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Suddenly in Hartford, then home again

One of the trips that didn’t make my schedule was a very sudden trip to Hartford to present at the Trendspotting III conference held Friday by the Connecticut Library Consortium. I left Thursday late afternoon and am flying back today (Saturday).

It was an interesting gig; the WALDO consortium recently signed up Liblime, so the air was frisky with revolt. The theme song could have been “we ain’t gonna work on Maggie’s farm no more.”

(One point about the Olde Way of doing things is how much dang work goes into “turnkey” software — and how hard it is to do that work in the traditional cloak-and-dagger NDA environment. All big systems are going to have “work” related to their software, but the question is are you working for the community or are you working for The Man. As a business decision, you’re better off with the first choice.)

Librarianship was reinvented over dinner last night (as it often is over such dinners) with the likes of Kate Sheehan and John Blyberg of Darien Library, Chris Bradley of CLC and Maura from Twitter — sorry, I just realized to me that’s her identity! She’s a delightfully smart, well-spoken woman and quite the fashionista. I know Maura must have a last name…

It might seem like a waste of a Saturday, except I have to catch up on my reading for my workshop. (now that I have two workshop groups — a one-on-one and a larger group — I’m going to have to give them better names).  So I’m wildly grateful to be in between two places today with two manuscripts I need to read for the second time and then write up.

Though I left all my red pens at home. How could that happen? They now get added to my packing list.

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