{"id":298,"date":"2012-01-24T14:53:02","date_gmt":"2012-01-24T22:53:02","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/sheldon-hess.org\/coral\/?p=298"},"modified":"2012-01-24T14:53:02","modified_gmt":"2012-01-24T22:53:02","slug":"ala-midwinter-2012-lessons","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.sheldon-hess.org\/coral\/2012\/01\/ala-midwinter-2012-lessons\/","title":{"rendered":"ALA Midwinter 2012 &#8211; Lessons"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>I had a really excellent conference! I got to meet several of my library superheroes, plus quite a few people I have no doubt will become my library superheroes as time goes on. I participated in the first session of this year&#8217;s Emerging Leaders program (which was excellent! Group G totally rocks!), planned an unofficial (not in the Scheduler) event (which I couldn&#8217;t attend&mdash;more on that in my next post), helped moderate an official (in the Scheduler) event, went to several &#8220;un&#8221; events, participated in meetings, went to sessions, skipped sessions for lovely meals with delightful people, partied with the <a href=\"https:\/\/www.facebook.com\/groups\/ALAthinkTANK\/\">ALA Think Tank<\/a>, spotted famous librarians, gave and received a million ideas, and generally succeeded at Doing Conference Right(TM). (There are <em>several<\/em> ways to Do Conference Right, by the way; mine was hardly the only one.) <\/p>\n<p>In the process, I learned some things about myself and about conference attendance, as I always do. (Actually, one of the things I learned, from a library superhero, was to write a &#8220;Lessons&#8221; post, either in my blog, or in a notebook, or whatever, so I can go back and refer to it later. Look at me, putting lessons into practice!) I thought I&#8217;d share, in case any of them will help others&mdash;and because I am sure they will help me, later.<\/p>\n<p>Lessons:<\/p>\n<ul>\n<li>Write up your lessons learned as soon after conference as possible. ;)<\/li>\n<li>When running a session, be sure to build time in for assessment, especially if the program is really free-form. (I want to know how to do Library Camp better in the future! Erica and I both definitely want to stay involved, if Jenny&#8217;s all right with it, but we want to make it better each time. I wish we&#8217;d asked people what they thought would work well, in the future.) <\/li>\n<li>Take a day to explore the city (I already knew this), <em>before<\/em> conference (I didn&#8217;t know that). I was so tired that I didn&#8217;t have the energy to go to the zoo today; I&#8217;m just sitting in a coffee shop, blogging and doing work for various committees and organizations. It&#8217;s basically a work day, done remotely. Which is still pleasant enough, but not as exciting, as restful, or as good for stories, later, as proper vacation activities would be.<\/li>\n<li>Bring at least one change of clothes in carry-on. This is another thing I used to know, but I had stopped doing it. I hate having a large carry-on bag, because there are already too many of those on the plane. I hate taking up the space in my small carry-on with clothes, though. Or, rather, I prefer having a blanket for sleeping on red-eyes to taking that space up with clothes. :) Lesson emphatically learned.<\/li>\n<li>I don&#8217;t remember whose tip this is, but I loved it: <strong>Never turn down an invitation!<\/strong> Seriously, the best things I did were spur of the moment, like brunch in the arts district, or were planned <em>during<\/em> conference, like the CodeYear meetup.<\/li>\n<li>Find everything you want to go to, and put it on a Google Map. (I can post directions, if anybody wants to do this but finds it daunting. I promise it&#8217;s easy!) Put the address of that Google Map into your phone, and print a copy for backup. You will be <em>so glad you did<\/em>!<\/li>\n<li>Ask for things you want. At Library Camp, while talking about the session on introverts, we managed to convince an extrovert to run a session on the etiquette of cocktail parties\/networking events. (I&#8217;m embarrassed to admit this is something I totally <em>do not understand<\/em>. I don&#8217;t know when it&#8217;s polite to step into a conversation, or how to politely leave a conversation, or any of that, in a free-form social situation. I find social events with people I don&#8217;t know very intimidating and often draining. I think I spend too much time with the people I do know, hampering their ability to build their own networks. [This is more &#8220;I like you and want to hang out&#8221; than &#8220;I am afraid of new people,&#8221; but it&#8217;s still part of that etiquette thing.]) If I hadn&#8217;t put that out there and said &#8220;I wish someone would teach this,&#8221; the session would not be in the works now.<\/li>\n<li>Relatedly: I&#8217;m probably an introvert. I have never really identified that way, and I&#8217;m not pure-I on the Meyers-Briggs (I have had E, I, and X, in the past), but I have enough tendencies in that direction, based on people&#8217;s descriptions of the introvert session (which I didn&#8217;t attend, not thinking I was one) that I should probably acknowledge at least the possibility.<\/li>\n<li>Say hello to that famous librarian at that party (or in the very long lunch line), even though they&#8217;re famous. They probably won&#8217;t mind. (My apologies, if you happen to run into one who does!) And then you&#8217;ll get to say something like &#8220;I shook hands with Arlene Taylor!&#8221; &#8230; Which I totally did. And a few other famous librarians, as well. (It was a very good conference.)<\/li>\n<li>Don&#8217;t post your detailed schedule on your blog before conference. It makes you feel guilty for the things you skip. It also makes you feel like being cagey about exactly <em>which<\/em> things you <em>did<\/em> attend, if you blog later.