Went to the hotel fitness center this morning.\u00a0 Yesterday I lifted, which I could do endlessly.\u00a0 Today was a day to run, and my body was like, \u201cDo you know what you\u2019ve been feeding me for two days?\u00a0 No.\u00a0 This isn\u2019t happening.\u201d\u00a0 #PLA2018, where Marisa makes all the bad health decisions!\u00a0 I powered through, because librarians know who to persevere, but I\u2019m at like 40% energy level for the rest of the day.<\/p>\n
First session was great – The Future is Now: Virtual, Augmented, and Mixed Reality in Public Libraries <\/strong>\u2013 but I could NOT stop yawning and had to keep forcefully drawing my attention back.\u00a0 Should have stopped for a coffee on the way.\u00a0 <\/strong>The session was a great introduction to available VR and AR technologies, with suggestions for where to start and supplementary tech products needed, as well as great tips for pricing and budgeting.\u00a0 I was super duper excited for this one, as I\u2019m about to put together a grant application for a tech-oriented makerspace and homework help center, and I feel like I have the background knowledge to at least start my research now.\u00a0 BONUS \u2013 I realized that this Discovery Center should really be a joint project between Youth and Adult Tech Services, because teens shouldn\u2019t get all the fun and there are so many programming opportunities for all ages.\u00a0 And there are a ton of ways our Local History Librarian would be able to create SUPER cool content using VR and AR technology!\u00a0 I met up with \u201cmy people\u201d from my system for lunch, and I planned to bombard Lindsay, our adult computer lab and Tech Trainer supervisor (that\u2019s not her official title, but it\u2019s what she does and I\u2019m tired, so it will suffice), with suggestions for how we could work together on this, and she was like, \u201cOh, I was at that session, too!\u201d\u00a0 Nice to be able to cut to the chase, and were totally on the same page, so bully for us!<\/p>\n In addition to the keynote speakers and hour-long presentations, there were also a TON of 20 minute mini-presentations on the PLA stage in the exhibit hall, and the few of these that I saw ended up being some of my favorite sessions.\u00a0 They\u2019re more concrete and specific – things you can walk away and implement as soon as you get back to the library.\u00a0 If your state library association does regional or chapter conferences, these are probably very similar to what you\u2019d get there.\u00a0 Today I saw a mini-session on librarians serving as digital media mentors from an ECRR perspective, and it was fabulous.\u00a0 The biggest takeaway is that we should approach digital resource evaluation the same way we evaluate \u201ctraditional\u201d resources.\u00a0 The presenter (Connie Strittmatter) was just totally reassuring \u2013 this would have been a great session for a tech-phobe librarian to see.<\/p>\n After lunch I attended a great session on coaching (vs. managing) which reinforced some books and articles that I\u2019ve read recently on the topic.\u00a0 Then I missed most of the later session because I was catching up with a colleague from a former library.\u00a0 And you know what?\u00a0 That\u2019s perfectly okay, because those personal connections are an important aspect of any event like this.<\/p>\n Also important \u2013 self-care.\u00a0 Like many librarians, I\u2019m an introvert.\u00a0 An outgoing and very loud introvert, but an introvert nonetheless.\u00a0 I\u2019ve been taking care of myself by telling my FOMO to take a seat, please.\u00a0 I\u2019m not ashamed to say that I\u2019ve retired to my room early the past two nights and gotten more sleep than I usually do at home.\u00a0 I can tell it\u2019s not enough to refill my tank, though \u2013 I\u2019m great at chatting with people when they\u2019re next to me in line, but as soon as they ask where I\u2019m from or what my name is, I\u2019m like, \u201cWhoa, let\u2019s slow this down a little bit.\u00a0 I\u2019m not ready for that kind of commitment.\u201d\u00a0 So if I happened to blow you off after we chatted for like 10 minutes and seemed to have a connection \u2013 sorry.\u00a0 It\u2019s not you, it\u2019s me.<\/p>\n That said, tonight\u2019s the last night, so if my co-workers want to hit up the reception or shut down the bar, I\u2019m totally going to push through and soak it up, because I don\u2019t know when I\u2019ll make it to another PLA!<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" Went to the hotel fitness center this morning.\u00a0 Yesterday I lifted, which I could do endlessly.\u00a0 Today was a day to run, and my body was like, \u201cDo you know what you\u2019ve been feeding me for two days?\u00a0 No.\u00a0 This isn\u2019t happening.\u201d\u00a0 #PLA2018, where Marisa makes all the bad health decisions!\u00a0 I powered through, because librarians know who to persevere, but I\u2019m at like 40% energy level for the rest of the day.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":302,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_monsterinsights_skip_tracking":false,"_uf_show_specific_survey":0,"_uf_disable_surveys":false,"footnotes":"","_members_access_role":[],"_members_access_error":""},"categories":[134,151,1458],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-17882","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-guest-blogger","category-live-blogging","category-pla-2018"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.alsc.ala.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/17882","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.alsc.ala.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.alsc.ala.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.alsc.ala.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/302"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.alsc.ala.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=17882"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.alsc.ala.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/17882\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.alsc.ala.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=17882"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.alsc.ala.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=17882"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.alsc.ala.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=17882"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}