So, there is snow and sleet in Minneapolis, Minnesota. What does this mean for me? Well, it means I have been in the Pittsburgh airport for two hours and I am still looking at another two plus hours, then my two and a half hour flight to the snowy city. Yep, today is Wednesday, March 23, 2011, and I am embarking on my snow-filled trip to the Twin Cities for my first ever professional conference, the 2011 VRA + ARLIS/NA Annual Conference.
I am hoping to be writing some blog post from the conference about my experiences there, the art library world, and of course, technology. I'll try to keep the complaints about the weather to a minimum (I mean who schedules a conference in Minnesota for March!).
Last Friday afternoon, in preparation for the upcoming VRA + ARLIS/NA Conference I participated in a chart on the Meembo platform. Before this chat I had never heard of Meembo before. Honestly, I didn't really think people still used the internet for chatting anymore. Or rather, anyone over the age of fourteen. I know I abandoned AIM (AOL Instant Messenger) around that age!
Now, I have attended numerous webinars, some presented by the VRA or ARLIS/NA. I am also taking an online class in Music Librarianship through the University of Illinois, Champaign-Urbana, that utilizes Moodle as its synchronous delivery of the lecture. All my webinars and Moodle lectures have some sort of chat function, though it is rarely used.
I guess I was just expecting this informal chat to be similar to a webinar. Like there was going to be a presentation that went along with it or something. Well, I was wrong. It was honestly just a chat. Again, I haven't used a chat room in about ten years (I steer clear of Facebook and Gmail chat). It was definitely awkward.. It seemed as if everyone in the room had been doing this for awhile and knew all the shortcuts. The time lapse was awhile, I could never remember to use the @person's name when answer a specific question, and it was hard to follow multiple people chatting at once.
I wasn't doing anything else during the hour long chat, just staring at my screen patiently waiting for the next sentence to appear (well and knocking my cat, Rudie, away from the keyboard). And I waited, and waited, and waited some more. It seemed like it took forever!
That is when I realized, I had a lot of time to think about other things, that this chat session was probably designed for professionals who were at work. Librarians and Information Professional who were working the reference desk, doing research, or any of their other job duties. By presenting this information session in the form of a chat room, the participants were able to multitask. This suspicion was verified when I read a little more information about these "Lunch Time Chats" as they are marketed by ARLIS/NA.
With the idea of multitasking coming into play as one of the reasons to present the information session as a chat, the chat room doesn't seem so archaic and clunky. While I believe that I would probably personally prefer a webinar or something a little bit more real-time, maybe when I have a job I'll be wishing for more chat sessions!
(And no, don't expect me to be on Facebook or Gmail chat anytime soon!)
- Posted from the Pittsburgh Airport using BlogPress from my iPad
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