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This morning I completed my participation in the 2011 ALA Midwinter. Most years, I have headed home on Monday morning since my committee obligations are usually done by Sunday. However, because I am getting more involved with LITA, I needed to attend the LITA Town Hall Meeting. This is a breakfast session for LITA members to have discussions about “about how LITA responds to and involves its membership in the larger information, association, community-building, and technology-related landscape.” Last year LITA finalized its Strategic Plan and specific goals and objectives from this plan were assigned to each of LITA’s committees. At this morning’s meeting, each committee chair reported on their group’s activities and accomplishments as they related to their assigned objectives. It was the first time I’ve really heard specifics about what each committee does (which is very useful to understand). As in other years, some time was spent in breakout discussions to generate suggestions and ideas for future direction of the organization. Each table captured their discussions and the results were given to the leadership group. Learning all of this has become somewhat important as I was asked to chair the 2012 LITA National Forum Planning Committee and accepted. I need to gain a better “big picture” view of the structure and culture of LITA if I want to be successful (which I do!). To that end, following the Town Hall meeting, I met with the LITA President-Elect Colleen Cuddy to start brainstorming about potential committee members for the planning committee. I’ve served on the committee two different years, but it’s much different being a member than being the one responsible to lead the entire endeavor. It felt good to get a bit of a jump start and learn more about the time table for keeping the conference planning on track.

I finished up by noon, but our flight doesn’t head us home until tomorrow (and I am crossing my fingers that all goes smoothly!). So this afternoon, we took advantage of the weather and the fact that I’m a strong believer in the educational benefit of travel to new places. We hopped a water taxi and headed over to Coronado, which is on the ocean side of San Diego Bay. Once we arrived, we walked over a mile to the ocean side to visit Hotel del Coronado, which was built in 1888. At that time it was the largest resort hotel in the world, and the first to use electricity (Wikipedia). It was the location used in Marilyn Monroe’s movie “Some Like it Hot.” It was a perfect afternoon and a wonderful way to recharge in anticipation of a grueling travel day tomorrow 🙂