I’ve now been in Monterey for two days.

1st day on my own dime. Rented car. Drove to San Francisco to skate. Had a great time. Drove north to Mill Valley to hang with my friend Dale and skate. Also had a great time. It’s always great to see Dale. Good to skate with someone who’s style makes sense to me and talk to an old friend about new things. As usual, I was so busy skating I forgot I had a digital camera with me. So no pics or video.

2nd day — Day 1 of the Internet Librarian conference. So far the conference has been very cool. I spent most of the day in sessions related to some new (to me) web technologies. Paul Miller, of Talis.com, was an interesting speaker. He discussed the terms “Web 2.0” and “Library 2.0” – essentially a service outlook of engaging your customers and the technical tools that enable that to happen (http://www.talis.com/tdn/innovationdir). I was pleasantly surprized today by a session on information discovery of blog and podcasting information. I really only went to the session because after lunch I wanted a comfy seat, and that session was in the “nice” auditorium! haha. Anyway, besides providing some hints on resources for finding such information sources, the session gave me some ideas for new things to try at work. Actually, new things for other people to try, that I’d like to be involved with. In particular, I can think of some good applications for podcasting of some services the public library provides. Likewise, there are some really cool potential applications for podcasting to my own, specialized customer base.

At 5pm they opened the exhibit hall and had free food. I lurked in there for a while and took some pictures. Then I went down the old pier and ate some fried calamari while watching some sea lions beg for food. Nothing compliments the taste of good fried calamari like the smell of sea lion.

I’ve decided that on Tuesday I’m going to attend sessions on podcasting all morning. In the afternoon it’ll mostly be podcasting, but also a session on JavaScript and RSS techniques that we might be able to use to include external content on our webpages, which is one of the main things I came here to learn. I’ve decided not to hit the session on Mashups. I think the topic is a bit too technical to get the detail I need in short sessions. I can learn it on my own.