ASIS&T PNW Conference, first meeting

The first meeting (that I attended) concerning this fall’s ASIST PNW chapter meeting was held yesterday. Aaron Louie (chapter president) and I met with the UW iSchool student chapter president and vice-president. A year ago, I was just turning over the control of the student chapter to the next year’s president, and these people are one down the line from that (the officers are typically 2nd year students in one of the Masters programs at the iSchool.) Now, the students seem pretty young to me, but in some ways they did at the time as well.

So, I’m not going to go into details yet — that would be jumping the gun, but I think that we’ve got something very exciting lined up. We’d talked previously about how we can best revitalize the chapter, which had been faltering somewhat in recent years. I think we’re doing a pretty good job so far — the ‘Information People Get-Together’ that we’ve had the last two months at the Elysian has been going well, and the way we’re planning to run this conference (unconference style, with ask later sessions similar to Ignite Seattle’s) will be fun, exciting, and informative for folks. We’re on target for our goals, consistent in message, and serving our identified audience.

About that last sentence. (One of) The real benefit(s) from being at the iSchool for me was getting more in line with the User Centered view of the universe. Before the school, I had been largely feature/product/use case oriented (largely as a result of many years of dev background with light project management), and I think the iSchool helped better my sense of the overall context — both social and technical — in which systems exist and are created.

The last several months have been integrative of all the different things I’ve learned in different periods of my life. Someone remarked to me the other day (@ the ASIST Info Social Hour) that I sound like a consultant, but it sounds to me like I’ve integrated all the different things I know.