A window inside my mind

Want to peek into my mind? I've used Wordle to create a lovely tag cloud from my del.icio.us account.



One thing I don't like about Wordle: I don't see an easy way to export or save the image of the tag cloud.

Midwest Library Technology Conference

Last week, I went to the very first Midwest Library Technology Conference, held in St. Paul, MN. The first day consisted of two plenary sessions plus shorter, thematic presentations. On the second day, we participated in longer, more in-depth, hands-on sessions. Thanks to all the planning committee members who made this event manifest.

A few conference highlights:

• Blessed, glorious, free, easily accessible wireless in all conference facilities! I couldn't be more excited about this (especially after not having access to free wireless at the Medical Library Association Annual Meeting in Chicago this year). The planning committee gets an extra special, very shiny gold star for this.
  
• Hanging with both my online peeps and my work peeps, plus meeting new peeps! Yay! The conference was a fine venue for professional networking.
• The hands-on sessions on Friday were an admirable experiment. While a couple of the sessions were a bit large for hands-on work, it was nice to be able to get in there and try some stuff.
  
• The Ning conference site provides a place for presenters to post their slides, handouts, links and other supporting materials. It also provides a forum for attendees to interact with each other. It will be interesting to see to what extent folks participate in the social networking aspects of this site.
• I liked the thought provoking usability session with Dorothea Salo very much. We got a tiny taste of what usability testing is like, presented in an engaging, interactive manner.
• Plenary sessions with John Riedl, Professor of Computer Science at the University of Minnesota and Rachel S. Smith and Alan Levine of the New Media Consortium (producers of the Horizon Report), all of whom talked about the future of the interactive, collaborative Web. Please note that these keynote speakers were not libraryfolk, which I found strangely refreshing.
  

Ideas for next year:

• Many of the sessions were at the 101 level, which is fine, but there also need to be some more advanced sessions for those of us who already know the basics.
  
• In-depth session about using content management systems (CMS) to create library Web sites. Perhaps a Drupal vs. Joomla Smackdown? Or, a comparison between using Drupal vs. a homegrown CMS?
• How about a hands-on session about planning technology initiatives &/or project management? I hereby nominate my LSW buddy Tim Keneipp to teach this session.
  
• I would love to attend a longer, hands-on, more substantive session about designing lesson plans that incorporate clicker technology (aka audience response systems) into library instruction.
  
• Folks from the University of Minnesota Libraries could present on creating home grown databases, such as HarvestChoice and EthicShare.
  
• Online social networking tools are fabulous for professional networking in Libraryland. I would be happy to offer an introductory presentation on this. :-)
  
• While I appreciated and enjoyed the session about AskMN - the new, statewide virtual reference service in Minnesota - fifteen minutes was too brief for me, especially since the University Libraries are in the process of evaluating and possibly implementing this servce. Next year's conference would be a good opportunity for current AskMN libraries and potential AskMN libraries to get together and discuss the project.
• Last, but not least: more coffee, more of the time! In my book, there's nothing uglier than a bunch of undercaffeinated librarians.

These are, of course, just my initial thoughts about the conference, but I promised Iris that I would get something down in writing before to much time passed. Were you there? I welcome your comments.