In April, the The Maryland Chapter of SLA announced the opportunity for a University of Maryland iSchool student to win a free SLA Conference ticket. The winner was required to provide (1) a photo essay of a day at the conference using Flickr or a similar photo sharing tool and (2) a 500 word written review of a session attended while at the conference.
Leia Dickerson was the lucky winner, and has provided excellent photo and written essays! She has provided excellent information that is of value to all of us. Enjoy!
Photo Essay
The photo essay is available via Picasa.
Written Essay
"When I first saw the listing for 60 Sites in 60 Minutes, in the SLA Conference schedule, I did not think about going. I consider myself fairly Internet savvy, and thought that it would be a session I could reasonably skip. But I was curious about it was so popular, so I decided to go. I do not regret that decision.
Presented by John DiGillio, Manager of US Research at Reed Smith LLP and Gayle Lynn-Nelson, Senior Librarian Relations Consultant at LexisNexis, 60 Sites in 60 Minutes provided an excellent overview of various types of websites. The 60 websites covered were divided into 10 categories. Each presenter had their own set of categories; Lynn-Nelson had six. DiGillio had five. The presenters took turns discussing websites, alternating after they finished one of their category sections.
Lynn-Nelson started presenting her websites first with the category "Blog World." Her first two websites, Common Scold and Mac Lawyer, are two technology blogs with a legal focus. Those websites are more narrowly focused than the third blog she presented, Mashable. It was worth going to the session for finding about this website alone. It comprehensively covers social media and web 2.0 applications.
After Lynn-Nelson finished discussing blogs, DiGillio discussed "Search." He reviewed seven websites, which only one had I heard of prior to the session. The one I enjoyed learning about the most was Criminal Searches. For free, it allows you to search someone's name for a criminal record. In addition, the application "Neighborhood Watch" allows one to map the location of criminals around a certain address. Although DiGillio warned about "not sleeping at night" after viewing the website, I find helpful in maintaining personal safety.
Lynn-Nelson then presented her section on "Resources," which was a bit of a misnomer. LinkedIn, Buyer Zone, and TryPhone are resources allow users to access and contribute business and consumer information. However, the other three websites, GrandCentral.com, TimeBridge, and Ning, are more utilities for productivity rather than resources. This is not to discount the their worthiness; they all offer a great deal to users.
DiGillio continued with "News & Info." All the websites featured in this section were relveant to the category title and quite useful. This included iBraryGuy, authored by the presenter himself. Lynn-Nelson discussed a similar topic with her websites under "Research & Reference." MEDgle, a visual medical digaonis application, was one of my favorite websites of the entire session.
DiGillio then moved in a different direction with "Productivity." He highlighted a variety of applications, like Remember the Milk, OpenOffice, and Drop.io. In the next section, Lynn-Nelson showed four travel related websites, including TripAdvisor, a traveler forum. DiGillio continued with consumer websites, all narrow and unique in their focus. For example, Woot! sells just one product a day. Lynn-Nelson then dicussed technology websites, including Zoho and Go2Web20, which features a comprehensive index on web 2.0 tools and applications.
By the time the presenters reached the last category, "Fun," time was running tight. Both presenters breezed through their websites in order to end the session on time. This was unfortunate. Some websites, like Pandora did not have their features fully explained. Still, each presenter was able to give a very brief description for each website.
At the end the conclusion of the session, I understood fully why the session is so popular. It showed me a plethora of interesting, useful websites that I was unaware of. 60 Sites in 60 Minutes certainly increased my Internet savviness."
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