Thanks for a great conference
By Thursday, 22 April 2010 00:00
What a great conference! Did you have as a good a time as I had? Despite the fact that I was on….meaning I had a lot of responsibilities, I was so happy that all went well, and people looked like they were having a good time! But, in addition to the good times, and I actually had one of our college student award winners tell me that she was having “a blast!” (Thank you Jill Lovett.) we still gained an enormous amount of information, professional development, fun with friends, and made new acquaintances.
Despite the few mix-ups of room scheduling, minor deals since everyone seemed to find where they needed to go anyway, the Penn Stater put on a good show. How about our General Session Keynote speaker, Stephanie Vance? Was she not the Advocacy Guru, making it a lot more palatable than it sounds? I really think that she has another career as a game show host. With her humorous approach she still made the message clear.
Robin Wasserman was a surprise. I don’t know about you, but after years of hearing authors speak, they usually speak about themselves and their writings, which is what we expect and want to hear. Robin’s address completely addressed how important we are in the grand scheme of growing up kids. I was waiting to get some emails about her use of terminology but so far, none. Why? Because she was right on target despite her choice of words. Having a bit of personal time with her, I can tell you she is so intelligent and so in to our profession.
What can I say about our Luncheon speaker, 2008 Newbery Award winner, Laura Amy Schlitz? Was she not delightful? Was she not someone who comes out of the box? Do we look forward to more from her? How embarrassing for me that when awarding the books on the tables at the conclusion of the Luncheon, I had the wrong date for Laura Schlitz’s birthday? How did I perform that smooth move? Of course, when I was in crunch time right before the conference I hurriedly succumbed to using Wikipedia. Her publisher’s page did not have her birthday so I thought surely this would not be a problem on Wikipedia. Well, here’s another Wikipedia story that you can use with your students. Wikipedia stated that her birthday was January 1, which I thought was really neat. WRONG! When I announced it, I asked her if that was correct, having a creepy feeling, and she said no! Her birthday is May 28! Just don’t trust that Wikipedia. It was a short embarrassing moment since people were so ready to get home.
Ok, I can keep going on about how great a time we had at the conference but we want to hear from you. Did you find that the workshops were up to your expectations? Did you find that your experiences were valuable? Go on the conference wiki and let us know. We take your comments very seriously. Thank you to the Conference Committee under the direction of Doug Francis, Conference Chair and VP, for another job well-done. They spend countless hours putting this together for us. Thank you to all of the Committee Chairs and their Committees for all of their hard work to keep our organization working in the right direction. Thank you to the Board and all of you for your terrific support, ideas, and direction for keeping us going one step forward at a time to keep our school library programs going in the right direction.