Day 2: Vegas morning

I am soooo glad I don't live here, as I'd be a helpless gambling addict.  I think that's where all the homeless people come from - arriving in Las Vegas with hopes and dreams of hitting it "big" and succumbing to the vicissitudes of Lady Luck and her capricious nature.  Okay, that's probably wrong, but I can definitely see myself as a young woman getting into some terrible, terrible trouble in Sin City.

So I woke up early, went to McDonald's (after the lousy in-house coffee and danish yesterday, I went straight to the old go-to for cheap, fresh breakfast), and then sat down at a couple of slot machines and ended up 3-dollars ahead!  Woo-hoo!  I'm like my dad, who was game but not a gambler.

Off to Hash House A Go Go to meet up with Facebook (hope-to-be-real) friends and then hopefully make the last hour of the Annual Unconference, which starts at 9am.  Crap!  Just realized that there are THREE Hash Houses in Vegas, and I don't recall which one we were supposed to meet!  Dang!  Okay, deep breath...

Okay.  Okay.  Anyway, just a reminder that I will be live-streaming coverage of two events today, the first session of CraftCon in the Uncommons (2:30pm), and the opening of the Exhibit Floor (5:30pm) - hope you can join me - I'll be filming on my phone so won't have a chance to check chat but I hope peoples who can't make it to either event will take a look and meet some of the great people I've met so far at the Annual ALA Conference for 2014.

Postscript:  Found out which Hash House, duh.

From the Schedule and Beyond: Highlights from #alaac14 (continues) (now with 15% more hyperlinks)

So I posted a couple of days about about The Library Games, and event which takes place on June 30th, and thought I'd mention a couple of other cool things that are happening before the weekend.

CraftCon, hosted by Kate, is an event listed in the  Networking Uncommons area, so it may get overlooked if you don't look at the schedule.  It starts at 2:30pm on Friday, June 27th, and runs at various times throughout the weekend.  Bring your own crafts, bring crafts to share, show off projects, or just come hang out with a bunch of chill library peoples.  I'll be Ustreaming the start of the CraftCon on the Ustream channel, before hunkering down to do some subversive cross-stitching until my next session.

ALA Play, hosted by the Games and Gaming Round Table and Graphic Novels and Comic Books groups is listed in the ALA scheduler.  This promises to be a fun event and a great way to unwind after the opening sessions on Friday, June 27th and runs from 7:30pm-10pm at Caesar's Palace.  The theme is Welcome to Nightvale - interesting!

Keep checking back as I post more updates - trying to decide if I should post the ALA party map...

Broadcast schedule on Ustream, so far

So here are two events I'll be live-streaming from Las Vegas on the Ustream channel, ALA 2014 Las Vegas, Baby! Both of them are on Friday, and I'm hoping to add to these soon, so keep checking back!  If I remember correctly, you can sign up for email alerts when the channel is live.

Uncommons: CraftCon Friday June 27th at 2:30pm

I'll be bugging people at the Uncommons area throughout the conference, but this will be covering the CraftCon event that starts on Friday

#alaac14 Opening of Exhibit Floor Friday June 27 at 5:15pm
This is where I get really excited and jump around, talking to exhibitors and gathering the best swag when it opens on Friday afternoon.

One month to go! #alaac14

Okay, let's try this again - I just deleted the first post, so now I have to rewrite the whole darn thing - how do I manage to do these things?  It is a mystery.  The Google Hangout last night went well, if not a little disorganized on my part, and I definitely learned what NOT to do with hangouts, like try to pause the broadcast, which essentially ended the scheduled one I had been advertising for about a week.  So I had to create another hangout on the fly, got the time wrong, and started later than intended.  I'm sure I lost a lot of potential views because of that, but all I can do is try again with another hangout.  I think what I will do is synthesize the information that folks generously gave during this last one and then present the information at the next one.  Or I'll just post it on the blog.

Hey, and a big shout-out to those who attended and generously supplied their time and expertise to the topic of attending a huge conference like #alaac14.   I am truly appreciative of the people involved in building community online and in person, and it encourages me to keep on keeping on.

Will have to post on some of the activities outside of the scheduled events.

ALA Mobile Scheduler is the bomb

You'll remember when I discovered the ALA Scheduler for Annual and immediately over-booked myself 5 times over.  Well, I was able to figure out how to add the ALA scheduler to my phone, and now I can access all the events and keeps track of all the events I'm attending.  You will see that it is fairly complete with a button to access all the sessions or just the items you signed up for. It has information about the Uncommons, which I'm looking forward to visiting (meaning I will bother the people at the Uncommons desk) and possibly using their equipment to live stream on the exhibit floor.  This is a recommended app if you like using your phone for scheduling, which I do.  Everything is very well organized but the real test will be when I'm juggling between the scheduler, Voice Memo, Notes, Facebook, and Ustream.