Thoughts from ALA Annual 2011 (plus a link to my YALSA blog post)

July 9, 2011

After returning home from ALA this year, I came down with a cold that I just haven’t been able to shake. It’s making catching up on my life and correspondence difficult, but I wanted to write down some of my impressions and thoughts from Annual before they fade too much.

Before I left for New Orleans, I spent some time thinking about what I wanted my conference experience to be like this time. Especially since the last time I’d been to Annual was also my first and I’d been a student at the time, I had a different perspective now that I have my own library to which I’m applying everything I learn rather than just trying to file everything away for later. And just by virtue of being in the field longer and finding more ways to get involved, I knew some of my responsibilities and experiences would change. (For example, in small groups, I was able to actually contribute ideas since I have hands-on experience that I didn’t have a year ago, and now that I’m on a committee, I had more official meetings that I needed to attend at specific times, which precluded me from attending sessions that looked interesting.) And for the first time, I was going to be rooming with a coworker, which turned out to be a lot of fun.

Anyway, my big goals this time were to be more fearless in just jumping into conversations and introducing myself and to learn more about YALSA and to find new ways to step up my involvement.

Being bolder and meeting more people

I knew I’d be going to receptions or events where I wouldn’t know anyone, and I wanted to make myself just walk up to those strangers, introduce myself, and start a conversation. And I did so, and it helped me meet some great new friends and pick up some interesting stories. It was a little scary at times and made events a lot more exhausting, but it was totally worth it.

In general, I feel like this conference was a lot more people-focused than any of the ones I’ve been to before. That is, my conference experiences up until now have been centered around attending a lot of sessions, learning as much as I can, and taking a lot of notes, but this time I found myself spending a lot of my time just talking to people and exchanging contact information. In some ways, I’m a little bummed because I love having my mind cracked open and poured full of interesting things, but in the long run, I think this will be more beneficial since I’ll be seeing new ideas from my new friends via Twitter or their blogs all year long and not just at the conference itself. It was also really exciting to finally meet people that I’d only ever spoken to online and to put a face to that name and those conversations. I especially liked then running into those people (or the handful of people I knew from earlier conferences) throughout the weekend: it made ALA feel a lot smaller and a lot more personal than it did when I was a student trying to make my way through the crowds of strangers.

Getting to know YALSA as an organization

My professional life has been so enriched by using the tools and networks YALSA has created and by pursuing volunteer opportunities, so it seemed natural to sign up to spend an hour at the YALSA booth in the membership pavilion answering questions and promoting different resources YALSA’s created or made available. But I also wanted to learn more about how YALSA works, so I sat in on the end of a strategic planning session, attended the YALSA membership meeting, and observed a Board meeting (which I wrote about for the YALSA blog). That’s definitely gotten me interested in becoming more involved, maybe by volunteering to serve on a process committee next. I also had the opportunity to meet a lot of current and former Board members and to talk to them about what some of YALSA’s priorities and challenges are, which was really interesting.

Some final thoughts

I still need to hone my skills at figuring out which sessions and presentations are going to be good and which ones are going to make me wish I’d chosen something else. And for as glad as I am that I met so many awesome people this time, I think my next conference needs to see the pendulum swing more to the middle of the people-and-obligations-versus-presentations balance. (Then again, we’re going to be in fifteen hours of meeting for my committee work at Midwinter, so maybe that lesson needs to wait until Annual 2012.) I also want to start scheduling a day to actual do things in the city where the conference is held rather than being all business all the time. But what an exciting, inspiring weekend it was–even if this cold is determined to defeat me now that I’m back.

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Tags: ala2011, conferences, networking, professional development, professional involvement, yalsa, yalsa blog