PLA Blog

Seth Godin wrote recently that “if you’re remarkable, amazing or just plain spectacular, you probably shouldn’t have a resume at all.” The idea being that you market yourself by doing good work, not by writing lists of bulleted declarative phrases, formatting them in professional-looking typefaces, and printing them out on quality paper.

I just walked by the LibraryThing booth, which is located at the far end of the exhibit room in the ALA equivalent of the nosebleed seats. The booth is decorated with a small sign, a single table, an inflatable rhino (natch), and nothing else, just a laptop, pointed at the aisle, and Tim Spalding, with his back to the aisle, typing and mousing away. Oh yeah, it has one more thing: a bunch of librarians surrounding Tim, peering over his shoulder at the screen. Maybe that LibraryThing’s onto something.

Okay, here’s why I love ALA. Keep in mind that I’m shy and also still very new to the profession.

While waiting for the shuttle to take me from the airport to my hotel, I met Judy Luther, a former academic librarian in Florida, now working as a library consultant in Philadelphia. It seems that sometimes you have to fly across the country to meet your neighbors.

After check-in, I had lunch with Nancy Hinkel, a publishing director for Knopf Books for Young Readers at Random House Children’s Books. If you want to find out which public libraries are doing really cool stuff, talk to a publisher or a vendor. They work with a lot of libraries every year, so it takes a lot to impress them. Fortunately, it seems, a lot of libraries are doing impressive stuff. I hope to write a post on that later.

After registering, I went to a WebJunction party where I met up with PLA Blog coordinator, Andrea Mercado. Andrea introduced me to a soft-spoken information professional at the University of Kentucky who, like me, is a recent library school grad who’s married to a yoga instructor (I wish he had business cards, because I’m spacing on his name); Walt Crawford, who was every bit as kind and thoughtful in person as he seems in his blog; Howard Besser, who’s doing fantastic work at NYU in film and video preservation, and who just landed a landmark grant from IMLS; and Roy Tennant, who’s helping to do the kind of stuff at OCLC that I’m really, really glad is happening at OCLC. In my little checklist of Things To Do at ALA, I’ve got a dot next to “Figure out how to expose the Collingswood Public Library’s records in WorldCat at a price we can afford,” though I’m hoping that dot becomes a check by Tuesday. Added to my to do list: become very familiar with everything the amazing Karen Calhoun writes on her new OCLC blog.

After WebJunction, I ate dinner with Andrea, Steve Roskowki, LJ’s Library Paraprofessional of the Year, ALA Council member Heidi Dolamore, and Laurel, a way-cool Oregon-based librarian and fellow Drexel alum. Along the way, I also ran into some of my favorite colleagues from Penn and Temple, and a colleague at PALINET who’s been helpful in helping me get my bearings at Collingswood.

Again, this isn’t a post about how I’m so popular and cool, because I’m neither; no one’s going to be dropping my name on their blog or with their colleagues. The point is, through conversation which each of these people, I learned how I can be a better librarian and how Collingswood can become an even better library. And the conference is really just getting started. This all took place a day before the opening general session. I cannot wait to see how the rest of the conference goes.

Hi, everyone! I’m Anne Heidemann, Children’s, Tween & Teen Services Department Head at the Canton Public Library in Canton, Michigan. I’m a member of YALSA’s Outreach to Young Adults with Special Needs Committee, and an outgoing member of ALSC’s Membership Committee. I’m also a member of PLA and LLAMA. Today I attended a YALSA preconference, and here are my impressions.

Got Tweens? Serving Younger Teens & Tweens

A YALSA Preconference
ALA Annual Conference, Anaheim CA
Friday June 27, 2008

——

The Basics: Who are Tweens/Early Teens?

Booktalks:
Encyclopedia Horrifica
Stanford Wong Flunks Big-time
Millicent Min, Girl Genius
So Totally Emily Ebers

Lisa Yee brought her peep, Peepy, with her (as she usually does), and introduced him to the crowd (look for photos on her blog in the next few days). She reminisced about when she was a kid and she used to look for books with cracked spines to know that they were enjoyed by others. She also looked at the check-out cards to see who else had enjoyed them, and often found that her own name was there, because she checked out the same books over and over.

Before writing books for tweens, Lisa wrote ad jingles (Pass the Old El Paso - that was her!). Before that, when she was in middle school, she kept a very secret set of journals that were very serious and dramatic. She told us about a show called Mortified, where people get up on stage and read from their tween- and teen-hood diaries. She decided she wasn’t going to audition for that show but she did read us an excerpt as an illustration of how awkward you feel as a tween, how you feel that nothing is quite right with your appearance and your body. A lot of this stuff is funny, but when she writes, she tries to include the sad, scary stuff as well as the funny things. With the help of her editor Arthur Levine, she realized while writing from a boy’s perspective, that she was writing too much about feelings - boys don’t really talk about their feelings explicitly. Boys communicate, of course, but not in the overt ways that girls do.

