Online Northwest 2010

I'm spending the day on the Oregon State University campus attending the Online Northwest meeting. I spoke earlier today (along with two colleagues) describing WSU's discovery systems work with WorldCat Local (slides are here).

The Online Northwest conference has changed a lot since I first co-presented in 2001 on my institution's work with CONTENTdm and, in my view, not in a good way. It used to be a technology conference; it has essentially morphed over the years into a design meeting. During the first session after the plenary, I participated in an exercise in which groups worked to build a poster (representing a web page) using web page sections/pieces laying on the table. I received a tweet during the session, to the effect that "this isn't what I signed up for!" If anything, I encountered skepticism at this meeting about the impacts of technology.