JHW's Notes: Tuesday & Wednesday

I've already blogged about two sessions on Tuesday (here and here). 

Food first...Since Sunday, I've eaten at:

• Rock Bottom Brewery which has outdoor seating and very good food & beer (their own)
• Union Square Grill -- excellent food with prices to match
• Wild Ginger -- Asian inspired and excellent
• Safeco Field -- I had sushi (Ichiroll) and it was excellent.  the New York Times had given thumbs up to sushi at this park.

Thanks to Nicole Engard, Chair of the Blogging Section of the IT Division, for arranging the bloggers get-together on Tuesday night.  There were more than 20 people at the event, including a few who weren't blogging yet.  This event is held every year as a social that is open to any SLA member.  for those of you who attended, remember that there is a Blogging Section and consider joining it (and perhaps blogging for it).

The big social event for many people was the Information Technology, Leadership and Management, and Physics-Astronomy-Mathematics Divisions Joint Open House (i.e., The Dance Party). I suspect that the DJs thought the night was going to be boring...I mean...librarians?  With 400 - 500 people in attendance and a dance floor that took up a third of the room, I bet the ended the night saying "wow...librarians!"  The theme was "Under the Sea, Come Dance with me!"  The setup made it feel like a prom.  Tiaras were worn by many people (women and men), as well as "prom" earrings.  Yes, good music, good times, good networking, lots of laughs, and a chance to make new SLA friends.  Thanks to the three divisions who co-sponsored the event as well as the two corporate sponsors, IOP Publishing and Thomson Scientific.  If you were at the Dance Party, and enjoyed it, please give a shout-out of thanks to IT, PAM, LMD, IOP and Thomson. 

Wednesday morning, the Info-Expo was open from 8 a.m. - 12 noon.  This was the last chance for many to visit the vendors.  The vendors this year were open for more hours than in previous years and I hope it was beneficial to them (e.g., good booth traffic, inquires, etc.).

Wednesday afternoon was the closing keynote speaker and the Association's annual meeting.  A year ago, I knew that "the event" of the conference -- for me -- was going to be Seth Godin's keynote.  I had read his book Unleashing the Ideavirus on my PDA and have followed his blog for a number of years.  Godin recognizes that changes that have occurred in marketing in recent years and the need to change our paradigm from shouting our message at everyone to getting people in our niche to spread our message themselves. 

Some people seemed to be typing every word he said, so I hope his points better than my notes (e.g., here).  Here are some quick thoughts from my chicken-scratch:

• "Ideas that spread win."
• "The people who don't know they have a problem aren't listening to you."
• "The spamming isn't working the way it used to." (Meaning that inundating people with messages isn't working.)
• "the amount of noise...is excessive."
• "Every Google search is its own [media] channel."
• "Connect people who want to talk to each other."

Rather than finding customers for our products, we need to find products for our customers.

Rather than insisting on commitment before success, we need to have success before commitment.

The "marketing" cycle is now Be Remarkable --> Tell A Story to Your Sneezers (those who will spread your message) --> They Spread The Word --> Get Permission (from those who are interested in you) --> Be Remarkable {and the cycle continues}

There were four questions asked at the end of his presentation, and I asked one of them.  I had read Unleashing the Ideavirus on my PDA and wondered what he had learned about the future of the book from that experience.  Godin said that books have become souvenirs, memorabilia and artifacts.  He originally disseminated  Unleashing the Ideavirus as an ebook for free and it was quickly downloaded by thousands of people.  After a while, people asked for a print version that they could have on their shelves and point others to.  Do we use all of the books we own?  Not really.  In fact, he had just given away his entire business library because he found that he no longer referred to the hardcopy books.  So what was the lesson he learned?  Give away information.  Write short books and given them away.  Then have people pay for the longer version or a customized version of the book. He said he made more money on a free book, than many have on books that they sold in hardcopy.  "Free" allowed his message to spread quickly and then got people to talk to him and hire him.

After Seth Godin spoke, we had the SLA annual meeting.  The association used to give hard numbers during the annual meeting, but hasn't done that for several years.  We know that we have more members, but how many?  We know that we have a financial surplus, but how much?  How much does it take to run the Association?  And how many people attended the Annual Conference (by category)?  Part of the 2.0 movement is increased transparency.  Hopefully, SLA itself will become more transparent.

Thanks to Tony Landolt for arranging excellent speakers for the Baseball Caucus and for getting around 90 people to attend the Mariners vs. Marlins game on Wednesday night.  The Mariners use an web/email-based automated system for group ticket sales, which Tony thinks made it very easy for people to purchase tickets (even just days before the game).  When the scoreboard listed the groups in attendance, we made a lot of noise when the Caucus was mentioned.

I have not placed any photos online yet from the conference.  That will happen once I'm back home.  However, there are already 750+ photos in Flickr with the SLA2008 tag.  they'll give you a good idea of what we did, how things looked, etc.  And hopefully provide visual proof that this was a very worthwhile conference.

We've been using the same conference planner on the SLA web site for three (?) years.  While our expectations of "conference software" has changed, the conference planner has not.  Guy has already commented on the conference planner, but I think it is worth giving some additional thoughts:

• Allow people to add comments to events in their personal planner, rather than having to add (duplicative) personal activities.
• In the personal planner, list the sponsoring divisions for the events as well as the speakers.
• Give us the ability to share our personal planners electronically with others.
• Allow us to easily integrate our personal planners into the MS Outlook or Google Calendar.
• Allow us to email events to someone ("hey...have you seen...")
• Allow us to have competing events on our calendars, but to make one of the events a priority.
• With the new emphasis for going green, allow us to connect to the digital handouts for sessions from the planner.
• Find a planner that has web 2.0 capabilities.

I know...this means finding and installing something different...and that's okay with us.

This conference is over.  Will we C U N DC?  (See you in D.C.?)

Comments

[Karen]

Great post! I appreciate the notes from Seth Godin's talk - it worked well to refresh my memory.