One person took the time to explain why some might be put-off by my relatively aggressive extroversion.* And I get that, I really do. But I’ll take my chances on making a real connection with four people for every one person that isn’t looking for that kind of interaction. Heck, I’d probably take my chances on making a real connection with one out of the five, but that’d be a discouraging rate of return after a while. Either way, it’s better than missing out on all five by not trying.

I was listening to an old episode of C.C. Chapman’s Managing the Gray podcast earlier this week. There was an audio comment from Julien Smith where he elaborated on the concept of one-way intimacy.

Here’s what he means: Content producers who have established a solid community around their content, often succeed in doing so because they are authentic and transparent with their audiences, putting a lot of themselves out there for people to see. Consumers feel that they really get to know the producer in meaningful ways.

But there’s little to no reciprocation. The audience has no real commitment to the producer in exchange for that intimacy. The usual development of mutual intimacy through the two-way sharing of personal insights, secrets and experiences does not exist. The producer doesn’t know the individuals who consume the show in the same way that they know her.

I am fairly open with the audience here in a lot of ways. I share frank, honest, not always popular opinions. I announce the birth of my children. You might say that, to some degree, you know me. And yet many of you have no real intimacy with me. Exceptions notwithstanding, I don’t necessarily know who you are at all.

And, as much as I’m comfortable with that here, it’s exactly what I’m trying to avoid on Twitter and Facebook. I don’t want either of those spaces to be yet another zone of one-way intimacy.

So if you just want to read what I have to say, but don’t want to interact, then you’re already in the right place. I demand nothing of you here, other than a modicum of respect for me and for each other.** But if you’re asking to follow me in Twitter or friend me on Facebook, then expect that I’ll be asking something of you in return.

I was told by a friend that I am “eccentrically counter-cultural” in this regard. And I’m good with that. If I’m not counter-cultural, who is?

* My extroverted appearance is a learned behavior. I’m an introvert by nature and do not function well without a few hours to myself every evening.

** That said, I’d be happy to connect with you. Drop me a line. Introduce yourself. Start a conversation.

The following day, I came across a situation where I needed the counsel of my trusted network. They came through and then some. I knew right then I wouldn’t be able to stay away forever.

So I’ve renegotiated my relationship with Twitter. I’m only following the conversations intermittently, during down times. I’m being more selective about updating my own status. I’m only monitoring direct messages and replies to my tweets. This has allowed me to stay part of the community with far less moment-to-moment commitment. It’s far more manageable and I’ve had little trouble letting go of the things I’m missing and am not trying to catch up on conversations gone by.

Anyway, a situation arose on Friday that I found perplexing and which reminded me that, at the end of the TwitteRetreat post, I’d committed to saying more about how I manage my social networks. I received a friend request on Facebook from someone with whom I was not familiar. Not all that unusual and not something I shy away from.

On both Twitter and Facebook, I have an informal rule that I be conversational with anyone who wants to be part of my social network. Many of you reading this know that already. I want to feel connected in some way to the people who I see in my friends list on Facebook or my followers list on Twitter. It’s really a pretty low threshold for calling two people connected and it usually consists of me sending a message to the requester asking the following two questions: “Who are you? Why follow me?” On Facebook, the second question is “Why be my friend?” This is known affectionately (or otherwise) by some as “The Quiz.” I point out in my messages that these questions are meant conversationally, not curtly. Hard to do much with 140 characters interview-wise.

The responses I get to the questions are varied, but the vast majority of people at least answer. Some people are really appreciative of the message and my efforts to engage. One person told me that they actually respected me more for asking. It is, admittedly, a hoop of sorts, as I’m not interested in people who are just padding their numbers. In every case where the person has responded with something more than “Facebook said we should be friends,” I’ve been able to sustain enough interaction and conversation to consider the person part of my world. The relationship has meaning and context.

And now, back to our story. So I sent this person my usual introductory message, including the quiz. A day or so later, when I was dipping back into Twitter, I noticed the very same person requesting to follow me on Twitter. “OK, this person really wants to engage me,” I’m thinking to myself.

Twitter, unfortunately, does not allow me to direct message someone who doesn’t follow me (which is a good policy to avoid spamming and such, but I’d like an exception for when someone you don’t know is requesting to follow you).* So in order to make an another attempt to chat, I accept the request. And because I always follow people who follow me, I also start following this person at the same time. I send the new follower a direct message saying that I’m going to skip the usual quiz, since I expect to chat on Facebook. No response.

