Executive Connections

SLA 2010: What a Conference!

If you could not join us in New Orleans for SLA 2010, you missed something special.  Attendees told me repeatedly how impressed they were with the learning opportunities in important areas such as mobile technology, new media, global information issues, search technologies and taxonomy.  This was truly a content-rich conference with lots of learning to take back to the workplace.   

If you did attend—physically or virtually (more about that below)—I encourage you to report on what you learned to your management, even if it is not required.  Doing so will encourage management support for your association activities.  It will also serve as a reminder of just how critical continuous professional development is to you and all information and knowledge professionals so that you can stay ahead of the learning curve in a constantly evolving field.   

This is the first year that SLA offered a Virtual Conference Component, and we have received nothing but positive comments from participants.  They were especially pleased that so many of the questions our keynote speakers answered were from virtual participants, making them feel very much a part of events.  I know that many more followed events on the very active Twitter feed (#sla2010), and I thank those attendees who shared their experiences over Twitter.  In fact, I just checked, and people are still tweeting! 

Shortly before I left for New Orleans, I was saddened at the news that the Louisiana State University School of Library and Information Science is being threatened with closure.  Our host chapter president, Beth Paskoff, is dean. I sincerely hope that the visibility our conference generated in Louisiana helps Beth call attention to the fact that LSU has the only library school in Louisiana, and one of the few in the Southeastern U.S.   

As much as we all learned, I assure you that there was plenty of fun, too.  We were, after all, in New Orleans, home to some of the greatest food, music and cultural attractions anywhere.  Louisiana is still recovering from the 2005 hurricanes and is now coping with the tragic Gulf of Mexico oil spill, so I was very happy to know that the New Orleans Convention and Visitors Bureau estimated that SLA 2010 contributed about $5 million desperately needed dollars to the local economy.

 The highlight of the conference was the opportunity to catch up with so many SLA members and meet many first-timers.  We have an exceptionally collegial membership!  I look forward to getting together with even more of you next year, when the SLA 2011 Annual Conference & INFO-EXPO will take place in Philadelphia.

Pardon the Interruption.

Guest Post by Cindy Romaine, 2010 SLA President-elect 

Can you relate to this? The Internet, with all its interconnectivity, instant gratification, and obscure but fascinating information at your fingertips, is actually doing us a huge disservice. As we tap into all the hyperlinks in that great new Wired article we are reading [Oops! Just a sec, I just got an e-mail that I need to reply to] we are losing our ability to concentrate. [Be right back, I have an incoming text message.] 

Nicolas Carr’s new book, The Shallows: What the Internet is Doing to Our Brains [Hey, look! I got a Facebook update] talks about this trend. Carr’s premise is that the way we ingest information over the Internet is fundamentally different than other methods. With all the links and ads demanding our attention, our thinking isn’t getting deeper, it’s getting shallower. In his NPR interview, Carr states that deep, critical thinking – the kind we get from books – is important. 

Carr is onto something here. [I think I’ll tweet that.] As it turns out—lucky us—Nicolas Carr will be speaking on just this topic at the closing session of the SLA Conference in New Orleans. The conference opens on Sunday 13 June and runs through Wednesday 16 June, Carr will also do a book signing following his keynote during the closing reception. Tweet me and we can hook up!