goblin cartoons

In the dead of night, the signal goes out: “Calling all agents! Calling all agents!”

Assuming that my sinuses don’t explode on the flight to Monterey (which would be scads of fun for everyone seated in my general vicinity), I should be arriving in California just after noon. If anyone would like to get in touch with me on Sunday, let me know and I’ll give you my cell phone number.

Am I excited about the upcoming conference? Yes. Yes, I am.

One week from today, I’ll be winging my way to Monterey for Internet Librarian. Boy, am I excited!

And boy, am I glad today’s not the day I go, because a nasty cold has jumped on me like Jet Li. My head is stuffier than the 1926 graduating class of Harvard. Ugh.

EDIT: You can tell I’m sick, because I’m resorting to insanely goofy analogies.

I’m back home after NEST. It was a good conference day, all told. Besides Pattie’s talk about seniors, we got Rachel Singer Gordon, who is quite droll and engaging, talking about different generations (Veterans, Baby Boomers, Gen X’ers, and Millennials) working together. And I sat on a panel with Rachel, Pattie, and Melissa Batson (who works with my buddy Gregg), talking about the problems and successes in working with younger and older librarians. Luckily, Kansas librarians are a feisty bunch, so the pressure was off of us on the panel, as many of the other librarians did most of the talking, while Rachel did her Phil Donahue and walked around the room with a microphone. And I still got to give my rant about why the MLS/no-MLS divide is frustrating and dopey.
Later in the day, we had small group discussion sessions. Some really good ideas were exchanged (and necessary venting was…vented). I think small discussion sessions, formal or informal, are an absolute must for any library conference. Without the conversations and community-building, conferences are too much like school…without the great social side that makes school so much fun.

Kudos to Mickey Coalwell and the other NEST planners who put together a nice conference, cozy but energetic.

Taking advantage of my new wireless laptop, I’m going to blog about Pattie Johnston from the Lawrence Public Library. She’s talking about doing library programs and general library service for seniors. Pattie’s a really good speaker, very funny and smart. Programming for seniors is something that applies to me personally, so even though I’m blogging, I’m multitasking and paying attention to what she’s saying. Not only am I an Adult Services librarian, which means seniors as well as older Millennials, but seniors are big-time customers for technology classes.

Thanks for the good advice, Pattie! I will definitely, when setting up programming for seniors, not go up against Bob Barker.

UPDATE: Here’s Pattie speaking.

Tomorrow, I’ll be leaving my house bright and early to drive to Valley Falls, KS, to see Rachel Singer Gordon talk about NextGen Librarians and to appear on a panel with her and other librarians. I’m pretty excited–it will be my first panel discussion.

At NEKLS Tech Day 2006, Mickey Coalwell and I did a presentation on Flickr and libraries. (Here’s a gratuitous link to picture of us, just after the presentation.) Mickey strolled through a list of terrific ideas of ways libraries could use Flickr. Michael Stephens, with Mickey’s permission, has put the list up on his blog. I encourage everyone to steal these ideas. I know my library will.

My eyes shot open at a quarter to 5 this morning and they haven’t closed yet. I’ve been cruising through the day on coffee and sugar and adrenaline. So, if you’re looking for calm, well-reasoned, linear blog posting, look elsewhere, Pocahontas. This ain’t it.

So, NEKLS Tech Day.

NEKLS Tech Day was an absolute blast-and-a-half! I got to meet Michael Stephens and David King and Scott Vieira. I got to hang out with my friends from NEKLS and the Johnson County Public Library. And I had turkey with dijon mustard on a pita for lunch. All the fixin’s for a good day, right?

Michael Stephens was awesome. (Jenny Levine was awesome last year, so I can only imagine how much concentrated awesomeness would’ve been in the room if they’d both been there together.) But here’s the cool part: he stressed throughout his talk and after that two of the most important things librarians can do (and encourage others to do) are “dream and play.”

Dream and play.

“Gee,” my wife just remarked, “that sounds familiar.” Dream and Play, as some of you already know, are two major themes in my life, and I’ve worked hard to get to the point where I’m paid to dream and play. So, Michael gets loads of points in my book for saying that.

The panel discussion afterwards–with Michael, David King, Christie Brandau and Diane Trinkle–was really good, too. Michael and David were great, of course. Christie Brandau continues to impress me. Is she the coolest State Librarian or what? And Diane Trinkle of the Nortonville Public Library is fantastic! She’s doing great things with her library, in a town of 600 people.

I led a session on Flickr and libraries in the afternoon with Mickey Coalwell from NEKLS. I think it went well, but I was so nervous, my brain shut down and I ran on autopilot for my half of the session. One great thing: I got people to join the Kansas Libraries & Librarians group on Flickr right there in the session. The group quadrupled in size in one fell swoop!

In another afternoon session, I learned more about Kansas’ Webjunction, which will be a great continuing education resources for my library staff.

These are just my immediate impressions, mind. I may post further thoughts later. But right now, I’m in serious need of no-brain time. Good night, Mrs. Calabash, wherever you are.

Thanks to Jane Eyre 2.0, I now have a room reserved for IL06, at a fraction of what I had originally planned to pay. And it’s not even a mile away from the conference!

I love it when a plan comes together…

The Northeast Kansas Library System was kind enough to cut me a check for a fair amount of money–enough to pay for registration and airfare. It would be foolish and rude of me to not take the money. I may be a fool, but I’ve got my manners. With the registration fee and airfare paid for, my wife and I can scrounge up enough money for me to stay in a hotel (especially if I can find someone to share a room with me) and eat at least a couple of square meals a day. All of which means…

…I’M GOING TO INTERNET LIBRARIAN ‘06!

Oh boy, am I excited!

P.S.–My wife, because she is so supportive in as many ways as she can be, has a new nickname: the Awesomest Queen of the Awesomeverse. Long may she reign!

My wife just called me from home. There’s good news and bad news. The good news is that I got a grant from NEKLS to attend Internet Librarian ‘06. Which is really really really good news.

The bad news is that the grant is for half of what I need to go to the conference. And because of circumstances beyond our control, my wife and I don’t have the money to make up the other half. Neither does my library.

So, at this point, it looks like I’m not going to Internet Librarian ‘06.

There’s always next year.