A few days later, I saw that this person was sending out tweets, so I thought I’d make another attempt at interaction. “Hi there. Still haven’t heard from you here or on Facebook. Don’t want to conversate? ” Without directly quoting the response I got, the person essentially said “Not really. Want to save Facebook for real faces. Have had great conversations here.”

Mind you, I’d have taken a conversation in either place, but now this person has done two things: 1. Indicated that, despite seeking great conversations, they don’t want to talk to me. 2. Wasted my time by telling me they want to be my friend, when in fact, they don’t. And why would you ask to friend me on Facebook, if you are saving Facebook for real faces?!?!?!

I was blown away. With Facebook, it’s trivial to ignore a friend request, which was my next move. On Twitter, the situation is a little trickier. In order to attempt conversation, I had to accept this person as a follower. Once it is clear that I don’t really want this person as a follower, I have no choice but to block them. I really hate doing this. I’m sure this is a perfectly nice person with whom I have no interest in creating static. But I don’t want people to be part of my Twitter conversation who aren’t willing to engage me personally. Period. Your approach may be different and that’s great.

This is actually the third person I’ve blocked for similar reasons. When I mentioned this on Twitter, a very interesting discussion emerged. I was asked about how I define my social network and how this compares with my approaches to Flickr or this blog.

Flickr is an interesting case. I actually have no control (to my knowledge) of who adds me as a contact, but I have complete control of which people I consider friends or family members. Most of my pics are only available to friends and family. For someone to be considered my friend on Flickr and thus have access to images of my personal life, I expect to have already established a relationship with them somewhere else, whether it’s on Facebook or Twitter, via the comments on this blog or somewhere out in the real world. Flickr is not, in and of itself, a place where I network. For other people, it is.

And that’s the main point of what has become yet another too-long blog post: everyone has a different idea of where social networking happens and what it looks like. I surely have a different philosophy than most of the people who read this blog. But it’s essential to me that I connect directly with the people that I consider to be within my social networks. It’s the primary element that gives it any meaning at all.

* Jessamyn West has indicated to me that Spaz will allow you to direct message someone who doesn’t follow you, but my attempts to do so were fruitless.

The ultimate question from the post: “What advice would you offer a new librarian looking to start speaking, writing and networking on a national level?”

There’s a part of me that says they have the wrong goal in mind (excepting the networking part). As Meredith said, most people who are seen as movers and shakers didn’t set out to be movers and shakers.

But there’s the other part of me that says there aren’t any barriers to writing on a national or global level, so what’s the issue? Just do it. That’s how I got started. There are so very few impediments to self-publishing online that it’s unfathomable that anyone who wants to be writing isn’t doing it.

But as I said, I’m not sure I can recommend focusing on speaking and writing as a goal in and of itself for the new librarian. Following the sage wisdom of Walt Crawford, first have something to say. Figure out what gets you excited in the profession (or outside of it!) and write about it. Get that blog started. Share your passion. Share your experiences. But remember that the writing, while immensely valuable, is not the experience itself, at least not for most newbies.

At the same time that you’re writing, join conversations, whether on other blogs, Twitter, wherever. And when you join those conversations, don’t forget to tell people what you’re doing and where to find you. Self-promote. Tactfully, yet shamelessly. We’re notoriously poor self-promoters in this profession. It’s an undervalued, misunderstood skill amongst library professionals.

Soon, you’ll find that you’re the one starting conversations. And that’s when you’ll know that you’re starting to find your unique voice. Those conversations are often the ones that turn into mainstream articles or conference presentations.

And if you plan on speaking, you’d best be submitting proposals, because until you’ve established yourself as a speaker, people aren’t going to come looking for you.

If I can be said to be on the right path to “making a name for myself” in library land, I attribute it to two things: good timing and, exactly as Meredith said, “seeing an unfilled need and filling it.”

Good timing, because I started my blog over five years ago, when there weren’t nearly as many voices in the blogosphere. I was noticed simply for listening to Sonic Youth, which I’m not sure is a realistic expectation these days. [Note that said post from Mr. Cohen was my first taste of librarian-related fanboy giddiness.]

That link from Library Stuff was really the beginning of everything else that happened to me outside of my day job. It crystallized the potential of the blogging medium and emboldened me to keep going. Not long after, I stumbled into something of a niche searching for new library blogs. This led not only to my stint as the LIS Weblogs editor at DMOZ, but to LIS Blogsource (big ups to all five of you who remember it!) and to my first national conference presentation, talking about blog search.

