The conference has been good so far. Howard Rheingold, author of Smart Mobs, gave the keynote. Interesting speech. I’ve been aware of that book for a while, but since it deals with cell phones a lot and I generally am not a big cell phone guy, I haven’t read it. Actually, while I have a cell phone I like, I only use it rarely, and in society at large I hate cell phones, considering them a plague that I wish would be eradicated. There — now that we are clear on that — let’s continue. I may want to read the book. It sounds like it has some fascinating examples of technology-enabled cooperative behavior. 

While all the sessions I attended today were OK, only one really stood out for me. The topic was “Mashing up and remixing the library website“, and was given by two librarians from the University of Houston. They have created, essentially, a custom content management system. I believe it is based on Cold Fusion software. Anyway, you know how in iGoogle you can create new web page parts and move them around your page? Well, they have created something like that for the library website. The other librarians can create pages using this system, and everyone is happy. At least with regard to the website. Really neat, and beyond my technical skills. BUT, some of the technologies they use might be adapted to our website, which is cool. 

As always, while I’m taking notes in one document, I have another open for recording ideas that tend to come to me while I’m in these sessions. Sometimes they’re ideas for personal projects, sometimes work, sometimes both. That is really why I enjoy coming here. It gets my creativity flowing.

Looking forward to the sessions on Tuesday.