The quickest way to turn off your audience is to not be authentic. Lisa read us a bit of a letter she received from a tween reader, who started out by telling Lisa that she enjoyed reading her book, but she didn’t finish it because she had an assignment, which she then asked for Lisa’s help completing. Lisa gets a lot of letters like this.

One of the attendees asked how Lisa thinks that public librarians can connect with tween boys, and Lisa said that for her son, it was getting the first right book in his hands. He needed to realize that books weren’t scary and weren’t his enemy. Books were a struggle and some kids need to know that it’s okay to put a reading-for-pleasure book down if it’s not engaging. She also makes a point of talking with him about books.

Lisa has a new book coming out for teens called Absolutely Maybe. She will be signing at Scholastic’s booth Saturday (6/28) from 10-11am and will present as part of LAYAPALOOZA Saturday from 2-3pm.*

——

Teri Lesesne, author of Naked Reading: Uncovering What Tweens Need to Become Lifelong Reading introduced and delivered a presentation on behalf of Stacy L. Creel, who couldn’t be here (she’s expecting and could not travel).
“Tween is a fluid definition: meaning that different cognitive, emotional and social developments happen at different rates in different adolescents. Some 10 year-olds may have begun physically developing while others may not see these changes until they are 13.”

Physical aspects:

* bombarded by hormones, hormonal roller coaster
* beginning reproductive development
* growth surge

Psychological aspects:

* reasoning capacities rise to new levels of complexity
* learning how to handle adult responsibilities
* ability to think about possibilities, consider hypotheses, think ahead, consider the thought process, think beyond conventional limits
* ability to use abstract verbal concepts
* ability to engage in abstract thought
* moral development evolves
* increased awareness of the relationship between the individual and society

Social development:

* expected increase in freedom
* move away from family toward peers
* likely to have friends of similar social and cultural backgrounds, similar attitudes and values
* increased importance of peer approval and acceptance
* rely on friends for everything
* more pressure from peers = greater likelihood of going along with it

Libraries are often a welcoming place to those without a place: tweens, who are self-identified as too mature for children’s area and too young for teen area.

——

The Basics II: Tweens/Early Teens in your library

Booktalks:
Beowulf: A Hero’s Tale Retold by James Rumford
The Ashwater Experiment by Amy Goldman Koss
Side Effects by Amy Goldman Koss

Amy Goldman Koss is the author of the two books above as well as The Girls, The Cheat, and Poison Ivy. Amy doesn’t like the word “tween” and has been trying to understand why we use it (her prevailing theory is that it’s an awkward word for an awkward time). (NOTE: At my library, the tweens like the word, and actually voted to name their dedicated area the Tween Scene.) She spoke about the physical awkwardness of being a tween, which clothes shopping still brings out for her, even as an adult.

She talked about the difficulty we have remembering the intensity of things that happened in the past, and how it’s crucial to find and evoke that intensity when writing for tweens. She tells her (grown-up) students to write for themselves at the age they’re writing for. She writes for “that moody, cranky, shitty little kid who was secretive, a bad student, but fearless and terrified.” She wants to write books that will entertain that girl.

Amy Goldman Koss may be signing in the exhibits at point in time (if anyone knows more specifics, please comment!).*

——

Booktalks by Jerene Battisti, Education and Teen Services Coordinator for the King County Library System:
The Clique by Lisi Harrison

Lisi Harrison did not attend a posh private school like her characters. She used her experience working with young women at MTV as her basis for the Clique girls, particularly her coworkers desire to do and wear and have whatever was necessary to be cool. She spoke about her characters and the impact they’ve had on readers who’ve contacted her.

Lisi will be signing at the Little Brown booth Saturday from 11-12pm.*

——

Teri Lesesne presented (her own PPT this time), speaking about illiteracy and reluctant tween readers. The recent/current movement of focusing on standardized test scores leads to an increasing number of young people who can’t read critically and don’t enjoy reading (but who have been taught to pass tests).