And again, good timing when it came to seeing a need and filling it. Librarianship needed a podcaster. I needed something to obsess over. A library podcaster was born.

“Anyway, enough of me talking about me,” he said self-referentially. In the end, I agree with Meredith: Writing and speaking have been benefits of being passionate, curious, motivated and willing to put myself out there. I didn’t set out to be a writer/speaker. I still don’t think of myself that way. In fact, one of the main draws of librarianship was the opportunity to “do the research and not write the paper.” But that’s a different blog post for another day.

“The average age of librarians working today is between 46 and 50. It’s easy to deduce that there will be a great number of retirements in the next few years.

There is much concern in library circles about what is going to happen as the retirements take place. Recruiting more people into librarianship seems to be the obvious answer.”

I may talk about this issue in my next full show, but suffice it to say that this does not correspond to my experience either as a job seeker or as a person in an organization with plenty of retirement age staffers.

Look for more CiL audio commentary later tonight…

Anyway, I must admit to some frustration at the lack of feedback and discussion about using a common tag across the various folksonomical sites, such as Flickr or del.icio.us (sorry for the lack of hypertextuality, but it’s late and I’m lazy). Still, I’m confident that this is a good idea and that, as information professionals, we need to insert ourselves into the folksonomies turf and show what we can do with our “Information Organization and Access” skills. We’re already lagging behind other efforts in this domain. Exhibit A: the Northern Voice blogging conference. They had the complete package: a conference website built as a blog, updated before, during and after the conference; an aggregator featuring all of the participating bloggers at the conference; AND organized tagging. Granted, there was no discussion about the tags, just an edict from Ronald Tanglao declaring northernvoice to be the tag of choice, but the results are undeniable. Here are the aggregated results of the northernvoice tag in Technorati, Flickr (658 photos!) and del.icio.us.

Applying this to content related to Computers in Libraries seemed like such a commonsense idea to me, but I realize now that I may have been presumptuous on a few different levels.

First, in all likelihood, no one reads this blog anymore given my extended hiatus and lack of worthwhile content. Totally understandable, although those of you who kept me in your aggregator were immediately alerted to my return. There are also probably some who are only subscribed in their podcatcher and therefore miss any of the text content (any feed I subscribe to with my podcast aggregator, I also subscribe to in Bloglines).

Second, most people aren’t going to this particular conference and therefore couldn’t care less. OK, fair enough, but I’d still like to know what term you’d use to search for content related to the conference. I like to believe that we do this kind of collocation for the particular benefit of those who can’t be there in person, making those perspectives essential.

Third, most people, even in the blogosphere, are not necessarily “early adopters” and therefore haven’t really participated in any tagging-based sites. Thus some education might be in order, although I don’t fancy myself the ideal candidate. Still, I’d be happy to guide anyone who expressed interest.

As the Northern Voice conference demonstrated, consensus tagging is only one part of the picture, but it’s the part I’ve tried to motivate, however unsuccessfully. I’d love to see Information Today (or anyone with the skills/resources, for that matter) take up the reins and demonstrate that the LIS world is not going to be left in the dust when it comes to organizing digital resources.

Incidentally, with the publication of this post, there should be a Technorati tag page for cil2005.

Despite my sentiments, the project is growing legs. In addition to the Bay Area effort (linked above), there’s a wiki related to a British effort in developing the project. On the wiki, there’s a Slashdot comment that I quoted which, to a degree, makes it seem like I am the “incensed librarian” being referenced. Not exactly, but it could have been me, if I had been clever enough to come up with a Distributed Lavatory Project.

Anyway, I think my initial reactions to the project still apply. So read ‘em, if you’re so inclined.

“I hector people to use it, kind of embarrassingly,” said Robert Levine, a former senior editor at Wired, now a freelance writer. “A friend of mine was complaining she was late in returning a DVD to Blockbuster, and I was like, ‘Why would you want someone charging you a late fee?’ It’s not like the late fees are so financially onerous, but they send you a notice that it’s late in the mail. And then you have to go in and pay. If they could just take the fucking late fee from my credit card, it’d be fine. But then you have to go into the store and wait in line again. I mean, it’s like getting in trouble with the library. I don’t understand why anyone puts up with it.”

