I don’t think I’ll be able to summarize any more CIL sessions as I’m off for a bit of
extended travel. Let me just say it was a great conference. Lots of interesting sessions and even more terrific people. It was so good to catch up with old friends and to meet so many new people. Many of those people are part of the T is for Training podcast crowd. Maurice Coleman even managed to pull off a podcast recording while we were all there. What fun to sit around the table and chatter with people I’ve known only online and through the podcast.
And kudos to the conference organizers for having good wifi in all the meeting rooms this year. Granted there were some blips here and there, but mostly it was terrific and I really appreciated this.
And I have to share something that was said to me that really made me chuckle AND think. “but I thought you were about 27”. This was the first time this wonderful person had met me in real life and for whatever reasons, I must seem younger than my 53 years in my online presence, not that I’m trying to disguise myself in any way. But I liked what this reinforced about age really just being a state of mind. I’ve heard comments from colleagues about young people being tech savvy and older folks, well, not so much. I’ve also heard people grumble that our profession will only change as these old folks retire. I realize that these things are often just said flippantly and aren’t really meant. And I’ve certainly been guilty of age stereotyping myself, usually assuming someone younger has far more tech skills than they do have.
So, I’m going to try really hard to banish all of those age-based assumptions from my thinking from now on. And having just overheard a woman on a plane say “I’m too old to be on twitter”, I hope we can all help our customers let go of assumptions that may hold them back from learning. If my 89 year old mother can be an internet maven, then what’s to stop anyone! And in light of that, I still feel like a spring chicken.