Research
Q: What makes you want to read?
A: (students K-12) being allowed to choose any book you want
A: (students K-12) having a classroom library
A: (students K-12) having the teacher read aloud
A: (students K-12) having the teacher take you to the school library
A: (students K-5) being allowed to read somewhere comfortable (floor, beanbag chair, etc.)
A: (students K-5) being allowed to buy your own book at a book fair
A: (students K-5) being allowed to participate in a reading competition
A: (students K-5) seeing the movie or TV production of the book after reading it
A: (students 6-12) having the author come to the school
A: (students 6-12) seeing the movie or TV production of the book before reading it

T-tweens need to Trust that we have fun books, tough books
A-tweens need Access to books
R-tweens need books that evoke a strong Response
G-tweens need books that provide Guidance
E-tweens need Enthusiasm for books
T-tweens need books with Tween appeal (and another and another)

——

The Info: Resources to Serve Tweens

Jon Scieszka is the author of many awesome books including Guys Write for Guys Read, Knucklehead (forthcoming), and my personal favorite Squids Will Be Squids.

Jon’s presentation was (as usual) terrific, with lots of brilliant ideas as well as hilarity. Librarians have the power to mediate the relationship between tweens and books, especially for tween boys. Tween boys are developmentally separating from their mothers, and most teachers (primary reading advocates in their lives) are mom-like figures, so that’s why reading drops off dramatically at that age. By making materials that tween boys want available and accessible, we can help.

Tween boys also need role models and while as a majority, we’re out of luck here as we’re predominantly female, we can help make male role models available in places where tween boys can connect with them. We as librarians need to embrace technology, including video games, because tween boys are interested in technology. We as librarians need not to look at things in terms of value judgments - materials are different, and that’s fine. (Totally! Like John Green said when I heard him speak earlier this year, it’s only as adults that we learn to judge things as either high culture or low culture, and we would all do well to forget how.)

Knucklehead is a collection of stories about Jon and his brothers growing up and includes his own illustrations and family photos from his childhood. Jon read some excerpts, and this book is hilarious! Hearing him read from it reminded me of hearing Chris Crutcher read from King of the Mild Frontier. I’m not going to retell butcher any of Jon’s stories here, but suffice it to say, growing up as one of six boys, he’s got a lot of fodder and really makes the most of it in Knucklehead.

Jon Scieszka’s Knucklehead will be released in the fall. He’ll be signing at the Simon & Schuster booth Saturday from 3-4pm. He’ll be signing at the Penguin Booth Saturday from 9-10am.*

——

Bruce Hale is the author of the Chet Gecko Mysteries (including The Malted Falcon and The Hamster of the Baskervilles) and the Underwhere series (including the Prince of Underwhere and the Pirates of Underwhere).

As a child, Bruce did not care for books. He loved the movies, comics, and TV, and found lots of inspiration for his imagination in those three avenues. His childhood career ambitions included pirate, gladiator, knight, and Daniel Boone. When he was around 8, their TV died, and his parents comforted and distracted the fam by reading books aloud. When his parents read Tarzan of the Apes, Bruce had an epiphany: “if this is what books about, I love books!” His father made a point of telling him that Edgar Rice Burroughs was the author, the man who used his imagination to come up with Tarzan, and suddenly Bruce realized that he wanted to be an author. His local public library became his home away from home and the librarians kept coming up with more choices for what he could read next. (Bruce actually got a little choked up telling us this - aww!)

As a teenager and twenty-something, he got distracted by several sidelines including acting, playing the guitar, and girls, but he kept running into meaningful books and getting a little closer to his goal of writing a book.

Bruce read from The Malted Falcon, and noted a number of other books he recommends for reluctant tweens, book that hook you with fantasy, action, the promise that something will happen, series, graphic novels, and books in which they see themselves. His recommendations include Captain Underpants, Matilda, Millicent Min, Girl Genius, My Teacher is an Alien, Battle of the Labyrinth, Ella Enchanted, The Lightning Thief, Because of Winn-Dixie, Joey Pigza Swallowed the Key, Animorphs, Redwall, Alex Rider, Artemis Fowl, Holes, Chasing Vermeer, Bone, Diary of a Wimpy Kid, Esperanza Rising, Bucking the Sarge, and Monsoon Summer.

Bruce finished his talk with examples of some letters young readers have sent him, which were funny and sweet and touching (lots of awws there). His final sentiment really sums up what several of the speakers have said today: “It only takes the right book to make a reader.”

Bruce Hale will be signing at the Harper Collins booth Saturday from 9:30-10am and at the Harcourt booth at 11:30am*

——

Booktalks:
The London Eye Mystery by Siobhan Dowd
The Willoughbys by Lois Lowry
Savvy by Ingrid Law

Ingrid Law spoke about the ways that tweens start to show the changes they experience as they grow up, and illustrated with examples read from her book Savvy. Writing Savvy, she wanted to read a book about magic (without using the word magic) because young people need to be encouraged to look at themselves and ask, “what’s extraordinary about me,” and “what talents do I have?”