I’m sure I don’t need to analyze the faults of Mr. Levine’s analogy for you, but his comments raise a compelling point: why don’t more libraries allow patrons to pay their fines online? Why, if we are going to maintain financial penalties, do we not provide all possible means to settle up? Isn’t the burden of having to pay the fine taxing enough?

In the end, I’ll probably just repeat last year’s methodology: public librarians rule. If name recognition has any bearing on the election (and I find it hard to imagine that it doesn’t), I’ll bet Michael McGrorty has a legitimate shot at election. Which reminds me, I need to send him a library card.

“Oh great, another blog.

At long last, Planet Neutral brings his indifferent perspective to yet another venue. We begin our tale as our young hero is less than two months from receiving his Master of Science in Library and Information Science (MSLIS) from the Graduate School of Library and Information Science (GSLIS) at the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign (UIUC).

Oh yeah, he’s engaged too.

Well, now he’s married, he works and he owns a home. What a difference a year makes. The people I’ve met and opportunities that I’ve been offered as a result of my modest publishing efforts here at Open Stacks have far outdistanced any preconceptions I may have had. To those of you who’ve inspired me, a heart-felt thank you.

So let’s honor this anniversary with some good old-fashioned congrunting. Warning: This post published late at night without proper editing. Read at own risk.

Day two at the Computers in Libraries begins with a keynote by David Seuss. Again, the theme is unintended consequences of technological development. His main premise is that technology inevitable has greater impact than the early developers/practitioners ever conceptualize. He uses this paradigm to look at the development of web search technology.

The intent of web search: to make everything accessible from one interface. The unintended consequence: obscenely bloated databases that produce search results of little to no relevance for the user. Priorities for library community (information organization) and search engine community (cash flow) are at odds. Seuss sees the future as lying in personalization of the search engine. Choose your own searchable sources using your own experience and discretion. Sounds good if you have either a) experience or b) discretion. I think that’s a lot to ask of the user. [Note: There are microcosmic versions of this approach already in practice, such as the Trusted Blog Search Tool, which allows you to limit your search to the blogs you read.]

During the keynote, I couldn’t help but watch Jenny multitask away on her laptop, while never missing a beat on the keynote presentation. We move to the back of the room, so she can plug in during the day’s first session (not only was this conference lacking wireless, it was sorely lacking electrical sources). The move to the back of the room is auspicious as it affords me the opportunity to meet Michael Sauers, whose name I recognize from a variety of online encounters.

First session is a presentation of an AI client being used for virtual reference at a medical library (I think, don’t quote me on that). Session is a little dry at first, but livens up when the client is put into action. Very cool and much closer to my vision of online reference. Not quite The Librarian from Neal Stephenson’s Snow Crash, but a step in an intriguing direction.

Second session is entitled “Supporting KM with Weblogs,” presented by Michael Angeles of urlgreyhot.com. I always find discussions of blogging at the organizational level compelling, although there isn’t too much new information for me through this session. He discusses three different strategies for enterprise weblogging: centralized, decentralized, mediated. He defines these strategies by two parameters: publishing tools and classification/search solutions, which is to say, by methods of input and methods of output. The right choice depends on the size and ecology of your organization.

Sometime during the morning, I meet Will Richardson, but I can’t quite place it within my timeline. His presentation on Weblogs in the Classroom looks like it was probably quite interesting.

Lunch with my colleague was a nice opportunity to catch up and digest some of the earlier proceedings.

After lunch, I went to watch Michael and Robert give their presentation under the vague title, “Organization Perspectives.” This is not normally the kind of presentation I would have selected, but I really wanted to see Michael speak and I had no idea what was to come. This session was really two presentations in one. The first section, presented by Angela Ballard, discussed technology training as an integral part of organizational culture and needing to be treated as such. She discussed the need for administrators and trainers to stay plugged-in to the impact of on-going training and to prioritize training that meets the organizational mission and goals. She appropriately mentioned the need for trainers to stay current in both the technology AND training fields. One idea that she presented that both my colleague and I appreciated was the idea of presented application software in context. That is, rather than another Intro to Publisher class, teach a class that shows how to create a desk schedule in Publisher. Task-oriented classes with practical applications. Point well taken.

