meetings, friends, food & #trenchUX at #alamw16
We’ve just returned from the ALA Midwinter Meeting in Boston, where the weather was a welcome reprieve from last year’s literal blizzard in Chicago during the event (although as a former Chicago resident, my heart swelled with Windy City pride to see how the snow was summarily dealt with … it was a mayoral election year, after all). After that, who doesn’t love a 60-degree MW Sunday evening in Boston, right?
I was honored to be asked to lead a workshop co-sponsored by RUSA Emerging Technologies and Reference Services sections and even more delighted when we were able to pull together a top-shelf panel that included the expertise of valued colleagues Heidi Steiner Burkhardt, Pete Coco, Deirdre Costello and Lauren McKeen. The resultant program, We Are All User Experience Librarians: Creating Change from the Trenches, was one of three inaugural ‘Deep Dive’ workshops at the conference. (We even got mentioned in the American Libraries MW preview! Nifty!)
We all had a wonderful time discussing content strategy, content governance, usability testing, and flash ethnography with a group of nearly 30 attendees who hailed from public, school, academic and special libraries. If you’re interested in the slides and/or tweets, you can find them on Storify – I’ve embedded the Storify at the end of this post.
Saturday night, it was lovely to be able to toast my ACRL editor, valued mentor, and all around amazing lady Kathryn Deiss at a party thrown to congratulate her on her impending retirement. I didn’t get any photos but someone had the presence of mind to get this one with Kathryn and the ‘class of 2000’ UIC Resident Librarians in attendance (thanks for posting, Francis):
As it always is, Midwinter was a whirl of meetings and shuttle buses – all in a bit of a blur this year due to an extremely packed schedule of meetings, notably those for RUSA Emerging Technologies Section, ACRL 2017 conference, and ACRL New Publications Advisory Board. Add to that two nights of intermittent insomnia and, well – let me just apologize if I was fuzzy, absent-minded, or drifted past unseeing in a hallway. I am a person who needs sleep!
One note about the conference itself – I loved all the coloring stations set up throughout the convention center. Such a neat idea!
And now, for non-conference reporting:
Earlier in the fall I’d snagged a sweet deal via one of our favorite travel sites (Travelzoo) at a conference hotel, the Westin Copley Place in the Back Bay. We enjoyed it very much – including our awesome view of the square and the BPL!
Speaking of the BPL, we did get to do a quick look-round on Friday morning before the meeting machine started up … what a lovely library. And the new addition looks to be getting near completion, too.
For those who are interested in our foodie adventures, we enjoyed the following establishments very much: Bar Boulud Boston; Towne Stove and Spirits; Row34; and Stephanie’s on Newbury.
[There used to be a Storify here. RIP, Storify.]