ConnectMidwest

I'm keeping an eye on MLA '09 using the various social networkings. The Official MLA Blog is working pretty well. [Just one little coding glitch yesterday that probably only I recognized since I made the very same goof once with the chapter conference blog. Allan B. came to the rescue that time.] Some of the Official MLA Bloggers have been staying up late or getting up early to share their experiences with the rest of us poor folks stuck back here on the continent. And thank you for that! It is kind of a mixed bag of fun stuff and session reports. Love the food photos the best! This all makes me really want to go to MLA next year. I've already requested on interlibrary loan a copy of A Whole New Mind which has been chosen for discussion at next year's meeting in Washington, D.C.

I monitored the "Top Technical Trends III: Technology Fusion" panel using Eric Schnell's Cover It Live feed yesterday afternoon. The tweets really could only give the flavor of the discussion with little detail which is a bit disappointing. But I did catch the videos as they were posted. The time difference is a bit of an issue for those of us in EDT. The session was only about halfway through when it was time to leave work. But this morning when I brought up the feed page again, the entire session was there for me to replay. I am actually just keeping that feed "open" to keep track of today's conference tweets as everyone gets started with the day. As I am typing this, the tweeters are doing an excellent job reporting the Social Networking Task Force Open Forum with lots of interesting crosstalk between them.

Another great way I'm keeping an eye on the conference is with Facebook. Most of my Facebook friends are librarians and many are posting updates and, even better, photos to their profiles. Fun!

Keep up the great work social networkers!