Saturday, October 12, 2013

Conference Season, Part 3 or “You’re From Missouri?!”

I pulled into Topeka.  First thing I noticed?


 Well, this was going to be an adventure; I could already tell.  That first day was a blur:  hashtag confusion, neglecting to live-tweet a session, my first Thai food (DELICIOUS IN MY FACE), and getting to watch the Cardinals at the Blind Tiger brewery before I nearly fell asleep.  It was a long day, apparently.  Day 1 over.  Crash.

I woke in the morning, as one does, and caught the keynote address by Jeff Kober, Customer Service guru of Disney.  Yeah, he talked about customer service; there was a lot to say.  However, the most impactful part of his address was how the library changed his life.  When he was in school, he went to the library and gravitated toward a National Geographic issue that had a 26-page report on Walt Disney/Disneyworld.  He would go and read it, and put it back.  He’d come back the next day and do the same.  One day, after probably memorizing the entire article, he approached the librarian.  He said that he really REALLY liked the magazine and asked if he could have it.  The librarian obviously said yes.  How did that change his life?  Well, just then he pulled out that exact issue on stage.  With tears in his eyes, he explained that librarians change lives in ways that we don’t even know.  At the beginning of the second day of my third conference, I realized that my library journey had come full circle.  Damn.  Also, 3 keynotes in as many conferences bringing my average up to .600.

The next activity that got me excited?  A session on comics followed by Battledecks, KLA style.  On the flatter side of the border, Battledecks was done as a breakout session.  Guess who was a contestant?  That’s right…

She didn’t win 1st, but she did win a giant flamingo subsequently named Floyd which might actually be (no, it IS) better.  The next stop was lunch.  Jo Budler, library rock star and Kansas State Librarian gave a great address on the state of Kansas libraries while we devoured lasagna.  My lunch buddies included twins, Floyd the Flamingo (and Erin of course), a free book, a South Dakotan, and MORE library swag.  Throughout the entire day, I kept hearing “you’re from Missouri?” like it was an extreme curiosity that I was there.  I guess it was; I was the only Missouri librarian there.  They didn’t seem to mind, though.  They commented on the Juvenile Series/Sequels database which MCPL has, and I thanked them and commented on… how flat Kansas is? In my defense, Kansans commented on that fact, too.  It IS a fact.

I went to the SLIM reception that night.  I won’t elaborate on that here.  Maybe I’ll wait until February.

After that, we toured the State Capital, including the State Library.  Wow.  The restorations/renovations to the entire building were amazing.  So many things kept being more awesome than the previous awesome things!

When we got back to the hotel, I had a couple of drinks, spent the night talking about different things with a new friend, then crashed.  Day 2, over.


Day 3 – learned some crazy ideas to try for NaNoWriMo, then listened to Jack Gantos talk about his pets’ incredible deaths.  An alligator, a car, digging their own grave?  Dang…  He still uses small journals to write his books and has written about 30 books while in a library.  I’m telling you, Jack Gantos is a riot and a magnificent storyteller.

Apparently, I sat next to Lawrence Public Library, too.  That’s my watch and phone.  Oh, and Corduroy?
Some other things happened, but they were mostly KLA business things, so I headed to Lawrence and started reading Locke & Key at the library.  I’m such a library fangirl.

I don’t want to think about how many emails I have when I get back to work...
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