<\/li>\n<li>A Navy Captain is much higher-ranked than a Captain from another area of the military. Also, the Marines are a subset of the Navy. Also, &#8220;mustering,&#8221; for students, is done digitally. (I learned this from Andrea at the Think Tank party. :))<\/li>\n<\/ul>\n<p>Finally, I have one that is too long to put in the bulleted list, but is still worth saying: <\/p>\n<p>I appreciate and enjoy the Think Tank&#8217;s approach to things, and I am proud to identify with them (us). (The approach, as related to me by JP and Patrick, then paraphrased heavily by me due to lack of sleep: &#8220;Don&#8217;t wait for an organization to do it, and don&#8217;t ask permission. Just do it yourself, or find a group of like-minded folks to help you. Don&#8217;t waste a bunch of time thinking about whether it&#8217;s OK, or whom it might tick off; just go be awesome, and make it happen!&#8221;) I love their (our) energy and the amazing conversations that happen, both in person and on the Facebook page. I am, however, unconvinced that changing organizations from the inside is impossible, or not worth my effort. (This may turn out, years from now, to be a major lie I admit to having told myself, but, for now, it&#8217;s something I need to believe.) I think it&#8217;s a lot of <em>work<\/em>, but I&#8217;m prepared to do that; I know these people are, too, because of how much they&#8217;ve accomplished, outside of the ALA structure. I wish the full power of the Think Tank could be harnessed to do the necessary internal work, too, though&mdash;650+ super-engaged and energetic librarians could be a <em>powerful<\/em> force for change! Still, looking back at my career so far, an awful lot of what I&#8217;ve done has been done in a very Think Tanky way: I wanted new members to have a welcoming home in <a href=\"http:\/\/akla.org\" title=\"The Alaska Library Association\">AkLA<\/a>&mdash;something the organization also wanted but hadn&#8217;t really conquered yet&mdash;so I made and ran a New Members Roundtable (not sure if that&#8217;ll solve the problem, yet, but I remain hopeful); I wanted my library to do social media (and, secretly, I wanted an outlet for some of my skills and energy, where I could have more freedom than I do with our website), so I made and ran a Social Media Team; I wanted to strengthen the library community in Anchorage and spend time with some of the librarians who felt left out by our local library chapter (secret sub-goal: &#8220;and convince them to join and help me change the chapter to feel more inclusive&#8221; &#8230; which is an ongoing secret goal), so I created and continue to organize <a href=\"https:\/\/www.facebook.com\/pages\/Interlibrary-Lush-Anchorage\/188612011209751\">Interlibrary Lush &#8211; Anchorage<\/a>. <\/p>\n<p>But I guess this is where I&#8217;m going: this whole internal [to an organization] vs. external dichotomy, for getting things done, was really the whole thrust of my Emerging Leaders application: I know how to create groups and implement side projects to get things done, at every level, but I want to learn how to get things done within the existing structure, too! (I didn&#8217;t mention ILL in the application. ;)) I believe you can #MakeItHappen and also be someone the existing organization trusts\/listens to. And I secretly believe that the Think Tank at large isn&#8217;t so cynical as to really disagree, that a large number of those 650+ people will step up and help make ALA into the best organization it can be. <\/p>\n<p>&#8230; which may turn out to be naive. We&#8217;ll see. <\/p>\n<p>Anyway, like I said, it was a great conference. I&#8217;m simultaneously exhausted and energized, which I think is a win. I look forward to Annual! <\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>I had a really excellent conference! I got to meet several of my library superheroes, plus quite a few people I have no doubt will become my library superheroes as time goes on. I participated in the first session of this year&#8217;s Emerging Leaders program (which was excellent! Group G&#8230;<\/p>\n<div class=\"more-link-wrapper\"><a class=\"more-link\" href=\"https:\/\/www.sheldon-hess.org\/coral\/2012\/01\/ala-midwinter-2012-lessons\/\">Continue reading<span class=\"screen-reader-text\">ALA Midwinter 2012 &#8211; Lessons<\/span><\/a><\/div>\n","protected":false},"author":3,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[54,4,5,15,43,28,39],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-298","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-el12ala","category-ala","category-alaska","category-conferences","category-leadership","category-librarianship","category-travel","entry"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.sheldon-hess.org\/coral\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/298","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.sheldon-hess.org\/coral\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.sheldon-hess.org\/coral\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.sheldon-hess.org\/coral\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/3"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.sheldon-hess.org\/coral\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=298"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.sheldon-hess.org\/coral\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/298\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.sheldon-hess.org\/coral\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=298"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.sheldon-hess.org\/coral\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=298"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.sheldon-hess.org\/coral\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=298"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}