So, conference is done and I’m about to begin the reflective process… so much to think about, commitments to meet, ideas to explore. Where do I begin?
By celebrating the simple things missed while at #SLANZA11. The morning latte, pictured below. It’s absence much lamented, bemoaned and suffered. You can now see, if you were witness to the lamentations, that it was a big-a deal of significant proportions. So that one gets a big tick, I’ve done that, and all is well with my world.
And then there were the ugg boots – who knew that Auckland could be cold? Southerner that I am, my previous experiences of Auckland have all been humid and warm – so I packed accordingly. There would obviously have been no place in a conference wardrobe for such an item, but they were nevertheless missed… so you can guess what I’m wearing right now!
And finally, my lovely Macbook Pro! I know that I was the envy of many, toting my borrowed iPad, seemingly fully connected and enabled. But I was a complete newbie to that device, and had no time, while trying to tweet and follow brilliant presentations, to explore the features and functionality. Oh I missed my Mac! Knowing exactly where everything is, moving between multiple tabs, accessing bit.ly to shorten urls, using zamzar to convert files, full access to my blog dashboard. And yes, I know that all of those things would have been available to me as an experienced user of iPad, but I wasn’t! So guess what’s on my lap now? Inches away from the snuggly uggs, and arms reach from a (now slightly crusty and sadly empty) latte bowl…
The other things missed were presentations not seen, people not met, and ideas not yet shared. So here I am. Ready to reflect, share, explore and leverage the learning from SLANZA11. Commitments to self include: reflecting on libraries as ‘coffee house’, referencing Erica McWilliams IASL presentation from 2010 – what might this mean to our understanding of what libraries are for? Exploring the notion of ‘flockmates’, what it means to me, and how communities of professional learning, like SLANZA members, can leverage this concept. Personal learning networks (PLNs), as a way into digital confidence and competence for school librarians – where do I start when there is so much to learn? Developing my own tool set to better manage information overload – what, how, and syncronicity. Exploring Joyce and Judy’s slides, adding to my toolkit, and sharing with my flockmates. Finishing the visuals for my own presentations and making them available online. Ah me, looks like I might need just one more latte…
Halfpint of hard earned wisdom 
I am right there with you on the coffee and uggs 🙂 I guess there’ll be lots of us who were at the #slanza11 conference spending today trying to get as many as possible of the ideas and suggestions out of our heads and twitter streams and into somewhere with more reliable retrieval systems! My brain is full to overflowing. It’s so good to realise that the conference isn’t really over, in a way, because there’s going to be so much reflection and sharing going on between those who were there. Also really cool to make connections outside SLANZA with people following along via Twitter.
I totally agree, Miriam. Conference as an event is great, but its role as a conversation starter needs to be exploited to the max. And I know what you mean about needing to deposit some of the brain overload somewhere – I was awake at 1am again, with blog posts simmering… the only way to get some sleep is to find a safe repository for all the post-conference clutter. At least, I hope that will work!