Blog Salon & Symposium at ALA MW

Just a reminder: the Blog Salon will be in the OCLC Red Suite on Sunday January 22, beginning at 6pm. The OCLC Red Suite (and our moving it from the Blue Suite to the Red has nothing to do with political affiliations) will be at the Marriot Rivercenter. And, as Walt Crawford rightly pointed out in a comment on Alice's post about the Salon: we can't tell you the number of the suite until mere days before the event. The 3 OCLC suites are not assigned until our intrepid suite organizer, Suzanne Lauer, checks in.

We will post the suite number here at IAG but you can drop by the OCLC booth, 1454, and ask for the suite number, or ask the front desk staff at the Rivercenter.

And aside from the lovely orange OCLC totebags, there will be an additional little momento for you--Alice's idea.

As well as your four IAG hosts, I think Jay Jordan and Cathy De Rosa will be attending for at least part of the gathering. And some of our WebJunction colleagues will be there too.

Finally, if you have the time open in your schedule, please come to the Extreme Makeover OCLC Symposium on Friday, 1:30 - 4:30 pm, Marriott Rivercenter, Salon G-H. I've posted about two of the presenters here, and will post about Omar and Antony, our other two speakers, soon. Registration for the event (and all the other official OCLC events at ALA) is here.

Considering how many librarians regard the words "marketing" and "brand" as inimical to librarianship, it could be a lively session. We'll be trying out a polling system during the symposium...200 lucky attendees will get a "clicker" and so will be able to participate in instant voting on questions posed by the panelists.

We won't be streaming the symposium live, but we will video it and make it available after the conference. But, as Alice has mentioned, we're hoping she'll be podcasting the symposium. And if there are bloggers attending--as I know there are--there maybe blog reports.