Today was the last full day of the conference. The weather was also
much nicer today, possibly due to the rain last night. On my walk to
the convention center there was a slight cool breeze and for the
first time I wasn't excessively sweating from walking outside.
My first session of the day was about gamification in libraries. One
of the speakers was from the academic library I am currently doing my
practicum at her her presentation was really interesting. I might
have to email her when I get back and see if she can send me the
papers she wrote on the topic. The other presentations were also
interesting but one of the girls was really hard to hear. Right off
the bat people told her to speak up three different times but I think
we all just kind of gave up after that. She had a deeper voice,
which didn't help, but she also wouldn't raise her voice or keep her
mouth close enough to the microphone. She would occasionally try to
make jokes (I think) but no one laughed because we couldn't hear them
properly. The unfortunate part was that her presentation was
actually interesting and it would have been nice to hear all of it
and not spend the majority of the time just straining to hear.
The session got out thirty minutes early so one of my classmates, one
of the girls I went to Harry Potter with and happened to be in
the same session, and I went into the exhibit hall and over to the
gaming and graphic novel stage. Drawn and Quarterly was just
starting a session there so we sat down and listened. Throughout
their presentation they listed a bunch of their books and now I want
to buy a bunch of their books. I know I have heard of them before
but I don't think I've ever read any of their books. That will need
to change. I got a free graphic novel at the end of the presentation
so I guess that will be an introduction into their catalog.
I rushed from that session to the LITA interest group on maker
technology. They were previously exclusively concerned with 3D
printing but this was the first meeting under their more encompassing
name. We all sat around a big table (or three long tables pushed
together to be more accurate) and started by going around,
introducing ourselves, and saying why we were there. Then there was
just an informal discussion covering some of the issues that people
were interested in. That covered makerspace policies, how libraries
set up their spaces, inexpensive ideas for spaces, and a few other
things. It was really interesting and I think it will be one of the
interest groups I join when I get back home and have to renew my ALA
membership. Also, some guy gave out a bunch of Arduino components to
the group. He apparently had a session that only a few people showed
up to and had a bunch of these parts to hand out so he gave them to
us. I have no idea what do do with them because I would still need
to get the board and a case and whatever else, but I'm one step
closer.
After that session I went quickly up to the fourth floor to watch
more ignite sessions. I caught one about something that didn't
pertain to me but I also got to see the two that I wanted to. One
was on marketing and the other was on easy makerspace program ideas.
That one was particularly interesting and I'm glad I made it up there
in time.
I went back down to the exhibit hall after those sessions. I briefly
talked with the lady from Drawn and Quarterly, looked at the maker
pavilion, spoke with my roommate for a little bit, and bought two of
the classic mangas from UDON, which were down to five dollars a piece
today. On my way out I ran into one of my classmates who was
volunteering at one of the booths and we spoke for a little bit
before I headed out to get some lunch. I was cutting it close on
time so I ended up going with the shortest line again. This one was
a panini place but I ended up just getting rice and black beans. It
was way better than the rice and beans I got from the other
restaurant.
I ate quickly and then continued the theme of rushing and went to my
next session. It was by the Pew Research Center and it was about how
the public grades libraries. The room was literally packed to
overflowing. All the seats were taken, people were sitting in the
aisle, standing along the back wall, and out into the hallway. I was
right on the edge between the door and the back wall. It was
uncomfortable standing the whole time but the presentation was filled
with interesting facts from the their polls. I'm a fan of data. I
would include some of the information here but it is getting late and
I want to go to bed soon.
I had a half an hour after that session before the next required
thing so I walked over to where we were meeting and read while I
waited. We eventually all made it there but didn't really have a
clue what we were supposed to do. We went into this little area with
tables and chairs and started dragging chairs around so we could all
sit together. That attracted the attention of several other people
who apparently thought we looked like we knew what we were doing.
One outside told us the idea of the space was for people to
informally come together and talk about some of the things they had
seen at the conference and do a little networking. Because our group
was so large we decided to break into groups by library, which worked
well for academic and school but the public group was still huge. I
broke off with a few of my classmates and we ended up kind of talking
about sessions but mostly talked about a bunch of random stuff like
video games and bitching about having to do some of the required
stuff. I enjoyed myself because it was the first time I had really
gotten to talk to some of them this trip. We were briefly joined by
a woman who works for FirstBook, which sounds like a company I want
to look into more. Or at least pass their information onto the
school librarian and maybe the public library.
From that we went to the Library Games. That was... a thing. It
felt like we had walked into the wrong house party, or as one of my
classmates put it, like a big inside joke we weren't apart of. It
was definitely an extroverts thing. There were three teams of
eccentric, extroverted librarians, two equally eccentric, extroverted
hosts, and a handful of judges. The teams were to compete in four
events and be judged by the judges and the audience. The events
consisted of having to give a presentation with a given topic but a
random assortment of slides that were mostly memes, several rounds of
Cards Against Librarians, a trivia contest, and then
lip-syncing. If it wasn't odd to begin with, there was also drinking
involved, which made things that much weirder, but I'm not sure it
would have been that much less weird if people were entirely sober.
It was just an odd bunch with a lot of histo
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