code4lib 2006

Feb. 15-17, 2006, Corvallis, OR

Notes

Considering that I'm an independent contractor, I'm making it a point in 2006 to attend only library-related conferences that are held either in Oregon or Washington. I considered the focus of this conference to be within my area of interests and therefore well worth spending on.

There's something about attending small, nascent conferences like code4lib2006. There is a shared passion among the participants which they are trying to define and give concrete form to. The largely serial format of the program helped bring participants together. Then there were the generous breakfasts before and ample breaks in between programs which allowed for more engaged conversations. More conversations followed at the dinner get-togethers, I've heard. [Too bad, I chose to do computer work over these human interactions during the evenings. I was losing income time while at the conference after all.] Most of the participants have known each other either from the many online channels of communication on code4lib or from Access Hackfest from which the code4lib conference was formed.

I will not make a big deal of it but there were only about 5 or 6 women among the one hundred or so participants. It made me think of the CRA-W Grad Cohort Workshop I attended in San Francisco last year which was specifically designed for women graduate students in the computing sciences. [It was nice to see Darci Chapman Hanning. We graduated a year ahead of our dMLIS cohort at UW. She now works as a technology development librarian with the Oregon State Library, a job for which I was also interviewed but which I agree fits her best.]

I have yet to organize my techie-acronym-loaded notes on specific sessions, but in the meantime, I've gathered below several blog posts and photo uploads from other participants at the conference. A very interesting bunch of people. I gave a ride to two of them on the drive back to Portland. One of them, from the UK, has a PhD in medieval French literature and plays the trumpet. And he codes too.

Photos
Code4Lib2006-related blog posts and other conference material online

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