This is the first time all day I've been able to get into my blog. I'm considering using Movable Type temporarily (we have it set up at work) so that I can at least keep blogging. Thoughts on today's sessions:

The keynote this morning, given by Hal Berghel, was titled "Analog Executives in a Digital World." We can all relate to that, right? Some quotes:

"You want to go with the paradigm shifts, not the trends."
"The next step will be nomadic computing."
"Computers are like socks - use them or get rid of them."
"The idea is to be mobile, not wireless."
"Available information exceeds personal bandwidth."
And Hal wants interactive movies where he can give input and change the story to his liking, so it's not just kids that are starting to want and expect that kind of interaction with their entertainment.

Mark Leggot provided a great motivational talk on "just do it" for projects in your library. Rather than talking about it, use his "decision matrix" to make swift and decisive moves. First, decide if anyone will die from what you are proposing. If the answer is no, then just do it. His Library (at the University of Winnipeg) has gone all wireless, and you students or residents in the area will be happy to hear that the network is open and that they are even planning to post a warchalk symbol! The Library also just finished a project that added CD burners to every public PC, and they give away blank CDs while including some library PR on the covers. Mark opened with a video of the scene from The Matrix where Trinity extracts the "bug" from inside Neo. Marc edited it to show a Microsoft logo rather than the parasite. Very cool! :-)

Terry Huttenlock is here from Wheaton College (another person from Illinois!). She talked about using Docbook to create documentation, something we sorely need to do at SLS. Given time, I might pursue this since it's free.

Hopefully more to come, especially since Will is kindly keeping sending me great links since my aggregator is (for all intents and purposes) down.

FYI, I'm having trouble reaching Radio on my home PC. Apparently the lapses in internet service at home decided to get worse while I'm away and can't really do anything about it. I'll try to continue blogging, but I wasn't even able to get in yesterday afternoon so we'll see.

Lots of great sessions here, though. So far, one of my favorite presentations was Thomas Dowling's discussion of why standards matter. Besides presenting some great statistics and examples, he brought home his point by using the Mars Orbiter as an example of what happens when you don't write to the proper standard. :-)