Got back from ALA a few days ago. It was exciting, overwhelming, incredible, helpful, stimulating, and above all, breath-taking and awesome. I mean awesome in it's original definition. It inspired awe within me.
Perhaps the most frightening thing I saw was a passionate sermon by author and blogger Cory Doctorow on the double-edged sword that is technology. In light of all the controversy of the XBox One having a camera that is watching you all the time, his comments about where we bring our technology - in the bathroom, in the bedroom, in the changing rooms - and how it could easily be watching us just as closely, struck a particularly sour chord for me.
I got to meet a ton of authors, got a few signed copies of books, and went to a panel on YA Dystopian Lit that I found extremely interesting and helpful. Doctorow was one of the speakers, as were multiple award winning author Lois Lowry, author baby Veronica Roth, and another guy I'd never heard of, Patrick Ness. The panel was enlightening and fascinating, and I learned a lot. I made a ton of new connections, and met a ton of interesting people. I was persuaded to join LITA, so I'll need to figure out how to do that, but I'm sure one of the connections I made will help. It gave me some takeaways, both tangible and intangible, to bring back to my library, and gave me a lot to think about. My feet hurt by the end of it, but it was worth it, one hundred percent.
No comments:
Post a Comment