The first day of the Spectrum Institute has been awesome. It’s such an inspiration to hear about the cool things that other students are doing, and the great support that’s available. We had an ice breaker game this afternoon called Spectrum Bingo, where everyone had a list of attributes in squares and we were supposed to go around and find people who had those attributes then have them sign the block. Each person could only be on your sheet once, and you couldn’t sign your own. I signed most for “Doesn’t own a car”, but also for having visited the space needle, milked a cow, been to Hawaii, and marched in a parade.

In the opening session, a variety of speakers welcomed us and talked to us about getting involved in ALA and associations, including the current CLA president, the current and next ALA presidents, and the ALA executive director. We had a tasty dinner (the sesame shrimp were quite lovely) and then another session focused on success and moving up in the profession. The common thread seemed to be that you need to know yourself, so that you can know how to translate the skills you have into the job or promotion that you want. Also, that you should strip out the negative talk about yourself and instead think of ways to brag (but not in an arrogant way).

Here are some of the recommended readings:
Managing Oneself by Peter Drucker
Brag! : the art of tooting your own horn without blowing it by Peggy Klaus
Now, discover your strengths by Marcus Buckingham and Donald Clifton

After the panel, Wendy shared with us her path to the job she has, and it’s so great to hear about the impact she’s had and the work that she’s done to help people become librarians who can, in turn, help others. Thanks so much for the work you do, Wendy! And thanks to everyone who has spent so much time putting the Institute together, because it’s been great so far.

Wow, it’s been a long time since I’ve done anything here. I decided that Drupal wasn’t really working for me, because it’s a bit more complicated than what I want to deal with just to have a blog and a few pages, so the past couple days I’ve spent converting to WordPress. So far it’s been fun to play with some new stuff (though I have worked with it before, in setting up a theme for the ALASC Blog). Anyway, it’s now up and running again, although there are still some tweaks I’d like to make. Please let me know if you notice anything that’s broken!

So what’s my excuse for abandoning my blog for the past 9 months? Mostly, school and work. School was pretty crazy in both the Fall and the Spring, but my classes were great. I really should write some sort of recap. Work was also pretty crazy, since we were neck deep in shipping our next release. The good news is, the software will be out the door any day now and I’m only taking one class this summer, so I have time in the evening to do other things.

Tomorrow morning I’m leaving for this year’s ALA Annual conference, and I’m excited about it. The first few days I’ll be occupied with the 2008 Spectrum Leadership Institute before diving into the main conference. At the end of the conference, my husband is coming down to SoCal and we’re going to spend a few more days in Anaheim then a couple days in San Diego before taking the train back home. The train trip will definitely give me some time to read all the books I pick up at the exhibits!