T minus 30 to Symposium

Hang gang! We are about half an hour away from the OCLC Symposium, here at the Sheraton Metropolitan Ballroom in Seattle. To me, the Symposium is what officially transitions us from "pre-ALA" into full-blown conference mode.

Can I tell you, I love the ALA conferences. It's always so fun to see everyone, to make new friends, to flip through a fresh box of crisp new brochures, to hear what new ideas are brewing out there in libraryland.

I've been off working on a Special Project the past couple of months, which means you haven't heard as much from me lately! Never fear, there will be lots of information forthcoming. We're in the middle of the research phase of the project now, working with Leo Burnett. When I have data to share, you can be sure IAG readers will be one of the first audiences to hear it!

So back at the Symposium, we're getting all kinds of social-y things cranked up. When you arrive, you'll be issued a *clicker* so you can register your vote with audience participation questions. Then we also have a cool little social/self-tagging exercise planned, as well. Here's how it will work:

As each person comes in, they receive a badge with descriptive tags on it. It includes things like "Gamer, Blogger, traveler, Photographer, Artist, Millenial, GenXer, Boomer, mac, PC,MySpace, 2.0, Techie, Cataloger, Administrator, Reference
Academic, Public, Special, School." So then once everyone self tags by highlighting relevant terms (a good conversation starter, in and of itself...) then we'll gather up everyone's tags and see who's in the room--and do a tag cloud display. So it gets into issues we're exploring at the session itself: social networking, privacy, personal information in a public space and the exchange that happens...

Another fun bit that I am quite excited about! We have a videographer who is randomly filming the event--the pre, during and after. We'll edit it for coolness and then mount to YouTube. It's not exactly the stellar time of storytelling I was hoping for, for OCLC's first foray onto YouTube. But hey, I'll take something over nothing!

Had dinner at the Flying Fish last night. Highly recommend it, especially the not-on-the-menu vegetarian meal. Absolutely gorgeous food.

Okay, people are starting to arrive so I will post this and continue to post during the event. We have wifi in the ballroom, so other people will also be posting. We have some power strips around the perimeter, so you will be able to plug in when you need to!