Michael and Robert’s presentation is both simple and remarkable. The main theme: Celebrate Staff with Technology. If there’s one thing I’d like to see my library try and do (other than Federated Searching and Aggregated Subject Guides), it’s use technology to highlight our wonderful staff. How did Michael and Robert accomplish this goal? By creating an absolutely stunning video featuring Madonna’s Ray of Light. The video featured footage of every (willing) employee amongst the library’s numerous branches. Not just front-line librarians, but facilities, security, cleaning crew, pages, clerks, and, of course, the administration. Every department was highlighted and celebrated. The video received a standing ovation from the staff when they presented it and received accolades from this audience at this session. Some people raised copyright questions about use of the song, but others were ready for it to be presented in front of the entire ALA conference. This video was a marvel, but other libraries could use the same mentality in simpler ways. How about a featured employee on your web site? And again, not just librarians. Celebrate everyone who makes your organization run.

Next session reveals the redesign of the SUNY-Stony Brook Health Sciences Library web site using the Plone content management system. I was hoping this was live, so I could check it out in greater detail after the presentation, but no such luck. I’m fascinated by Plone as it seems powerful, dynamic and highly extensible, so I enjoyed seeing it deployed in the library context. It’s probably a bit beyond the current needs/ecology of my organization, but I think it would streamline our efforts at collaborative content creation, so it may be worth a closer look.

I base my final selection of the day on my new role as overseer (for lack of a more official title) of ILL within my organization. This session looks at an effort to unify the ILL efforts of New Jersey’s libraries through the creation of a virtual catalog. Kentucky already offers a virtual catalog (thanks Jenny!), so I’ll be interested to see if we are taking advantage of this great ILL resource. What seems unique about the New Jersey effort is the creation of a union catalog to accommodate the holdings of smaller libraries and allow them to participate easily in the lending process. The requesting interface is also intuitive and easily used by end-users and librarians alike.

After a long day of learning, I head to the hotel room to decompress, but am distracted by the sight of Gary and Jenny chatting in the lounge. Not wanting to miss a opportunity to chat with those toward whose achievements I aspire, I join the fray. Moments later, we are joined by search engine guru Greg Notess. These three just know way too much about search, so they make for a fascinating conversation.

Eventually I find myself chatting solo with Greg and a few minutes late for the library bloggers dine-around. Running down the hill to Thaiphoon, I see the group has already assembled. I meet some new folks, including the elusive, yet legendary Chris Zammarelli and Fox News librarian Jerry Kirschner. Good times, lively chat (rarely about library blogs) and some tasty food, including some amazingly good post-meal ice cream at Larry’s.

Not particularly tired after dinner, Andrea and I retreat to the lounge and discuss careers and life for a while. Eventually, I decide to head up to bed. And then I saw exactly what I had been seeking. Michael Sauers had somehow found his way into a conversation with some of the conference aristocracy, including conference chair Jane Dysart. I had determined earlier that I was not going to pass up an opportunity to get into these kind of conversations while I was at the conference. So remembering that Michael was in the lounge as it is one of the few wireless-friendly locations in the hotel, I approach him under the guise of confirming his wireless success. Seconds later, I was sitting in a circle with Roy Tennant, Stephen Abram, Darlene Fitcher, Frank Cervone and Jane Dysart. This is why I’m loving the conference scene. And they all seemed interested in what I had to say.

At one point, Jane asks if Michael and I could add an RSS feed to her blog. Could we? We’ll do it right now. I felt like I was participating in a historic moment. Jane couldn’t thank us enough for our help. By the end of the evening, Jane and Darlene are encouraging us to submit proposals for Internet Librarian in November. Food for thought, no doubt.

Well, that was enough excitement for one day and this is enough writing for this day, the one year anniversary of my presence in the blogosphere. Thanks for reading.

Preface: Conferencing is all about networking and I met some amazing people at this conference. I’ve mentioned before that after almost a year in the blogosphere, I’d never met a single one of my online acquaintances. Can’t say that anymore and I couldn’t have been more pleased to share company with all of my cybercolleagues.

So without further adieu, an extended recap of the first day of CiL.

Opening keynote by Clifford Lynch touched upon a number of interesting topics centered on a theme of the “unintended consequences” brought on by technological development. One of the more provocative ideas he mentioned was a recognition that not all things written are read by humans (consider search engine crawlers as an example). He asked us to consider how publishing and writing might change if it is done with machine reading and automated fact extraction in mind.

After searching in vain for the library blogger contingent before the keynote, I stumble across Steven (already an old friend, even if only in cyberspace) and Jenny. Happy to have finally made some connections, I follow them to the first session where I have the privilege of meeting Michael, Aaron and Andrea.

