Tuesday, May 13, 2008

SAMM part 2

Michael Stephens was a great way to start the meeting. I went because I knew Karen Schneider was going to do the closing. In the middle there was lots of other good stuff....

Let me start with the non-work part of the event. The Emory Conference Center Hotel is FABULOUS!!! It's a bit far from anything, out in the woods, but it's a great facility. The architecture was beautiful and there were a lot of little extras that made it special. I was quite taken by their green-ness. They are a Green Seal approved facility and there were some interesting things they were doing - some of the room keys were recyclable, they had recycle containers everywhere for cans, bottles, and paper. They had a great space with pool tables, foosball, checkers, and other games for those who just wanted to hang out. And getting to go to the Braves game with Sol Hirsch didn't hurt the event either (especially when the Braves won!) And bonus points to someone who can tell me where to get the Coke bottle shaped recycle receptacles they have at Turner Field.

Thursday morning I atended the program on Open Source technology. It wasn't quite what I was expecting but since I know nothing it was informative. The three speakers were John from Duke talking about their proposal to start discussing the Services Oriented Architecture approach to open source. Then Tim Daniels talked about the PINES/Evergreen project and their experiences. He was followed by Andrew Nagy from Villanova talking about vufind, an open-source resource discovery portal that he referred to as an 'open source OPAC replacement'.

The lunch speaker was Scott Peacock, executive chef at Altanta's Watershed Restaurant. Scott is a great storyteller and talked about southern cooking (tales from his book, The Gift of Southern Cooking). I'm particularly excited to try the chocolate fritters and perhaps work up the nerve to make a Lane Cake.

Thursday afternoon's business meeting was probably the shortest business meeting I've ever attended - 15 minutes to cover everything. This was followed by the merger discussion. Not to much new to report, if you haven't been following this I do encourage you to read the info Solinet has up on their website. The Board has voted to accept the results of the Due Diligence and the next step is to begin discussions on location, governance, and membership. The Director of Palinet provided an overview of their services - some highlights were podcasts, a technology sandbox, their leadership network wiki, and workshops available from WebJunction.

Thursday nights vendor reception was great. Mashed potato 'tinis are just fun! Best thing I learned was about the Gale Powersearch widget (which I blog about later this week when I get more details).

Friday started early with Richard Madaus' presentation - Staying Ahead of the Technology Curve. As always, Richard is way ahead of my technology curve.
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