Countdown to ALA Annual 2011: 65 days. Are you ready??
With only two months left to prepare for Annual, do you know what programs you will be attending?’ Who you are rooming with?’ What Twitter hash tag to follow?’ What time Café du Monde closes?*
Social Networking
Twitter: Follow Annual attendees, exhibitors and presenters via the hash tag #ala11 . ‘ Some programs may have their own hash tags for real-time interaction between attendees and presenters.’ Last year’s RUSA President’s Program For the Love of Reference did this, which solicited much pre-program laughter.
Facebook: ALA11 has its own event page and already has over 800 followers which will likely spike in the days leading up to the conference.’ Start talking to fellow attendees here; you may get a roommate or a new friend out of it.
Programs
YALSA has conveniently organized a wiki that lists all YALSA programs, including the big-ticket events such as the Michael L. Printz Program and Reception and the YALSA pre-conferences.’ Go here if you want to know what, specifically, YALSA is hosting.’ But be sure to read the entire program guide.’ You will be surprised at the relevant, non-YALSA panels and events that are relevant to your work.
Registration
What are you waiting for?! Register! Everything you have heard about Annual is true: you will lose sleep, you will make friends, you will be walking a lot, and you will hear some incredible speakers and panelists.’ And it is more than worth the money.
You can visit the JobLIST Placement Center in the convention center and trained professionals will help you tweak your resume, will give you interview tips, and can even arrange interviews in New Orleans with hiring libraries from around the country.
If you are still in need of a roommate, post it on Twitter, Facebook, or on any of the ALA listservs that you frequent.’ No need to room alone if you can share that cost with a like-minded stranger.’ Just don’t convince yourself that your roommate enjoys being woken up at 7:30am by a singing Koala puppet.’ A plate of fresh beignets? That is a different story…
Look for more Annual-related posts as we get closer to this yearly party…er, I mean work event.
*This was a trick question.’ Café du Monde never closes!
I am aware that the link to the wiki is not working. Something is wrong on the wiki’s end. Hopefully that gets fixed soon.
All ALA and YALSA wikis are undergoing maintenance this week. They will largely be read-only but there will be periodic outages: http://yalsa.ala.org/blog/2011/04/13/alayalsa-wiki-outage-next-week/
BTW…I was a little upset to receive the packet in the mail recently of YALSA happenings at annual. There are several places on the web to find this information and I was disappointed to see YALSA spend money on copying and mailing that could have been used for better purposes.
@Melanie, perhaps we can take that to the attention of YALSA. Maybe we can convince them to give us the option of reading through the media packet online?