Having gotten back from LITA Annual not too long ago (it was also a great conference – if you want info on the talks, go check out the LITA blog), I’m reminded of the very best thing about attending conferences: the people. Sure there are some great sessions to attend and I’ve always come home having learned bunches. And sure, you (hopefully) get to hang out in a cool city (Denver and Monterey both qualify as neat places to hang out). But to be perfectly honest, I think I could ignore the sessions and spend all my time indoors and still have a great conference experience if it meant I could hang out with the other conference attendees. I’m pretty sure that others have mentioned this already, but I tend to learn just as much in conversations between sessions and over meals (or over drinks in a local pub) as I do in the sessions.

LITA Annual also gave me the opportunity to re-connect with some folks. I ran into a friend and former library school classmate who I hadn’t talked to in close to two years (and Maggie, if you’re reading this, it was great to see you). I also got an e-mail from another friend and former classmate who saw my last blog post letting me know that she’ll be at Internet Librarian and we’re planning to meet up. Now, I know that Libraryland is a relatively small world, but still, how cool is that?