Unconference!

Karaoke of the powerpoint kind
Originally uploaded by Constance Wiebrands.

The unconference went really well (see Kathryn’s photos for visual confirmation). The fuzzy photo depicts me trying to do Powerpoint karaoke – a recent innovation that was first pioneered at some barcamp, somewhere. How does it work? You talk to a slideshow that someone else prepared, and that you don’t see until the moment you stand before the audience to deliver the talk. Our slides were kindly provided by the Free Range Librarian – thank you, KGS! After trying hard not to think too much about it beforehand I think I was a little thrown by the seriousness of the slides – that’s what happens when you fixate on the word KARAOKE (I should have thought Powerpoint) – hopefully my talk wasn’t too full of gibberish. I might see if I can take another look at the slides now the dust has settled, as I seem to have completely wiped them from my memory.

Everything ran smoothly, even if we did end up with way too much leftover pizza. We also had problems with wi-fi but Nick was wonderful, running from room to room and patiently putting up with panicked phone calls whenever the connection dropped out.

The talks that I attended were excellent. Kathryn talked about making time to keep up. I think the tone of her talk was perfect – encouraging and positive without being patronising or vehement (not that there’s anything wrong with vehemence, but it can be off-putting; I think I suffer from this).

Sue gave a wonderful talk on using Twitter as a professional development/current awareness tool. Take a look at her slides here. I wonder if she would share the text of her talk…

Matthias‘s information on LibX led a few people to mutter about having to take a closer look at this Firefox extension (which sounds almost too good to be true).

So when’s the next unconference?