game play lags bigtime.)
• He estimates that only 5% of users will upgrade. And after January 31, 2007, all new computers will come with Vista already installed on it.
• He talked about how Sleepmode will have priority over all other functions – it’s sort of a hybrid of standby and hibernate, but won’t leave you with a dead laptop if you close the lid before it actually goes to sleep. That will be a nice improvement!
• David also talked about the differencs between the various US versions – why someone would want to purchase one over another. The Ultimate version has all the features.
• He showed many nefty keystrokes on how to do things much quicker than with a mouse. It’s as if we are going back to command line. But for the less savvy users, they will still be able to navigate and do almost everything without knowing the special keystrokes.
• Vista has a speech recognition package built-in.
• It looks very cool!

6) Thomson Scientific Reception @ Space Needle – I hooked up with Amia Baker (whom I was rooming with), Marshall and Zora Breeding, Chris and Yuh-Fen Benda, Don Jones, Peg Earheart, and others at the reception at the top of the Space Needle. The food was wonderful, the view was amazing, and it was fun talking about how the conference was going so far.

 

 

Sunday, January 21

1) LITA’s Top Tech Trends – This was LITA’s usual panel of experts in the library field, with our own Marshall Breeding included. I took copious notes, but there were lots of people who reported on what people said on the LITA blog, so why reinvent the wheel? I have put direct links to what the experts had to say here for your convenience. Also, the session was podcasted in several easy to digest sections. Only 4 of the 8 experts were present, hence only 4 podcasts. Besides Marshall, I also saw Dale Poulter at this session.

• Sarah Houghton-Jan’s Top Tech Trend (not present, but posted trends on blog)
• Thomas Dowling’s Top Tech Trends (not present, but posted trends on blog)
• Eric Lease Morgan’s Top Tech Trends (not present, but posted trends on blog)
• Roy Tennant’s Top Tech Trends (not present, but posted trends on blog)
• Marshall Breeding’s Top Tech Trends (mp3)
• Clifford Lynch’s Top Tech Trends (mp3)
• Karen Schneider’s Top Tech Trends (mp3)
• Andrew Pace’s Top Tech Trends (mp3)

 

2) LITA Program Planning Committee Meeting (3 hours). In this group, we evaluate and help to improve programs proposed by the LITA interest groups and committees as well as other groups looking for co-sponsorship for ALA annual conferences and preconference institutes. It’s a lot of work, but I really enjoy it. I am a liaison to the LITA Open Source Systems Interest Group who typically do about 4-6 programs and preconferences each year at Anuual.

3) I did have a few opportunites to walk around and visit with vendors, primarily the business resources that we either subscribe to or are interested in for the Walker Management Library. I stopped the Elsevier booth just as they were getting ready to do a brief 30 minute session on getting published. The audience had an opportunity to talk with the editors about submitting, coming up with ideas, and other helpful tips on making it in the publishing world.

4) ALA President’s Program, “Learn to FISH!” – This was a wonderful program! Deena Ebbert was an enthusiastic speaker and very positive. The session was so uplifting (and not only because I got tossed a purple fish.) She reminded us that we are more than a job description. We are more than a piece of paper. We are unique and talented people, and sometimes we forget to let ourselves come out. “You got it. What’s ya going to do with it?”

This whole presentation was based on the FISH! Philosophy which goes back to the Pike Place Fish Market where the fish monglers worked long, hard, smelly grueling days and didn’t get much reward. They tried to make it more fun and were successful in doing so. Someone else came along, saw what they were doing, and called this the FISH Philosophy and wrote a very popular book about it.

What is this philosphy that has been embraced by Amazon, Microsoft, and many other corporations? According to the FISH! site,

FISH! is a skill that provides the process, tools and language to generate the skills necessary to design a workplace full of inspiration, creativity and innovation. FISH! creates a common language. A language that will help improve your culture by using four simple practices – Be There, Play, Make Their Day and Choose Your Attitude. FISH! is a wisdom that everyone can embrace. It is an invitation that enables people to care about each other and their commitments. FISH! is an ongoing journey that spawns all industries and communities around the world. It is not a fad. It is a practice and a skill that evolves over time creating a positive workplace and a vibrant culture each time it is embraced.

I thought that these 4 basic principles – Be there, play, make their day, and choose your attitude – are wonderful and left me envigorated. I don’t think that “play” is encouraged enough in libraries, especially academic ones. I personally believe that people learn best when it’s hands-on, when they are engaged and involved in the learning process. You have to take time to play. For me, it’s playing with emerging technologies. I’m not an expert at these things. I don’t know all there is to know. I just take the time to play with things, see what they do, what they don’t do, and look at what I can take from it to help me improve my work environment or assist my colleagues. Playing leads to innovation and creativity, two things I value and need in my life in order to contribute to my happiness.

Deena also reminded us to bring our uniqueness with us everywhere we go. Lean into our fears, don’t be afraid of them. It will make us stronger. Remember that it’s often the little things that make a difference.

She said we shouldn’t be afraid to admit this: “I take pride in the work I do, and when someone appreciates it, it makes me feel worthwhile.”

Monday, January 22

1) LITA Town Hall – This was a lively session after a wonderful breakfast with LITA colleagues. There was a huge turnout, and we got together in groups to talk about what we like about LITA, what we would like to see more of, and where we think LITA should focus its attention for the future. Listen to Vice President of LITA Mark Beatty and LITA Emerging Leader Michelle Boule give a post-Town Hall breakdown (mp3) of what happened during the meeting, why LITA members Have More Fun, and what LITA members can look forward to in the coming year.

 

2) LITA Program Planning Committee Meeting (3 hours)

3) LAMA Dialog with the Directors Discussion Group: Mind the Generational Gap in Staff – There were about 70 people who attended this lively but moderated discussion on generational differences in current library staff, and the newer librarians entering the workforce. Flo Wilson also attended this session. =)