Wednesday, November 01, 2006

ALA Midwinter Events

It's back!! We will be hosting a Blog Salon at ALA Midwinter in Seattle. It will be on Friday, January 19th at the Sheraton Hotel in the "Blue Suite." Should we start it earlyish, say 5:30pm, so people can go for dinner afterwards? Or should we start it at 7, so people can go for dinner first?

If you've attended a Salon before you will recall that the suite number in the hotel is unknown to us until we all arrive in Seattle in January. We will tell you here what the room number is then, and the hotel front desk will also know. So, if you're coming to ALA MW, and you are a blogger, or a blogger wannabe, or know a blogger, leave us an RSVP here at It's All Good so we know how many cocktail sausages to order!

The second event I want you to know about is the OCLC Symposium. It will be on Friday, January 19th also, 1:30pm-4:30pm. I am not sure yet exactly where it will be held but will post that here when I do. We don't have all our panelists lined up yet, but we have some people and I am very pleased by who has agreed to come and speak.

But first, the topic! The title is "Who's Watching Your Space?" and our speakers are going to talk about social media and social networking, what these are, the history of social networking, how they have changed and might change society, and more specifically, what a culture of participation means for libraries and other public institutions.

And I am really, really pleased that danah boyd and Howard Rheingold will speak to symposium attendees. Howard is an éminence grise in the area of social networking, and the author of Smart Mobs (which is also the name of his blog). danah has done and is doing significant research on Facebook and MySpace and might be described as an éminence verte , given she is much younger than I am! Usually, the moderator for the symposium is an OCLC person, but this time we decided to to give our audience a break from our faces, so the gracious and inimitable Michael Stephens has agreed to moderate this panel.

HOT!!

More when I know more....

13 comments:

Anonymous said...

I'll be there (for the Salon), or am I one of the hosts these days? (But I don't think my plane gets in in time for the symposium.)

Alice said...

Host or no, we look forward to seeing you (and everyone else!) in Seattle.

Anonymous said...

YAY! This is the first thing that's made me feel excited about Midwinter. For some reason, Council doesn't have quite the same pizazz factor as the Blogger Salon.

Eric said...

I love the blogger salons. Unfortunately I may not be able to be there on Friday night ;(

Not exactly connected, but FYI there is now an ALA Midwinter wiki...

Michael Stephens said...

Rheingold! Boyd!

HOT is right!!

Janie L. Hermann said...

Both the Symposium and Salon sound Fab to me! I would prefer the Salon to happen at 7 pm as I think I have obligations up until that point in the day, but will make every effort to be there no matter what the time!

Anonymous said...

Wouldn't miss either of them!

Michael A. Golrick said...

I'll be there with bells on. (Well, maybe not real bells.) And by then I should be at least a semi-offical Cheese-Head since I'll have worked there for six weeks or so!

I'll probably try to find some blogging friends to bring along! (They are still naming their blog....)

Beth Gallaway said...

My vote is for 5:30, so as not to compete with YALSA's video game night!

The Shifted Librarian said...

Count me in for both! Another great lineup - you folks know how to put on a good show. :-)

Anonymous said...

Alackaday, I'm going to be attending the Forum on Library Education, "to
be held on Friday, January 19, 2007 from 1:30 to 3:30pm." Now, me, I'd want those biblioeducational types at the Symposium. But anyway. Michael G., think about how we'll do the PUBLIB thang. Later, for dinner? Or, because PUBLIB is on Webjunction, which has or had some weak ties to OCLC, should we just tell PUBLIB to crash the Bloggers' Salon? ;-)

Anonymous said...

Looking forward to meeting many of you at the Blogger Salon and the Symposium. The symposium lineup is fabulous!

Michael C. Habib said...

I will be at the salon and maybe the symposium. I may need to attend RMG's 17th Annual Presidents' Seminar, Friday January 19, 2007, 2:00 - 5:00 p.m. instead.

http://www.rmgconsultants.com/page6/page11/page11.html