Monday 9th - first day of speakers

Stephen Abram - blogging celebrity and keynote speaker number one. Stephen only had an hour to speak, and although I took lots of notes I didn't come away with a central message. I think a lot of the ideas he talked about I've already read on his blog and associated writings. That's not to say he had didn't anything new to say, but rather he reinforced a lots of messages he already writes about. Here are some dot points I made of comments that stood out for me:

• We need to change to the name of 'information literacy'. Who would want to come to a class where you have to admit you're illiterate!
• The average gamer is female and 31 years old!
• Referred to a recent Pew Report - The future of the internet. I must catch up with that one...
• Banning kids from using MySpace - you don't teach road safety by banning children from crossing the street...
• Book aren't at risk - libraries and their role in society are
• How to libraries react to this? Create an experience, immersion, learning opportunities and support communities.
• Google scholar may not be very 'good' by librarian's standards....yet....bit it's only 2 years old. What will it be like when it's 15 years old?
• Need to focus on the experience of the customer, not the library's needs
• Chance to use lots of new web 2.0 tools that are free and easy to use, to connect with our communities. IM for reference work, RSS for promotions and news, YouTube for marketing and tutorials etc
• Death of DVD format within 5 years. How to libraries deal with content without a box?
• LibraryThing is the 50th largest library in the US (not sure how this was measured, maybe number of items catalogued?)

I attended a longer session with Stephen later in the conference where he presented for a bit over 2 hours, and gave a more structured, considered talk.