With spring conference season in full swing, we figured it was worth taking a few minutes to share some thoughts and links from our PLA 2008 experiences—before we got sucked completely into the next event (CIL 2008).
Personally, I really enjoyed the PLA Virtual Conference, and that’s not just because we were sponsors! I think there’s a definite online conference need for those in our library community who can’t (budget? staffing?) or won’t (environmental issues?) travel to a national conference venue.
The technology infrastructure and bandwidth is almost there, and the virtual production values are pretty darn smooth—the next step is to find a programming model that works for the genre. I’m not sure what that is, but I can tell you we may do more harm than good by trying to cling to our physical format in a virtual sphere.
One thing is for sure, a Virtual Happy Hour has none of the redeeming characteristics of its physical world cousin! I’m hopeful though, and am excited to see tons of online conference innovation in the coming years.
One equalizing connection layer between physical and virtual attendees is the huge increase in online sharing that we’ve seen this year. Between Twitter, blogs, YouTube, and Flickr, I almost feel like I was in the Twin Cities.
Betha’s post about the new Minneapolis library drove this home to me. As I physically sat in Seattle, virtually experiencing Nancy Pearl explain how she preferred the modern warmth of Minneapolis library over cold sleekness of the new Seattle library, I had no idea that a timely, serendipitous blog post with photos would illustrate her points perfectly.
That’s just one example where the collective sharing of the PLA community has come through for me. Even though the conference is done, the wealth of online resources means you have plenty of opportunity reap some sharing benefits of your own.
I’d recommend starting, of course, with our BlogJunction PLA2008 post category to check out what the WebJunction team was up to. From there, you’ll find no shortage of great content. The following are a few of my favorites:
- WebJunction Flickr Stream
- Flickr Photos tagged with PLA2008 (1605 at this count!)
- PLA2008 on the PLA Blog
- Twitter Hashtags explained on the PLA Blog (You can see the hashtag feed on the blog main page)
- Mix It Up: Using Blended Learning for Staff Training
- E-learning and Blended Learning at Cuyahoga County Public Library
- Mixing It Up at the State Library of Iowa
- From Hype to Help: Making a Difference with New Technologies
- PLA Conference Handouts
- PLA WebJunction Fact Sheet
- Library Looney on the PLA Hype to Help Session
- Video: Backstage at the Virtual Conference
These should get you started, but I’m sure there’s much more we haven’t seen. If you find a great link please let us know via the comments. For that matter, if you have a question, comment, complaint or insight about PLA 2008, let’s hear that too!