One of our conference co-chairs, Maureen Babcock, will be blogging about various parts of ILTA ’09 each day. We are very pleased to present Comments from a Conference Co-Chair, Volume I.
I am quite curious to see how our push to expand social networking opportunities will fly during and after conference:
- We have the conference blog firmly in place.
- We have Twitter in full tweet, including a live feed at the main registration desk.
- We have created “Communities of Interest” where like minded members can meet on Sunday before the opening reception to make contact up front with others who have similar job responsibilities or interests (including a Tweetup group).
- ILTA TV will be interviewing attendees on topics of interest to our profession each day around the lunch hour.
- Several educational sessions will be made available in video format on the internet.
- There are educational sessions for social networking newbies and the terminally curious all the way through to a session on legal implications of its use.
- We have a conference listserv for those people wanting rides from the airport, looking for extra tickets, posting lost or found items, etc.
Although I blog for conference, I am still trying to decide for myself if the full court press of social networking can play any lasting role in my personal or professional life. I FaceBook yet am not at all sure I care that someone I know got 40,000 points playing Mafia Wars or that connecting to high school classmates will be chalked up in the plus column of my life’s experiences. I tweet intermittently but without the enthusiasm of a true songbird. I am LinkedIn. I am called, texted to and emailed to from both my personal and professional contacts at any time. I carry not one but two portable units that can access the internet. One of my own conference takeaway goals is to learn more about the practicalities of social networking. I feel like I need a personal testimony before I can imagine ways to suggest employing it to the advantage of my Firm…or maybe before I just shout “ENOUGH!!”
I look forward to seeing how social networking is used and received at conference. For some, it has the potential of a virtual epiphany – perhaps some of my peers will leave tweeting, blogging, linking in and facebooking in ways that they had never before understood or imagined? Others might leave having made the firm decision to avoid it like liver and onions or overly steamed cauliflower. My hope, however, is that whether each person embraces it or shuns it, they will at least know OF it. Whatever innovative value lies in social networking, it seems to me must be personally embraced before it can truly be understood in terms of other benefits.
I hope those who couldn’t get here this year due to “economic challenges” will benefit from tuning in to some of what is happening here. For the first time, they can know of the activities and information that was presented at conference as it occurs, reported through the virtual networking efforts of their peers in attendance.
I, for one, am looking forward to seeing what side of the fence I end up on!
Filed under: 2009 Conference
