The final award, the Session Law (Librarian) award is going to the most memorable, best, or my favorite session at the conference. Winner: Energize! Teleporting to Second Life: Exploring the Legal and Library Communities in a Virtual World, presented by D. Prano Amjadi, Kate Fitz, and Meg Kribble I have to admit that I haven’t really gotten into Second Life at all, and in fairness this presentation is not likely to make me more geared towards trying it out. But it was still a well done and effective presentation. The angle it took of discussing Second Life from its potential for education was very helpful. All the speakers were well prepared and gave good talks. There was even a presentation from a fourth speaker from within Second Life which was very well done. There was also a video discussing forays into Second Life by library students at San Jose State University School of Library and Information Science. Honorable Mention: Cool Tools: Energizing Law Librarianship with Web 2.0, presented by Victoria J. Szymczak, Kincaid C. Brown, Deborah Ginsberg, Barbara Ginzburg, Jewel Makda, Bonnie Shucha This session gets honorable mention for the interesting format. It included a presentation by several panelists, after which there were small breakout sessions. People could roam around the room listening to parts of several breakout sessions, or they could listen to an entire breakout session if they wanted to. This was a very interesting format, and a great way to break up a 90 minute time block.

The You Look Nothing Like Your Avatar award goes to the person/people I was most excited to meet after connecting with them online. Winner(s): in no particular order Tom Boone, Meg Kribble, Bonnie Shucha, Jim Milles, Sarah Glassmeyer, Katie Brown, and Lyonette Louis-Jacques. The name of this award may need some work because I’d seen photos and kind of recognized everyone. But the point is the same. There’s something very different when you meet someone online versus meeting them in person. Now when I read the blogs listed here it will kind of be like a movie scene where I hear their voices while reading.

The Let’s Get The Band Back Together award for the best group, committee, team, or person to work with at the conference or leading up to the conference. I enjoyed working with all the different committees, caucuses, and groups, but the choice was obvious. Winner: The Local Arrangements/Advisory Committee I can never remember if it’s local arrangements or local advisory committee, but it was a great experience. Local arrangements for this meeting had its own particular challenges as I’m sure they all do. Having many hotels and activities across the river from the convention center, and local law librarian politics seemed to make this a particularly difficult planning situation. My own responsibilities (the website and blog) were not quite as challenging as some of the other committees like Hospitality and Registration, but we had our issues to deal with as well. And one person told me it was the best website and blog for an AALL conference. Maybe they were just being nice… well it was nice of them to say it. Chair Tami Gierloff was fantastic. Her staff at Lewis and Clark including Rob Truman, Kathy Faust, and Alana Carson were great also. Special mention also to Maryruth Storer, Laurie Daley, and too many other people to mention. Everyone worked hard on this and I think it all worked out in the end. I’m almost a little sad that it’s over. Honorable mention: The TSLL editorial board This was the first TSLL board meeting I was able to attend and it made me wish I had been there for the other meetings. It seems like the publication is going in a good direction and has solid leadership going forward as Brian Striman transitions out of the editor role.

The “Mean Girls” award is not a reference to actual mean girls, but rather the movie Mean Girls. This award is for the event I wasn’t looking forward to going in, but attended based on recommendations, and ended up enjoying. Winner: CONELL Speed Networking I’ve been working in law libraries for over four years now, but this was my first AALL conference so my boss and I decided that I should attend the Conference of Newer Law Librarians (CONELL). I was actually looking forward to the CONELL program generally until I found out about the Speed Networking (kind of like speed dating, but profession oriented). I don’t mind events where networking is expected, but I don’t usually like when networking is an assigned task. But the speed networking event was enjoyable. I think maybe the novelty of it was what made it enjoyable. I also enjoyed the Fist Timers & Fellows connect event at SLA, possibly because they made the networking event a more interesting game rather than a straightforward story swap. Whatever the cause, the speed networking event was well done and well worth the effort. The whole CONELL program in fact was enjoyable from the dine around to the end. By the end of lunch I was sorry I would not be able to attend the tour with the other attendees, even though I’ve been to the Columbia Gorge many times. I would definitely recommend CONELL to newer law librarians and conference first timers. Kudos to the CONELL planners.

I very much enjoyed my first AALL conference, and I feel very professionally energized, particularly after the Bloggers meetup. I’ve been trying to do a little more with this blog, and have been struggling with how to accomplish and most importantly how to find the time to accomplish the various things I want to do with this blog. One thing I’ve been trying to figure out is how to spice up the blog a little and I’m going to start by giving my post AALL thoughts through a series of awards. So, in the grand tradition of the The Dundees I will present my own post-AALL wrap-up awards. So keep a lookout over the next few days for these awards.