Well we pulled it off ~ and very successfully at that! It’s been a blast being part of the 6th New Librarians Symposium (NLS6) crew. Here we all are at the end of the symposium BBQ ~ all seemingly tired but very happy. I know it sounds corny but I really miss this great bunch of people. They were really excellent to work with.

So the theme of the symposium was ‘Be Different‘ and that we were. Not only did we have 7 awesome keynotes from diverse backgrounds and industries, we also asked would-be speakers to submit creative proposals (in different formats) rather than abstracts. We’ve even eliminated feedback forms and instead we asked delegates to write comments and questions on post-it-notes.

As part of the marketing sub-committee, most of our work were tapering off as we headed towards the actual event on the 9-11 February. So we helped out during the symposium by chairing some sessions and making sure that everything was running smoothly.

Of course it wasn’t all work. I did manage to catch most of the keynotes and some of the workshops and sessions. My highlight was meeting the international keynotes: Jenica Rogers; Ruth Kneale; and Sue Gardner. They were amazing presenters and their messages will resonate with me for a long time: Jenica said to be our own heroes; Ruth told us that opportunities are out there but we must seek them out; and Sue encouraged us to be all Wikipedians.

Below are images of my five minutes brush with fame:

If you missed out on the event or simply just want to know what in heavens I’m talking about, you can check out:

• Twitter hashtags: #nls6, #nls6Sat, #nls6Sun, #nls6Mon
• Storify captures: NLS6 Workshops; NLS6 Day One; NLS6 Day Two: morning & afternoon

Also, if and when recordings become available, I will tweet or blog about it.

So how am I going to be different after this conference? Well I’m going to:

• present at the next NLS
• edit a Wikipedia article
• start a book project
• and Raise Hell!!….(oops but that’s from another conference)