The conference proper began on Sunday with the opening of the exhibits and the Opening General Session. The Exhibits Hall is always fun. Although I’m a specialist in a specialty (Collections Systems Manager in a historical society), I like to cruise all the aisles of the exhibits hall, taking care to look for vendors whose products we do (or could) use. And you get to pick up plenty of vendor swag (pens, notebooks, shopping bags, etc.). If you’re really into these freebies, the morning of the closing day is best. Vendors are often happy to give away things to non-customers, just so they don’t have to box them up later.
The Opening General Session if the first actual event of the conference. SLA is lucky to get really good speakers and this year was no exception – we had General Colin Powell. He’s a very funny, engaging speaker. His theme was how fast information is moving and how we have to keep up with it. One anecdote resonated with me. When he first became Secretary of State in 2001, General Powell was appalled to discover they were still using Wang computers and ended up buying 44,000 new computers to bring the State Department and all US Embassies and Consulates up to the 21st century. I arrived at the VHS in 1997 and discovered several staff were using computers with no hard drives and 5" floppy drives. While the VHS didn’t buy 44,000 new computers, the 33 we did buy allowed us to kick all those dumb terminals out the door in about six months. Nice to know we weren’t alone in this regard.
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