NLA/NEMA conference revisited

After an exhausting two days at the NLA/NEMA conference, I can truthfully say that there are many many many more librarians than I ever thought. And that I want all the technology that the SMART board people brought with them. Here are the highlights of my first conference experience.

1. Early breakfast with MU proffessors started at 7:30 AM! I didn't make it there until 8 because of an accident on Dodge, but it was nice to eat those delicious cinnamon rolls, meet with Dr. Budd and Dr. Adkins, and see Micki and Dr. Pasco so very early in the morning.

2. Micki's Murder Van: There's a funny story about that van, I just can't find it anywhere. Dangerous piece of vehicle that thing is.

3. Ben Hotness...I mean, Ben Softness: Google search man and genius taught some great lessons about searching google. Best tip of the day would have to be the "control" + "tab" to cycle through open tabs on Firefox or Safari or IE.

4. YART roundtable: A small but mighty group of us came together to talk shop and get ready for our spring meeting in Blair. Information to come for those interested. Also check out the YART blog @ nlayart.blogspot.com

5. Gaming with Librarians: Apples to apples with children's librarians is dangerously funny. Watching adults play guitar hero was amusing too. No comment on DDR though. ugh!

6. Gaming presentation: Let me just summarize the entire thing with Gordon's awesome quote. "Contrary to popular belief, gaming does not make you a douche."

7. Embassy Suite's Coffee bar: Fucking amazing. I can't even begin to describe it.

8. Final sessions: I went to a speaker who talked about the suppression of student voices, one about screen capture videos, and the keynote speaker giving an hour long book talk about his dad's awesome life.

9. Tweeting @ NLA: I always thought that Twitter was much too much of an overshare, but I discovered the usability of this technology at NLA. It's helpful to see what other's thought of a session you might be in or something important you missed that you should check out later.

Over all, it was a great experience, and I met a whole bunch of librarians that I will now need to contact so that I begin schmoozing them for jobs or scholarships or recommendations.