Jan 19th, 2007
ALA Midwinter 2007 - Sleepless in Seattle
Well, after traveling by car, train, plane, and bus, I finally made it to my hotel in Seattle for the ALA Midwinter conference. It sounds bad, but it really wasn’t…just a lot of waiting around at the airport. I’m staying at the Westin and I have to say that my hotel room is really nice! It’s one of the co-headquarters for the conference, so there are a lot of people here. I’m in the lobby right now, taking advantage of the free wifi. It’s a strange feeling to think that most of the people walking around this hotel right now are either librarians or have some kind of connection to libraries. The old stereotype of librarians doesn’t hold true, but I still feel like I can spot a librarian out of a crowd 
This is my first time visiting the Emerald City, and my initial impression of Seattle is very good. It seems like the downtown area is very clean and walkable. I’m looking forward to actually seeing it during daylight hours. Hopefully, I’ll get a chance to walk around a bit and explore the city in between meetings and programs.
My main purpose here is to participate in ALA’s Emerging Leaders program. The goal of the program is basically to give 100 new librarians a headstart in taking leadership roles within ALA. We start by attending the Midwinter and then follow it up by participating in a project for the next 6 months until we meet up again at the ALA Annual in Washington D.C. I was fortunate enough to be selected and I’m really looking forward to it. It should be a great learning opportunity for me. The EL meeting is scheduled for all day tomorrow and it sounds like there’s a lot planned for us. We haven’t been told a lot about what’s happening, but I know that we’ll be meeting with our project team members, which should be interesting.
Okay, I should get some rest! I’ll update again tomorrow…
