February 3, 2008

OLA Super Conference 2008: My Session

As I mentioned the other day, I presented yesterday at the OLA Super Conference this year on My Job in 10 Years: The Future of Academic Libraries. Between the bad weather all day Friday and the 9:05 Saturday timeslot (not to mention being up against theTop Tech Trends panel (Curse you, David Fiander!)), it was as cozy as I expected it to be. Turning it all into lemonade, however, I would like to thank those that did show up for seizing the presentation away from me and turning the session into a wonderful conversation about the future of academic libraries. It was very gratifying that a number of the attendees remarked that it was the best session that they'd attended during the whole conference.

As promised, I will be posting the PDF version of the slides on my webspace (probably tomorrow). I'm also embedding the slides here using the Google Docs presentation module. I have to say that I was quite pleased using Google Docs and would recommend it to anyone preparing a presentation using a variety of computers (ie. office, ref desk, two different home machines, laptop on the road). The fact that you can now export to PDF makes it a lot easier to create a portable presentation rather than the zipped html they allowed before. The printing is also a lot better. The only thing that's missing is a notes field.

Here they are:



During the presentation itself, I barely got beyond the "Some Thoughts" slides as each of them turned into a jumping off point for discussion. Who knows, maybe I'll get a chance to reprise the whole thing again somewhere.

(BTW, if any of the attendees are reading this, consider yourself invited to comment!)

Update 2008.02.04:
And before I forget, I'd like to thank Melissa Helwig for stepping in at the last minute and convening my session. Thanks, Melissa! Also, pdf version of slides here.

PDF version of original My Job in 10 Years blog posts here.

9 comments:

amanda said...

Wow, John -- those are some kick ass slides. I'm sorry I missed you session.

Marjorie said...

Hi John - I'm one of the people who attended your session, and it was kick ass. Our collective conversation was fabulous and I appreciated you grace as we "jumped off" the slides we gave you the opportunity to present. Really, kudos to you for putting together such a thought provoking presentation.

RTR said...

Wow it was an amazing presentation. Interestingly I went to York. Found Steacie scary and I hated using libraries. Now with the world of library and information changing I love it, I use libraries all the time and wildly enough am a librarian. How thing change and these changes you mention is why I love it soooo much.

John Dupuis said...

Thanks for the kind words, everyone.

Connie Crosby said...

...found it. Thanks, John!

Cheers,
Connie

Anonymous said...

yep, hands down the most thought-provoking session at OLA!

rakerman said...

Thanks for the mention! It's always nice to find one's ideas connecting.

Hopefull2 said...

I agree, it was a great presentation. Your thought provoking quotes like "What happens when the free stuff becomes good enough?" or Tim O'Reilly's quote " Obscurity is a far greater threat to authors and creative artists than piracy."

Joseph Kraus said...

This is great. Especially after a year of sitting on the server...