An ALA Annual Conference Scholarship Opportunity

The company I work for – Evanced Solutions – is offering a very exciting  chance to win the following:

– A free copy of Camtasia Studio by TechSmith
– A free one year subscription to a new or existing product
– A $1000 scholarship to attend ALA Annual Conference in Washington D.C.

All you have to do is create a 3-5 minute video or presentation about why you love Evanced Solutions and/or our products.

Details here: http://evanced.blogspot.com/2009/12/we-love-evanced-video-competition.html

Busy Bee

Bzzz Bzz Bzzz

I can’t stand bees.  I’m highly allergic.  Just thinking about them makes my throat more than a little itchy.  ACK! But I can’t think of a better parallel to how life has been in recent days. So, yes, dear readers, I will say I have been a busy, busy bee.

 

Here’s a report of library type things that I haven’t been able to keep my hands out of recently:

I’m writing an article for YALS about how the recession is affecting teen services in libraries.  Anyone care to comment?

I’ve been working on the Infoquest text messaging reference pilot project, set to launch in the middle of the month.

My Emerging Leaders project might just cause me to snap, but do you know what saves me?  My very cool team and the fact that the responses we are getting are pretty fascinating.  I’ll be sure to summarize what we find when the project is done.  (We’ve been researching how rural libraries build community relations and what resources they use to improve those relations…)

And I’m preparing for ALA Annual Conference.  Dear reader, let me tell you:  Conference is a tad stressy if you’re a librarian.  When you’re a vendor, it’s just flat out stressy.  I never appreciated how much work goes into pulling together a booth and such, and I’m not even doing the lion’s share of the work (yay for great bosses).  Perhaps part of it is that I am presenting several times (all for Emerging Leaders) plus working at the booth. 

If I can say anything about Evanced it is that we love our presentations.  You show us a good presentation topic and we’ll show you a staff that’s willing to present.  I am looking forward to it all, however.  A girl needs a good adrenaline rush and my goodness – to be busy AND be in the bustling Windy City – oh how cosmopolitan it all sounds!  (Note to self, channel inner Katharine Hepburn for the week…)

In non-library related events, I’m taking a cheese making class.  A girl needs cheese, right?  Will report back on that one as well.

And in blog stats, the things that make my blog most popular, in the order of most popular to least:

1. Amelia Earhart
2. My semi-mockery of a prayer for Librarians
3. Libraries and sustainable design

I can’t really make that up.  It’s true as true can be.  Maybe I just need to focus on an Amelia Earhart blog.  If my cheese post becomes most popular, then I’m really going to question my career choice. 

Have a rockin’ week my friends. 

That new airport smell…

So this afternoon I’m flying back to metro Detroit after spending a few days at the new job.  The Indianapolis International Airport experienced an overnight reincarnation, and in a span of four hours, all services were switched to a brand new airport.  And it’s sexy.  And it has that new airport smell…and an IPOD VENDING MACHINE!!!!  I had never seen one before.  I took a picture and will post it soon.

I think I was filmed by the local news asking a question about where my gate was.  Of course, I’m having a bad hair day.  Ah well, I can’t always be unbearably gorgeous.  😉

The new job…the last time I wrote I told I had ‘gone private’!  Yes, yes I have.  So, I’m working for Evanced Solutions in Indianapolis, Indiana.  They make a summer reading program management software, a rooms/reservations management software, and an events management/events notification software.  My title?  Coordinator of Customer Experience.  My job is to make sure that the libraries that use the product are happy.  And if they’re not, I fix it until they are happy.  That’s it.  I don’t sell stuff, I don’t try to make them spend more cash (which my company isn’t into either…they are actually not going to do a previously planned price increase because they realize how bad the economy is right now).  My main goal is to make sure libraries get the most value from their investment in the software.  Isn’t that cool?

Now, let me tell why that’s going to be great for my blog.  In the process of making sure that all those libraries are happy, I’m going to be touching base with over 800 libraries all over North America and a few in Australia.  What I get to learn about their innovation or ideas, I’m going to share with you, because, y’know, those are library ideas.  🙂

All right, well, I’m going to go get a hot dog…they’ve got a chili dog shop at the airport!  Yum!