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.

Memorial Day

Today I put out our flag for Memorial Day - yes,  I am a super-duper patriot besides being a most excellent librarian.  I'm thinking about my dad and my first Zen teacher, Russ, who both fought in WWII in the Pacific and in France, respectively.  Both came back artists - after the war my dad immediately headed to NYC and attended NYU on the GI bill, taking courses in photography.  Russ went into the war a math major in St. Louis and came back an art historian and artist.  I am proud and honored to have had the gift of knowing both of them.

Cool T-shirt makes me want more!

I got this fan art t-shirt that has Totoro dressed as the Buddha and holding an umbrella - it's very kawaii and as I was wearing it yesterday I had the sudden urge to buy another one, even though I just got this one and I would pay almost twice the original price.  But I stopped myself and thought, "why would I want to buy another of the same kind of t-shirt?"  It didn't make sense until I thought about how easily we fall into grasping, wanting, needing when we don't expect it.  So, I've been thinking a lot about desire and how that spirals into neediness and greed.  So what do you do?  We live in a world where we're constantly bombarded by illusory images of money and power and the things it acquires, and it's hard to turn those messages off, no matter how destructive we know them to be ultimately.  Solution?  Not sure, but it has something to do with NOT trying to turn off the messages that we're forced to cognate - cognition is thought, so being with this thought of "want-to-have" is like giving it all the energy it needs to hamper your life and possibly deplete your wallet.  But what if we acknowledge it as a thought, and then move on?  This is what we're taught in Zen Buddhism when meditating - any thoughts go in an out and we just observe them and keep going without attaching to this or that notion.  This is a great technique for when you're not meditating, as well, so when I was able to back up from the thought of "want-to-have" I saw that it was just thinking and was able to let it go.

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.

Google Hangout May 26th from 9-10pm EST

I decided to do an online Google Hangout this coming Monday to get together with folks who are old and new to ALA conferences (or any conferences) to come hangout and talk about strategies for navigating such a huge event.  I've never done one of these Google Hangouts online so it'll be interesting.  Come join me!

Bird is here

Where does the sound come from when we hear it?

Woo-Hoo! I'm a stringer!

Just got the first email from George Eberhart to the people chosen to be stringers for ALA 2014.  While it looks like live-blogging might be a problem because the wifi might be poor (or nonexistent), I now know how to submit blog posts to ALA Direct's blog, The Scoop, where we'll be posting all the news and views of ALA in Las Vegas.  Really looking forward to it!  I'm hoping to still do a lot of photos and short video interviews with attendees, as well as longer, U-Streamed, events like the ALA Think Tank's pub crawl on Thursday night.  I'll work with the limitations and do the best I can!