Being Totally Wired and thinking of when and if print will really go...
I had a great night's sleep in the Heavenly Bed (they are always heavenly to me) and woke up to a bright and sunny day. I got ready and went downstairs to me my wonderful friend, Laura Pearle, from Hackley School and fellow wonderful independent school librarian. We had an AMAZING breakfast
and did some yentaing about people we know and the state of libraries in general. When we finished up, we wanted to go somewhere to work on the outline for our chapter in the upcoming book on Independent Libraries to be published by Libraries Unlimited and edited by the fabulous Dorcas Hand. What better place to work than somewhere with fresh air and maybe a view? Where could we find such a place? Well, just a few feet outside the restaurant, that's where! 
You can actually see our feet in the picture - we are reclining on two of many chaise lounges set up everywhere around the 7 pools. Being a librarian is really tough sometimes, but we actually got a ton of work done and Dorcas will be happy with us, I think. :-)When we were finished "working", we walked over to the conference center attached to the hotel and checked in with the School Library Journal Leadership Summit. And we weren't the only "journal" in the convention center - Yoga Journal, a popular read in my library, was also having their convention there (and doing yoga on the beach at the hotel, which must have been amazing) and the contrast between the attendants was quite obvious. The yoga aficionados where walking around in comfy pants and shoes more sensible than the librarians (which was saying something!), not carrying laptops or bags, and would sit around on the floor, stretching. You can see what the beach looked like (the building on the right of the picture is the attached convention center of the hotel).
Laura and I picked up massive amounts of swag and took our seats for the luncheon. There were some opening remarks by Brian Kenney, the editor-in-chief for SLJ and he was followed by a few vendors welcoming us as well. Major applause for Capstone Press for their red beach towel giveaway (so soft I thought it was a blanket) and the Godiva chocolates at the place settings. I heart Capstone, particularly since 5 of those boxes found their way into my giveaway bag (I didn't steal them, people shockingly weren't taking them - what's up with that? You don't know someone who eats chocolate???).
Our keynote speaker, Anastasia Goodstein, took the stage after our delicious lunch to speak about her new book, Totally Wired: What Teens and Tweens Are Really Doing Online. Anastasia is the founder and owner of YPulse, a company that presents research and advice about marketing to Teens, Tweens and Generation Y. She was a delightful speaker and we all received a free copy of her book (which I got signed). She presented amazing research and insight into what role technology fulfills in teens lives and I appreciated her non-alarmist approach to this topic. She admitted that often she is a speaker to parents after a cop has come to speak with them and scared the daylights out of them and this puts her in a tough position. Anastasia did an incredible job putting the current views of technology in an historical context (let's face it, jazz music, rock music and the automobile received equally as alarmist press in their day).
But what I enjoyed the most was her psychological approach to teens and technology - she made the point that teens are using technology to fulfill the basic psychological needs of their age group, namely to create and play with their identity and to individuate from their parents. The research she presented was excellent and I've got a lot of links to explore and reading to do to fully reflect on a lot of her points.
