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After a lovely road trip from Winston-Salem to DC in the library’s new Quest van, we delivered everyone to their respective hotels, got checked in and went directly into *conference* mode. Carolyn, Erik and I are staying at the Washington Hilton which is one of the headquarters hotels. It is where many LITA activities are taking place. But it is a few miles from the Washington Convention Center, so we earned our daily summer Olympic activity points by walking to pick up registration materials and checking out Erik’s session room assignment. Then we headed for the obligatory ALA Friday night social swirl. We attended the annual LITA happy hour and then Carolyn took us to a dinner with anthropology/sociology librarians which was great fun.

This morning we jump started with an early departure on the shuttle bus to get Erik to his 8 am cloud computing program. He showed an amazing amount of patient good humor when the bus driver went in the opposite direction of the convention center, heading northwest toward the zoo. He whipped out his trusty new iPhone 4 and guided her back in the right direction and then all the way to the center since she didn’t have a clue. He received an enthusiastic round of applause from the entire bus when we arrived. With only a half hour to get set up to facilitate his 4 hour program, he did a super job of staying calm and taking care of business. The program turned out excellent, with an overflow crowd and excellent presenters.

Details of the session can be seen at http://groups.google.com/group/alacloud

Exhibit Hall time was spent touching base with old and new vendors. I enjoyed meeting our remote shelving vendors and seeing the new High density shelving. It is impressive and the sample was just the 18′ height!

I’m currently heading back to attend my LITA National Forum Planning committee meeting, so more later!