Had some good sessions on Tuesday. Probably the most useful dealt with building video tutorials for online applications. I think we have need of something like this, and it should be fairly easy to produce. Need to look into this.
Also, last night my wife and I used iChat on our Macbooks to have a video chat. Really cool. Worked great — everyone should get a Mac of some kind.
The conference has been good so far. Howard Rheingold, author of Smart Mobs, gave the keynote. Interesting speech. I’ve been aware of that book for a while, but since it deals with cell phones a lot and I generally am not a big cell phone guy, I haven’t read it. Actually, while I have a cell phone I like, I only use it rarely, and in society at large I hate cell phones, considering them a plague that I wish would be eradicated. There — now that we are clear on that — let’s continue. I may want to read the book. It sounds like it has some fascinating examples of technology-enabled cooperative behavior.
While all the sessions I attended today were OK, only one really stood out for me. The topic was “Mashing up and remixing the library website“, and was given by two librarians from the University of Houston. They have created, essentially, a custom content management system. I believe it is based on Cold Fusion software. Anyway, you know how in iGoogle you can create new web page parts and move them around your page? Well, they have created something like that for the library website. The other librarians can create pages using this system, and everyone is happy. At least with regard to the website. Really neat, and beyond my technical skills. BUT, some of the technologies they use might be adapted to our website, which is cool.
As always, while I’m taking notes in one document, I have another open for recording ideas that tend to come to me while I’m in these sessions. Sometimes they’re ideas for personal projects, sometimes work, sometimes both. That is really why I enjoy coming here. It gets my creativity flowing.
Looking forward to the sessions on Tuesday.
Here I am in Monterey. I’ve been letting my beard grow out, and it’s coming in quite nicely. I’ll report on the conference later tonight. No point in trying to do it in even close to real time. I’m up against real blogging fanatics here — they can type really fast.
Well, I got to Monterey the other day, rented a car, and drove up to Mill Valley (in Marin County) to visit my old skating buddy Dale. When I got there, Dale had grilled up some insanely good chicken, which was great as I was quite hungry. We ate, and then watched a documentary about 1980s vert skating ripper, Jason Jesse.
Saturday we both got up kind of late, had some breakfast at a local eatery, shopped for skate shoes for Dale, and then in the afternoon went for an excellent hike on one of the many trails around Dale’s neighborhood. Later in the evening we went to see the new film, “W”. The film was enjoyable, but strange. Too over the top to be serious, but not funny enough to be a comedy. But there were some really funny parts.
I know Dale would like to have gotten some skating in. I’m happy though that as old skate friends, our friendship isn’t just confined to skating.
Got up this morning, had breakfast, and drove down to Mountain View for a freestyle session with Gary Holl and the guys from sk8kings.com. Lots of fun. I always enjoy skating with Gary, who is an amazing skater. He always gets some nice pics of me skating. Here is one below.
Big thanks to Dale and Gary for their hospitality.
After the session I drove back down to Monterey and checked into my hotel, which is where I am right now. Looking forward to the Internet Librarian conference tomorrow.
Me, doing a 180 casper. Photo by Gary Holl.
Well, I’m on my way to Monterey, California, sitting here in the Los Angeles airport waiting for my flight up north. The tmobile internet connection here is WAAAAY faster than my shitty cable modem wifi at home.
Anyway, I have a nice 2.5 hour wait for my flight. Not much to do except surf the web. Looking forward to a fun weekend. Will take some pics as soon as there is an interesting subject. The Internet Librarian conference starts on Monday. Should be great, as always.
Right now, I’m ready to chill with my friend Dale, have some relaxing and fun skate sessions, chill, and skate some more.
Holy cow – they’re playing the Electric Light Orchestra here in the terminal. Nice.
