I am currently gearing up for the 2007 LITA Forum and saw this announcement come across my RSS feeder this morning. It is a survey about technology conferences posted on Michelle Boule's A Wandering Eyre blog where she writes that she is a member of "an ALA LITA Committee that is trying to design a better technology conference". Here, here!
While ALA conferences seem to provide a smattering of "technology in libraries overviews", they often focus on trends without providing practical information. I've notice that many of my colleagues find conferences like Internet Librarian to be more relevant to what they are actually doing day to day. In my own experience, I feel that user group meetings (like the CONTENTdm Western Users Group) have been the most helpful to getting hand-on training, answers to specific questions, and insights from librarians and programmers working on specific applications, solutions, or enhancements. If you have opinions on technology conferences, this is a opportunity to share your opinion and hopefully squeeze a bit more out of your hard-to-come by travel funding.
