For the last couple of years, I’ve been wondering just which conference I should adopt as “my” conference. I want it to be one where the sessions are thought provoking and where I’ll get to hang out with people I know and like and are interested in things I’m interested in, and where I can meet people I’ve never heard of before and that have the potential to become my new best friends. So far, the conferences I know about are either so far above my technological abilities that I’d be lost the whole time and not have much reason to apply those skills in my everyday life, or they are at the “no really, the web can help you” level. And so far, I’ve attended the latter sort of conference primarily because that’s where other people who are stuck in the middle like me attend. These are the people I learn from the most, and this is where they go, so that’s where I want to go.

My experience last week reinforced this for me. I had a great conference! But reading Kathryn’s post, I realized that what we all want is a different conference to attend. We want something that falls in between the two kinds of conferences that are out there already but that has national (and international) draw like the current options do. Personally, I want something that gives nearly equal time to carefully thought-out presentations and less structured discussion. I want to hear from library-types and non-library-types. I want the moon.

Does this exist? Shall we descend on some unsuspecting conference and make it so? Shall we invent it from scratch?

I love Seattle. This is only my second time here, but it’s just such a pretty city. And seriously, the entire down-town area smells of coffee, which strikes me as the perfect smell for a city.

I’m sitting here listening to announcements before the opening keynote and hoping that this conference will strike that tricky balance of being both fun and informative. My last ACRL (which was also my first) wasn’t such a great experience, so I’m on a mission to make this one different. Last time I think I chose my sessions poorly, and I had no idea how to meet up with people, so I ended up feeling like the most anonymous person in a sea of potential friends. This time I hope to choose better sessions to attend, and I’m hoping that I’ll manage to connect with some great people and re-connect with previous acquaintances. Part of this depends on you! If you’re here and see me (mostly recognizable by my olive green back-pack, which complements my jeans nicely) please introduce yourself! As a hint, I’ll probably be near a power outlet, and yes, I’m happy to share my extension cord with you.

So here goes. Keynote, then dinner, then hanging out, then back to the hotel (which is right across the street from the Seattle Public Library!). Here’s hoping for a useful, engaging, and fun conference. See you there!

Yesterday an enlightening thing happened in the comments on a blog post by Steve Lawson (a post which is positively ancient in blog years, by the way). Up until yesterday, I’d rather naively thought that even though the terms “unconference” and “library camp” are still in their toddlerhood, people generally had a common understanding of what those terms mean. In my head, this common definition went something like this: An informal, free or low cost, loosely structured gathering at which people share knowledge with each other. I would hear “unconference” and have an image of people gathering at the beginning of the day to figure out what they wanted to learn that day and which of them could lead sessions on those agreed-on topics.

Now I see that people may not, in fact, have a common understanding of the term “unconference.” The comments on Steve’s post point to at least three different interpretations: Unconferences are loosely structured conferences, Unconferences are grassroots gatherings, and Unconferences are a genre rather than a format. Here’s what I mean…

• Unconferences as loosely structured conferences
  If you think of a conference, you know that there are all kinds of logistics that go into pulling one of those things off, most of which depend to a large degree on how many people you want to attend. Everything from spaces to staffing to the number of speakers to the relative rock-start status of your speakers to the rigidity of the schedule has to be geared toward attracting and handling your target audience. If you plan for 100 people and only 40 show up, that’s a huge waste of capital. Bring this mindset to an unconference and you end up with less worry about rock-star speakers (though a few recent unconferences have had Big Names give keynote addresses), but most of the same issues remain your primary concern. The major thing that changes, then, is that the unconference organizers spend little to no time planning out sessions topics, leaving that up to the attendees.
• Unconferences as grassroots gatherings
  Other people, while still having to deal with logistics, consciously force those logistics into the background of the event. They still need space and people, obviously, but if they plan for 100 and 40 show up, those 40 might not even notice that you had enough room for more than twice their number. Those 40 would gather, decide what they want to learn and which of them can facilitate that learning, and then learn it, usually for free (with the space and other necessities paid for by donors or sponsors).
• Unconferences as a genre rather than a format
  Still others (myself included) think of unconferences as a genre of gathering which may or may not include a keynote address, may or may not charge a small fee, and may or may not have an over-arching theme. This genre places the emphasis on attendee-driven content, but other than that, it no more dictates the size or cost or logistical complexity than does the parent term “conference.” As Steve says, an unconference “can be whatever the attendees decide it is” (citation).

Luckily, the solution to all the muddled assumptions is transparency. So if I see an unconference coming up, and I see that it will charge me a small fee and what that fee will go towards, I can make my own decisions about the value of that unconference in my life. If I see that it will be of the loosely-structured-conference variety, and I’m ok with that, that’s great. If I see that it’ll be a completely unstructured day of serendipitous learning with other librarians, and I’m ok with that, that’s great too. After all, not all conferences are like ALA Annual, so why must all unconferences be as diametrically opposed to Annual as possible?

It’s a curious thing, going to a conference. A healthy chunk of the presenters are people I know and talk with all the time, so I’m often familiar with their topics and sometimes even with their approaches. And yet, the experience of going, sitting, and attending sessions back to back, hour after hour, day after day is still enlightening. It’s not so much that I learned new facts (though there was a little of that, too). No, it’s that when you sit through that many sessions, themes emerge from the periphery, gather form and substance, and finally strut around in all their splendor.

The theme that emerged most strongly for me at this conference was ethnography. Previous conferences have trumpeted tools, change, and stories, but this is the first time that I saw a collective desire to understand what it means to inhabit this online world.

Rather than lead us on tours of tools and services, more than one presenter echoed Cliff Landis’ statement that it’s not enough to have an account any more, you have to participate. Over and over we heard about presenting ourselves as humans online, not as institutions. Sometimes this means presenting yourself as a professional (Elizabeth Edwards’ session on an ethnography of Facebook made this point),* but even professionals have personality, and personality is as important online as off. danah boyd spoke compellingly about how an online profile is our digital body that we adorn as if we were getting dressed in the morning.** And both Greg and I spoke about online identity.

Not only are we finally taking a closer look at what it means to inhabit these online spaces, but the online spaces are becoming more integrated with our off-line spaces. As the two worlds come closer together, as the process of switching from one to the other becomes less and less of an action that requires thought and decision, and as computing becomes more and more ubiquitous, these issues of social norms and interpersonal interactions are bubbling to the surface and commanding our attention. How refreshing! This was the first conference in a long while that didn’t rely primarily on listing Tools You Should Know and instead concentrated on interacting with people online.

* A very similar presentation to the one we saw was blogged here.
**For excellent notes on this talk, see Jenica’s blog.