A mix of professional development and networking drew in a friendly crowd for the first 2015 event by ALIAWest on a balmy Thursday night. The speed networking component of the night helped everybody meet some new faces in a comfortable and lively atmosphere. During our speed networking session, with only 2 minutes allocated per pair of guests to speak to each other, I noticed some new connections being made as time pressure brought out spontaneity in people.
Following the socialising, we heard from speakers, Erin Bell and Katie Mills from the University of Western Australia, Adrian Bowen from the State Library of Western Australia and Kym Andrews from Department of Defence Libraries, who spoke about their experiences at ALIAOnline 2015. Having a speaker from different types of library helped us see how ALIA conferences have a mix of interesting, relevant and challenging topics for us all to think about.
Although many of us could not physically attend the conference, the speakers did a fantastic job of demonstrating how exciting it was to attend the conference. We heard from Katie and Erin on how libraries were creating an identity through social media. Adrian discussed how collections are now using a combination of imagination and technology to bring history to life.
Kym summed up the conference with an inspired and honest take on how the whole ALIAOnline conference experience impacted her.
All the speakers left me interested in attending some future conferences and with some conference papers to check out. I hope that everybody enjoyed the night as much as I did.
Tamara Capper
ALIAWest Committee Secretary