ALA (post 1 of several)

(Rather than doing a mega blog post about ALA, I’ll try to stagger my posts for a few days. It seems only fair.)

I haven’t been to a ton of ALA conferences, yet: 2008 Annual in Anaheim, 2009 Annual in Chicago, 2010 Midwinter in Boston, and now 2011 Annual in New Orleans. (Also SLA in DC, ER&L in LA, and AkLA in Anchorage & Juneau.) So far, though, I have to say, New Orleans is my favorite conference location and is going to be tough for future places to beat. The locals seemed really genuinely happy to have us there–they remember that ALA was the first big conference back after Katrina–and all of the hotels are close to one another; my non-official-conference hotel was within walking distance of the convention center and was less than a block from the shuttle, which also ran very efficiently (nb: my last annual before this was Chicago, where the shuttle situation wasn’t half as good). Better: the convention center is so big that very few meetings even had to happen outside of it. And, although I dispute the suggestion that librarians are particularly hard partiers, overall, they do seem to enjoy imbibing adult beverages, something nowhere supports quite like NOLA.

By all reports, the city has rebuilt amazingly since the 2006 conference. I witnessed some of that: I did one of those multi-hour bus tours on one of my “vacation” days, and we went through some of the affected areas. (Side note: another “pro” for NOLA was that I felt like it was worth visiting in its own right and therefore worth spending some extra time in–a major asset for someone flying as far as I do, to get to these things.) Brad Pitt’s Make it Right foundation is helping people build these very cool “green” homes, to replace what was damaged in Katrina, in one area. And, overall, people there seem to be really resilient and to really love their hometown. I see why: it has an awful lot going for it.

So, NOLA was fantastic. The conference, too, was fantastic: I attended a LITA preconference on user experience design (that’s getting its own post), several technology sessions, several non-technology sessions, several auditorium speakers, and several New Members Roundtable (NMRT) meetings–I think my tenure as NMRT Member Services Director has now begun? Or perhaps it’s not official until July 1st? But, anyway, I’m all geared up for that. And on top of all of that, I also lucked into a few social events with fun and energetic librarians. Just, overall, a really outstanding time. Glad though I was to get back to 60 degree temperatures, I have to say, I was sad to leave.

(Also, this may not be my last post about my NOLA tourist experience… I have pictures! :))