First session is very inspiring. David King of the Kansas City Public Library discusses the conversion of his library’s collection of Internet links to a series of subject guides in the vein of About.com. He showed how a search for Harry Potter would pull up a page containing not only catalog holdings, but relevant web links, library and local events, etc. Unfortunately, it’s not live yet, but the user-centered focus on aggregating local resources was a compelling approach.

Next session covered federated searching, sometimes known as metasearching. So many good reasons to consider federated searching, which, for those unfamiliar with the term, allows a user to search multiple heterogeneous resources through a single search interface. The presenter discussed how federated searching addresses the issues of “prior knowledge” (where the user must know how to choose resources to be effective) and “multiplicity of effort” (where the user must replicate the search repeatedly in different databases). Using a single interface that produces a list of results from different databases also facilitates resource discovery. The most promising revelation from this session was that this technology is already in use at King County Public Library. Why not at mine?!?!

Lunch time means a trip to Pennsylvania Avenue for a meeting with Blogdigger‘s Greg Gershman. He’s an interesting guy and the stuff he does has enormous potential. Steven and I have been particularly intrigued by his Blogdigger Groups, which allows creation of a group blog by aggregating feeds from the sources you select. For an example, check out Steven’s Librarian Blogs or my Indiana Blogs! page. Greg has been very receptive to feedback and I’ve enjoyed being a small part of the development of this particular tool.

After lunch, I went to a session that dealt with usability testing. Not too much here, but a few things that reinforced what I already know. Jargon is bad and it’s even worse than most think. Just remember that “library catalog” is incomprehensible to a large percentage of users and you’ll have the idea. I was mostly interested in the methodology they (being the Penn State University Libraries) used in testing their site. They did a task-oriented comparison of different site arrangements and navigational structures. Capture software was used to record mouse movement, keyboard strokes and running audio of the user’s experience. They conclude that site navigation systems are at the core of site efficiency. Nothing too surprising about that.

Last session of the day was the first (and as fate had it, only) chance to see Steven present, alongside two other experts in the domain of “keeping up”: Gary Price and Rita Vine. Rita presented a list of top newsletters for staying current with Internet search, most of which I am already well familiar. Steven ran through his 10 step program for keeping current, and again, I already know his perspective on currency, but enjoyed his rapid-fire presentation manner. And he did mention me in his presentation as co-conspirator on Blogsource, so that was an exciting moment for my ego. Gary talked about a wide variety of resources and demonstrated how he keeps track of over 700 sites using Web Site Watcher. He also mentioned that ResourceShelf now provides a full-text RSS feed and I couldn’t help but applaud.

The most telling moment of the whole conference came during the question-and-answer portion of this session. After all of the discussion by both Steven and Gary about RSS, an audience member stands up and asks “What is RSS?” And I’ll be darned if half the audience didn’t applaud at someone asking a question that they all had been harboring the whole time. Wow. It’s easy to forget that not every librarian lives and dies by the same set of technologies. Those who are thoroughly acquainted with OpenURL may never have seen an aggregator before and vice versa. And similarly, you can’t assume that just because you’ve presented introductory material on a topic any number of times, there won’t be new faces in your crowd. I learned more in that moment about technology in libraries than in any other time at the conference.

After the session, I introduced myself to Rita and Gary. I don’t remember too much of that conversation, except for the moment when Gary thanked me for writing that article I wrote last summer. I didn’t even mention it, but somehow he remembered. Amazing individual.

Wednesday evening means the legendary “Dead Tech” panel, which explores dead and emerging technologies in libraries. I had heard a little about this session and was told it was not to be missed. And Jenny was on the panel, so it was a no-brainer. What no one mentioned was how “loose” the presentation would be. I’m talking about panelists with beers in hand and almost every panelist having some sort of shtick related to the theme “Fear Factor.” It was pretty silly with a number of the panelists mentioning Steven in some affectionately disparaging fashion. Of all statements made over the course of two hours, none stuck with me as strongly as the declaration by one panelist that Virtual Reference was a dead technology. Hasn’t even been born in my library and perhaps it never will be. It was a statement much discussed over the next two days.

The late night activity took place at Zorba’s Cafe with some falafel, hummus, red wine and good Hoosier-centric company. A long day that finally ended with some much needed sleep in preparation for day two. More to come…