My Conference Can Beat Up Your Conference

Hi there sexy library creatures. I’m spending this weekend doing prep-work for the upcoming South by Southwest Interactive conference. In my case, this means re-dying my hair, e-shopping for warm weather gear, and drinking a lot of water. Chris and I are flying to Austin on the 9th – we’ll be hunting down margarita machines and Shiner Bock soon thereafter.

The cool local burlesque troupe that I wanted to take you guys to isn’t performing this month. Still, I promised a party so I’ll do what every good librarian should: utilize existing resources. I’ll meet everybody at the Frog Design party (they had belly dancers last year). I’ll be handing out Librarian pins and buying beer for anyone with a library degree. If are going to be in town, lemme know and I’ll send you my cell number. Chris is an Austin native, so we’ll be hitting some good Mexican food joints throughout the week. Finally, I’ll leave you with a list:

The Ethos of ALA vs SXSWi

ALA SXSWi
Gobs of free books Gobs of free drinks
Shoulder Pads Electronic Notepads
Informative panels about last year’s technology Informative panels about next year’s technology
The Caldicotts The Bloggies
Meet Winnie-The-Pooh Meet famous pornographers
Nuclear politics Nuclear tacos
Blue hair Pink hair
Power suits and eye shadow Power symbol t-shirts and iBooks
Sponsored by: Demco Sponsored by: Tito’s Homemade Vodka

7 Replies to “My Conference Can Beat Up Your Conference”

  1. Free book rock! (which is why I *used* to ‘dumpster dive’ behind Barnes and Noble before they closed down…one gets used to reading books without covers.)

  2. far be it from me to defend ALA, which I do attend but I don’t think meeting fictional characters or free books is a negative…are you sure you are a librarian? :) where else does the author of “knuffle bunny” have a line of people waiting to get his book signed? the kids books section of the ala exhibits is the best thing after the NationOnline booth. That said, I would much rather be at SxSW, if only for the locale.

  3. Sounds like fun! Be sure to take and post lots of photos so that those of us who are not able to go to SXSW are still able to experience it vicariously. :)

    One of these years we ought to try and coordinate conferences….

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