Hi All,
I hope many of you are attending SLA 2011 in Philadelphia, going on right now! I am unable to attend live this year due to budget restrictions, but I am nevertheless on board as an avatar virtually attending the keynote and spotlight sessions!
Broadcasting the opening session live through VirtualU was technically flawless. The evening began with well deserved awards: I was so happy that our 2010 Chapter President Ashley Conaway won the SLA Rising Star Award for her outstanding achievements in the first five years of her career as information professional! Plus Judy Tapiero, who works so diligently as our Student Liaison to MLIS programs at both the College Park iSchool and Catholic University, won the very prestigious Rose L. Vormelker award for being such a wonderful mentor to both students and working professionals through student group chats and her career development workshops. There was a tie for the Vormelker award this year, and I am very happy that Mary Talley, fellow Maryland chapter member as well as a dynamic leader and mentor in the DC Chapter, also won a Vormelker award. Let's congratulate Ashley, Judy, and Mary for their distinguished achievements to our profession!
Keynote speaker and Pulitzer Prize winner Thomas Friedman convincingly addressed what I was told was a packed house via tweets. Speaking on the merger of globalization and information technology, Friedman continued using his "flat earth" metaphor from his recent books like The World is Flat 3.0, to describe how we need to be creative in a world where everything is on a level playing field, and Beijing and Bangelore are our next door neighbors.
Friedman's overweening "Average is Over" motto in his keynote talk challenges us all in terms of job-seeking, career development, or education. He stresses creativity in a world where employers want people who can invent/reinvent a job, rather than just fill it. He touts a liberal arts education to foster creativity, collaboration and synthesizing concepts, which drew a huge applause from the crowd! Although Friedman praises science and math, he says: "If we throw out liberal arts, we may be helping the bottom reach the average, but the average will never reach the top."
Whew, what a heady opening night at SLA 2011, and I was only an online participant! This is my first time attending online, and I have to say that the 3-D VirtualU platform is a lot more conducive to online conferences and much easier for virtual world beginners to use than Second Life. Unlike Second Life, there is also a 2-D "webinar" version of VirtualU that works well for virtual attendees in low bandwidth/slow Internet environments.
While sitting in on the keynote session and chatting with other 2-D and 3-D virtual attendees, I also monitored and participated in #sla2011 tweets. I feel like I got the full force of the keynote address, plus could take a peek at the notes everybody else was taking via Twitter, even if I wasn't there to enjoy the session in the flesh!
Once the conference is over, I'll report on the conference from my virtual perspective for The Cutting Edge.
My best,
Seán
Seán Henry PhD, MLS
2011 SLA Maryland Chapter Past-President
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