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This ALA was a particularly good one for me… in fact, I think it was the best one I have attended!

I was involved with two programs, both of which went well. I presented a poster on my microtext/govdoc student supervision system twice, and got great responses from the people who stopped by. The Emerging Leaders program has concluded, and it was nice to be able to show the Intellectual Freedom Round Table the project we had worked on for them, to tell the LITA Board about my experiences, and to see the others in the program again. The meetings that I attended were well run and we accomplished things that needed to be done in person. I was able to attend two vendor breakfasts and see Susan win her award. Virtual participation is a hot topic, and is beginning to seem like a potentially viable option. And I met many, many people who before I only knew online.

I know I tend to go into detail, so I’ve spared you that here. If you want to see more, here are my posts:

• Maureen Sullivan on Emerging Leaders: Leadership Principles and Practice
• Leslie Burger on Transforming ALA
• If We Don’t Call It Distance Learning, Does It Exist? (part 2)
• Social Software Showcase and my ULG poster session
• Alexander Street Press Breakfast and WSS Committee Meeting
• Committee on the Status of Women in Librarianship program on Caregiving
• Joe Janes for the LITA President’s Program
• Blogger Salon, Ex Libris Reception, and Susan’s Award
• My final poster session, Twitter Meet-up, and COSWL meeting
• I’ll probably post a few more times on ALA over the next week. I know at least three topics I want to write about: the Emerging Leader program, giving a poster, and setting up an ALA program

Though a few hotels were far out, most of the things I did were pretty close together. The things I had responsibility for went well, and I was still able to go to a few extra things. The thing that really set this conference apart, though, was my Twitter network. Before showing up, I knew people. People saw me and knew who I was before we were introduced. Twitter kept me in the loop for programs I wasn’t able to attend. It let us arrange impromptu meet-ups, and meant there was always an option for something to do. Blogging started this trend. From my first ALA, I’ve been keeping tabs on programs by reading others’ reports, and I’ve known a few people because of this. But Twitter expanded on this exponentially. Meebo chat rooms provided another conference back channel. Many very good programs were scheduled at the same time. I was able to attend one, but watch the Meebo chat room discussion for another one, to know what technologies were being discussed in the Top Tech Trends panel or hear quotes from Cory Doctorow (one of my heroes) on privacy– all in real time. It was like being able to attend two conferences at once. Twitter and Meebo aren’t for everyone, but for me they really enriched the conference experience.

So it was a great conference. Things are afoot with the Committee on the Status of Women in Librarianship, the Women’s Studies Section of ACRL, and the LITA Distance Learning Interest Group. Social Networking is becoming a useful professional networking tool. The big theme of the conference (that I picked up on) is that we’re transitioning from “library as place” to “library as experience.” (That idea was mentioned in at least three sessions that I know of.) People are talking about virtual participation. If you want to chat about anything I posted on, just let me know! 🙂

Update: I had to change the title of this post when I realized that both of us Laurens went to the conference! 🙂