Day 2! Preconferences!

Ah the Preconferences. What a fun time to delve into a topic and really get deep into the nuts and bolts of a thing. Today Diane had the pleasure of starting her preconference with a breakfast at 7:30. I was the lucky one whose preconference didn't start until 8:30, so she left first and I followed later. I left the hotel around 7:30 and went next door to have a quick breakfast at Starbucks. From then it was a short walk to the MAX and I arrived at the convention center without any problems (Yes Joe. I took the train by myself and I'm still among the living).

My session was about Advocating for Teens. What a great topic! I'm not going to bore you all with the details but suffice it to say that I learned a great deal about tools to use to help you in your advocating, the purpose of advocating, and the difference between advocating and marketing. Some technical tools we learned about include Google Forms, Twitter Search, and Google Search...all really neat tools that can be used to learn more about your community and therefore make you a better advocate. We talked about collaboration, partnerships, and even were pretty much forced (although for most of us it wasn't too bad) to develop a partnership with someone in the room. I met a great gal from Iowa named Anna - a teen librarian who is just 10 months on the job! We even had lunch together at a fun Portland restaurant called Burgerville. They had some items made from local produce and rosemary french fries and I threw all Lenten Resolutions into the breeze and had a Cherry Chocolate Smoothie. SO good.

While at lunch we met Douglas, a really interesting CELEBRITY who writes for the New York Times Book Review! He was at the conference presenting on Graphic Novels and was a wealth of information. He joined us for lunch and even let me get my picture with him! (After looking at his blog...he went to a Magnetic Fields show...I wonder if he likes them? I myself am a fan!)

Afterwards Anna and I went back to our preconference where we finished our afternoon learning about telling the Advocacy Story for your library and we also swapped emails with another woman, Angie also from Iowa (but across the whole state from Anna).

I texted Diane and we found each other and after a short pow-wow we decided we'd try to find Historic Irvington! Portland style, that is!

And find it we did. After just about 15-20 minutes of walking we found a Historic Irvington sign, American Four Square homes, Bungalows, Queen Anne houses, and even a quirky resident who raised chickens and thought it was great that we were having a little adventure finding a true "sister neighborhood" to our beloved Irvington. Did you all know that I live in the neighborhood where Diane grew up? I do and it's called Irvington!

Walked back to the MAX and hopped on planning to go back to the hotel, but I happened to see a Nordstrom Rack and hustled Diane off the train so we could shop at this Nordstrom Outlet. Bought a new spring jacket and started my Christmas shopping! Yeah for great deals! Back to the hotel to get rid of our bags and consult our maps and call out husbands and we were back on the town where we walked a little over 1/2 mile to a fun pizza place called Hotlips! Yum yum pesto breadsticks!

Oh yeah! One of the neatest things we saw today was Mount Hood! We saw it plainly from the MAX and it was a beautiful site to be able to see it so perfectly from our train. Really loving the walkable city of Portland!

Burgerville
Yalsa
Google Alerts
Portland Irvington
Indianapolis Irvington
Hotlips
Douglas Wolk
Magnetic Fields and Other Stuff