CIL2008: Final Thoughts

Overall, what a great conference. I really like the Information Today conferences - they do a great job of putting on something that is useful and practical. I'm still processing all of the stuff I heard, but I already have some thoughts and ideas and some tools to try.

• Our website need to be interactive and have staff and user input. Let our users market the library and give them and our staff a voice. People WANT to contribute.
• We need to explore social tools for our website.
• We need to take the website to the user on Facebook, Flickr, YouTube. Also give them widgets, toolbars, etc.
  
• Drupal looks like the right way to go.
• Need to see about getting some folks together to brainstorm about the website.
  
• Gaming is changing the way people view things. It's possible to bring the virtual and real worlds together - if you work at it.
• There are a lot of tools to help make it easier to put content on your website (I already knew this, but it was reiterated.
• I went to the Gaming and Gadgets petting zoo Sunday night. I want Guitar Hero!

Top tools to try:

• I signed up for Google Webmaster Tools, now to explore.
• Commons.wikimedia.org - icons
• Kuler (see also: 25 Online Color Generators
• Conduit.com (see also: LibX)
• Yahoo Pipes

I'm sure I'm forgetting something, but while it's not a big list of ideas and tools, it'll be a lot to work with.

This is the first time I've blogged my notes (I take written notes at the conference) from a conference. I've found it very useful - for me - as a way to process the sessions I've attended and to share the information with colleagues. As I've been doing this, I've realized that we aren't always great about sharing the information we get at a conference. Obviously, it doesn't always apply to everyone, but I wonder how we could improve on that?