SLA Conference Seattle

I had a great time at the SLA coneference in Seattle last week. Started out on the Saturday with a boat trip on the Seattle waterways thanks to Paulette deGard and her family. It was a beautiful evening as you can see in the photos.

Dave Snowden gave a keynote talk on the Monday morning that was well received and that he has podcasted. However, many times I see Dave and hear the children's party story I always come away feeling motivated and energized.

I had been a little nervous about my talk and knowledge cafe as it was to be held in a room with lecture style seating for up to 200 people. In the end I need not have worried as we the only had 100 or so people and as everyone told me - librarians love to talk. So just getting people to turn to each and talk where they sat and to move between groups worked just fine.

The only real down side was that we could not have a whole group conversation and people had to report back via the fixed microphones. But the event pretty much proved what I have often said that a knowledge cafe cannot go far wrong as long as you have a good facilitator, a bunch of people and an interesting theme. Nothing else matters!

What some others said about the Knowledge Cafe:

• Learning the value of conversation
• Walk that sharing talk
• discovery in Seattle

Flickr Slideshow: SLA 2008, Knowledge Cafe, Seattle

Photographs of my Knowledge Cafe taken at the Special Libraries Association (SLA) Annual Conference in June 2008.

Media Information:

A big thanks to Donna Gibson, Dianna Wiggins, Nerida Hart, David Stein and Karen Huffman for making the trip possible and looking after me so well.