Day two - the light bulb goes on...

End of the 2nd day of the conference and I haven't blogged a single session. I think the idea is to have your own PC so you can go back to your room and write slightly considered opinions about sessions. The internet lounge at the conference venue is good, but it can be hard to find the time to sit and write between sessions, or during lunch breaks.

Anyhow, it has been a good conference so far, and today made it for me. The keynote speaker for day one was Stephen Abram, who only had an hour to articulate some of his ideas. It was good, but not as inspirational as I thought. In contrast, I have just been to a 2 hour presentation by him, and he had a lots more time to explain some concepts, which I found really rewarding.

My highlight was getting the chance to have a coffee with him and talk for about half an hour. Good fun!

Tara Brabazon was the keynote speaker for today and was inspirational too.

Being a reflective thinker, I'll probably try to post my thoughts and impressions once I get home, and everything has had time to percolate for a bit. But so far, the themes I'm getting out of the conference are only confirming what I've been reading and thinking about lately:

• It's all about the customers. Libraries need to stop spending time and money worrying about processes that suit libraries and not customers. Spend time and money on customer focussed procedures instead.
• Library spaces are about giving our customers an experience.
• It's all about building social contacts and building community.
• It's about learning
• It's about being nimble and able to take up new, free web.20 tools to improve the customer experience
• It's about using the tools (instant messaging and texting) in order to communicate with a large part of our non-users (teens)

Umm...that's about all for now. Off to the conference dinner.

:-)