ALSR Conference Finished

Before presentation;
The conference officially closed at around 5:45pm on 12th March. Presented the paper from aorund 11:10-11:30 am this very morning. Wanted to start off a story as Paul suggested in his talk, but just no time. Practised two times the night before, both ended up standing at around 28 mins. Not sure where to cut. Dr. Chruchill (HKU)'s keynote speech, covered some of the points I need to say, which I thought that was good. Just before my presentation, Jia Mi from the College of New Jersey, provided a fairly detailed account of the historical changes from Web 1.0 to Web 2.0. then I started to get a bit panic thinking if she would cover all the points I need to say. this came as a relief as I could simply focus on the Murdoch scenario. I think the organising committee of arranging the program should be given a big CREDIT. the program provided a coherent flow of the themes plus having the individual flavor added it. It was a good choice of main course and desert! Those two papers allowed me to present my first part of the presentation more easier and quicker as partcipants could enjoy viewing a few images plus putting the faces to the names that Jia mentioned about.

The waiting for the presentation was pretty nerve wrecking as well. Thanks to Jennifer from QUT she taught me to breathe deeply as to relieve the tension and got talking to her was good as she was calm and cheerful.

Presentation
My original plan was to turn each of the pages of the notes and synchrnonised with the ppt so as just to speak what I put down. My overconfidence took over in the third slide that I simply presented the ppt from the top of my head. A dangerous practice if I missed some key points. I managed to clam myself down a bit by moving myself from one side of the theatre to the other. I managed to spot a few audiences to grap some feedback from their facial expression. This made me feel that when I was an audience myself if I could provide a positive facial expression to the presenter would certainly help to boost the confidence of the presenter. Being a P-plated presenter, I needed that. (In Australia, in the first two years after one gets the drivng licence they need to put a plate on the car while driving to signal other drivers on the road.)
I managed to see the time keeper's signal of 5 mins, 3 then 0. I overrun by 1 min or so, but that was fine considering some presenters completely ignore the 0 minute sign and that could have disrupted the schedule. Of couse if ome did not take up the 20 mins then that would even out. The twenty minutes was so so short I could say, you would wonder if they did wind the clock faster or what, it went so quick, the shortest 20 mins in my life. Towards the end I did ask if anyone blog the conference, a complete silence, why? The theme was talking about Web 2.o tools, if you did not set a model for practising, how would the tools be used in your work? I encouraged people to read mine but not sure they could see the blog name during the presentation. [Note, if anyone is reading, it would be nice if you jot down a few lines not just regarding my paper, if you have, I would be much appreciated, but how u feel for the whole conference]

After the presentation
A few delegates that I met in the confernce mentioned that the prenentation went well, so as a few librarians that I had never spoken made an effort to comment on they should also look at doing something like 23 Things program in their libraries. I could not help to reinstate that a case study as such was to let participants know what we did and how we did and what we could do better. As such one can avoid the reinventing of wheels by adopting only the most useful ones. One could not be over ambitious as we all have got our duties to fulfill, I know people in HK all finish work late, seeing the email sent from ALSR, I completely understood the amount of time they had put in for this conference. The adrenaline must be so high for the whole team in the last half of a year. I would like to openly thank the organising committee especailly Anthony Ho, Winnie Chim and Lisa Lam for their assistance and patience with me as I was the one who always did not follow the dealines.

What should I go from here?
As mentioned, the writing of the paper and the presentation has given me the adrenaline to do better in my profession. This is an excellent staff development program for myself, I would think more from the users perspective when it comes to information literacy. I would continue to blog more if I see some comments as to build up that collaboration. Stephen Abram mentioned in our opening of the 23 programs, writing helps to reflect your own learning.

Is writing and presentation an addiction, probably yes, during the times i was struggling with writing the paper (researching, reading) and presentation (learning to embed different tools into ppt and how to present it in a way not to bore the audiences,) I told myself I would not do it again, it has taken the toll of my family time, I have to thank my husband Chris and my daughter Marina. But, i am afraid to say to them, may be I would like to do it again.
Reason 1: Meeting all the nice colleagues from around the world is good as that would help to think how I could do better
Reason 2: most importantly, being someone who is still a HK citizen, I feel strongly and passionately that how I could help more librarians to be able to present a paper in the conference. I am thinking to be able to co-author with author or authors in HK to present one in the next conference. It is an absolute pity that we did not see more papers presented by the librarians themselves , may be it takes time as we are into the fourth year only.
Reason 3:One thing I learnt while researching for the paper was if you don't report, no one knows what you have done. The writing should go to peer-reviewed journal as that would be picked up by the major databases such as SCOPUS.
Reason 4: In the 2007's ALSR, I was sitting there and found quite a few papers mentioned things that we did already or even a while back and we had already gone past that stage, why were they still talking about them. I am sure I could do somehting better

Presenters from China, I am afraid to say, they need to uplift their games a bit, the language barrier was certainly an issue, I understand that myself as I am also an ESL speaker, but if you know your content well, u should be able to engage your audiences better, so please do not just read out from the ppt or notes. But at least, in view of the barriers, they had tried.

Would write some more after I read through some papers