I’m feeling pretty energized these days. Fabulous wife, two awesome kids, house that I can call home. My job has settled in to become something I enjoy (most days). The show is everything I hoped it would be (although I could do a better job of marketing it). And my network of librarianly friends and acquaintances seems to grow on an almost daily basis. Things are firing on all cylinders.

It’s the perfect time for a conference.* After a bit of a hiatus, I’m returning to the ITI conference scene for Computers in Libraries 2008. And I’m pumped up about it.

I’ll be speaking twice. First, with the estimable Matt Gullett, I’ll be talking about Libraries as Laboratories for Innovation and, more specifically, about the efforts of our innovation team at my workplace.

The second presentation is a bit more unconventional, at least by library conference standards. It’s called a Pecha Kucha. The idea is that each presenter is allowed 20 slides that are displayed for 20 seconds each. 6:40 to get up, get on with it and get off. Beautiful. That’s about the limit of my attention span.

In this particular Pecha Kucha 2.0, as it’s billed, each participant will be evangelizing for a particular 2.0 technology (naturally, I’ll be covering podcasting) with a final presenter taking on the role of naysayer. Should be good fun and the fellow participants are all noteworthy presenters.

But as many of you know, the real joy of a conference comes from the other attendees, and in particular, the conversations you have in between sessions, at receptions, over meals, and so on. This year, I expect to be fully overwhelmed.

Beyond the old friends with whom I’m anxious to reconnect, there’s a whole new web of acquaintances that I’ve made through the show and through the wacky world of social networking, especially Twitter and Facebook. I can’t wait to meet as many of them as I can in person. I’m all about bringing people together right now. In many ways, that’s what Uncontrolled Vocabulary is all about.

Anyway, all of this yammering on is for no greater purpose than to share some of my excitement with you. I feel we could all use a little more good energy around this little chunk of the blogosphere. So here, have some of mine.

* I know that this is a bit early to discuss a conference in April, but I can’t help myself. I’m excited now!

Michael Stephens (who I can’t wait to call Dr. Stephens) points to a David Warlick post on Conference 2.0.

Michael adds an idea of his own: A podcast booth or quiet area where podcasters could stage a discussion, conference debrief, or just get some recording done.

Yes, yes, yes. I can’t begin to tell you how handy that would be for my (intended) efforts. It’s nearly impossible to find somewhere quiet enough to do any group recording.

As for Conference 2.0, I once listened to Steve Dembo talk about a conference in which all of the presentations are pre-recorded and disseminated prior to the actual conference. The conference sessions themselves are then reserved for group discussion, questions, etc. Knowing that, under the current model, all the best stuff happens in the discussions that take place outside of the traditional sessions, this seems like a brilliant reconsideration of the old school conference mode.

Incidentally, if you are not familiar with David Warlick, take a minute to check out his stuff. He’s a real education visionary.

A few people have asked about the slides from my two presentations at Computers in Libraries. So the links follow.

Searching the New Digital Formats – Podcasting Edition

Podcasting cybertour

If, for whatever reason, you’d like to hear me talk about these topics, please join me for a two-part session on podcasting for the SirsiDynix Institute.

I’ll be talking about the consumer end of podcasting in the first week (May 17, 8 AM Pacific). During the second week, we’ll talk about podcasting from the content creator angle (May 24, 8 AM Pacific).

So it’s time to start thinking about March madness. No, not college basketball, but conference season. Unfortunately, two important conferences have been scheduled at the same time this year: PLA and Computers in Libraries. I can’t imagine that this cross-scheduling will not negatively impact both conferences. I’ve already talked to one vendor who is putting all its eggs in one conference’s basket and skipping the other entirely. And the choice is surprising. In addition, many of the people that I look forward to running into at CiL are spending most of the week at PLA (and this includes a number of non-public librarians).

So I am bit disheartened by the conflict, although extremely excited about heading to D.C. in a few weeks. With thanks to Meredith Farkas and her foresight in starting the unofficial CiL2006 wiki, I see that I will get to meet a number of folks who I’ve only known virtually: Dave Hook, Nicole Engard, Chad Boeninger, Tom Peters, Lori Bell, Alane Wilson, Paul Miller and, of course, Meredith.

[This would be a nice opening for my shameless plug of pbwiki, an excellent free web-based wiki service, which is playing host to the CiL2006 wiki. I must disclaim that this positive commentary will result in extra upload space for me, but I love them nonetheless. Check out the Carnival wiki or my Podcasting101 presentation to see pbwiki in action.]

I will be speaking twice at CiL this year. On Wednesday, I’ll be sharing the stage with Christina Pikas as we discuss “Searching the New Digital Formats.” Christina will be covering blog search (a topic I discussed at Internet Librarian 2004), while I will be discussing the finer points of podcast search. I’ll also be doing a quick podcasting cybertour on Thursday, which will be similar (yet different) to the prerecorded cybertour that I contributed to Internet Librarian 2005. I’d like to think that I’ve earned the right to display the following:

Can’t wait to see you all in D.C.

Update: Have to add Dorothea Salo and Amanda Etches-Johnson to the list of people I look forward to finally meeting in D.C.

Here it is: CIL Day 1 Recap

About 18 minutes in all. Sound quality is a bit rough between the recording set-up and my scratchy voice.

Some related links:
The CiL Blogdigger Group (great written recaps of Day 1)
Kansas City Public Library
KC Research
Andrea on presenting

Feedback is welcome.

I forgot to list a few other non-”core” bloggers who will be at Computers in Libraries.

So there’s a Blogdigger group set up for Computers in Libraries. A reasonable idea. It describes itself as “Core bloggers for the Computers in Libraries 2005 conference in Washington, DC.” When the group first appeared, it only included the blogs linked to from the official ITI blog. It seems that a few more blogs have since been added, which is good news. I want to point out that there will be plenty of non-”core” bloggers at this conference as well, myself included. Not to take anything away from the great efforts of the “core” bloggers, but I believe these blogs are equally worthy of your time.

This highlights two reasons why I’d prefer a consensual tagging situation over an effort to aggregate individuals. First, you invariably miss people who are talking about the conference. Second, you’re aggregating posts that potentially have nothing to do with the conference. This isn’t really saving the end-user any time, especially if they subscribe to most of the “core” blogs already. That’s not to say the group doesn’t serve a very worthwhile purpose, just that I don’t feel it provides the strongest return on investment of energy.

Updated: This post has been updated to reflect that the author of the Science Library Pad will not be in attendance at CiL2005.

Steven mentions the great wiki that brings together resources related to the recent Northern Voice conference (great presentations, by the way). I’d love to see something similar for Computers in Libraries, but first and foremost, I’d like to see us establish a common tag to use for sites like flickr, del.icio.us and Technorati. That would greatly aid the collocation of relevant content, as can be seen in the use of the northernvoice tag at Flickr or del.icio.us.

So what’s it gonna be? Here’s some possibilities:

computersinlibraries
computersinlibraries2005
cil
cil2005

Also, do we want to consider applying a broader tag, such as libraryconference? As good information professionals, shouldn’t we begin to work out some preferred terminology? Let’s show these folksonomies who’s boss!

I’d be happy to help coordinate any decision-making about this, but it needs input from y’all. So how about you contact me with your opinion and I’ll try to get a sense of which way the collective tide sways. Great, it’s settled then.