She comes from a long line of anxious women and has come to the conclusion that anxiety is just imagination misused, so she decided to use her imagination to ask “what if” something good happened, rather than something bad.

Ingrid Law will be signing at the Penguin Young Readers booth

——

The Panel: Programming for tweens

Natalie Hoyle, Lamont Elementary School, Illinois

• Natalie started an audio discussion group for her students, which meets at lunch time during the school day.

Catherine Schaeffer, King County Libary System, Seattle, Washington

• Catherine is running a program called Science Alive this summer. Local university science students, a bioengineer, and several other science professionals visit the library for these programs. Teen volunteers help run the program.

Jerene Battisti, King County Library System, Seattle, Washington

• One of their branches has a tween gaming program. It started as a teen gaming program, and the teens volunteered to run the program for tweens instead.
• This summer tweens (and teens) can Read Three, Get One Free. They read three books, answer some questions, and have the chance to win prizes.
• This summer tweens (and teens) can Read, Flip, Win, which is a video contest using YouTube. Teen librarians will judge.

Mary Burkee, middle school librarian, Columbus, Ohio

• Mary displays books and other materials on table tops. She did one display of books that relate in some way to Guitar Hero, which was very popular.
• Every month she takes a group of her students to Barnes & Noble and get to pick out any books they want for the library collection. Each book is then tagged with a bookplate indicating the student who picked it out.
• She runs Free Read Fridays, where teachers can bring their students in and read for pleasure.
• She has a suggestion box and she promises her students she’ll buy any item they suggest. Empowering students is her best bet for encouraging students to read.

Jenine Lillian, University of Washington Information School professor & part-time private school librarian grades 4-12

• Jenine recommends talking to your tweens and asking them what they want/like/think. She also recommends year-round programming, no matter what type of library, to provide consistency and the expectation that there’s always something to do there.
• Her teens have been excited to share their expertise and interests with tweens (knitting and anime club members especially). They have also helped run programs including bowling night.
• She used a scavenger hunt to gather information on what her patrons liked and didn’t like about what they saw at the library.
• Her tweens did not want to do a book club, so they did read-the-book, watch-the-movie instead.

The panel fielded questions from the audience, many of which related to how to define tweens (define by age? grade? either way, what range?). The consensus of the panelists is that it will vary according to community.

Several of the panelists run tween advisory or similar groups, mostly as feeder groups for their teen advisory boards.

——

*all book signing information subject to change, error, and me being just plain wrong. Corrections are welcome in the comments!

I live maybe ten miles from the Philadelphia airport—I was through security and waiting at my gate this morning less than an hour after leaving my house—and I’ve lived in the Philadelphia area most of my life. Yet from the air, on take offs and landings, it’s almost impossible for me to tell where I am; the familiar seems completely new from thousands of feet in the air. I think it’s the shift in perspective more than the effects of speed, because jets don’t give the impression of moving all that quickly.  Looking out from my window seat, the ground seemed to sort of meander along, even though we were covering 3,000 miles in just a few hours.

This isn’t a travelogue, this is a metaphor for libraries and my relationship with them. I enrolled in library school less than two years ago, and I graduated in September. While in school, I worked at the University of Pennsylvania’s Lippincott Library of the Wharton School, then worked at the libraries of Temple and Saint Joseph’s Universities after graduation. In May, I began working as the director of the Collingswood Public Library.

I thought, before all this began, that I knew libraries pretty well. As with driving, food, and website design, when it comes to libraries we all think we’re experts. Of course, I had more to learn that I could imagine, and library school was a great place to start. I’m particularly grateful that Drexel’s faculty helped me apply what I already knew (I’ve worked as a web developer, fundraiser, and nonprofit manager) to our profession, a field that seems to meander along, and yet manages always to cover a tremendous amount of ground with startling rapidity.

With that in mind, I’m attending this year’s Annual so that I can do my job better. Like our colleagues in Borough Hall, at the Police and Fire Stations, and in Public Works, our job at the Library is to make Collingswood a better place to live. So I plan to talk to Tim Spalding about his ideas for revamping classification, because Dewey may not be the best choice for everyone. And to colleagues who are implementing faceted interfaces for their catalogs (Collingswood will be rolling out a Scriblio-powered website in the next couple of weeks). I want to talk to the folks at LibLime and those who are using Koha to see how it might help us deliver better customer service. And I definitely plan to talk to OCLC about exposing our records in WorldCat; Aaron Swartz has already agreed to include our records in the Open Library, with links back to our catalog once our Scriblio instance permits us to produce stable URLs, but I’d love to let people who are interested in our collection access it from as many sites as possible.

Of course, that’s just the beginning. I have a lot more planned, and I also hope to be open to the sort of serendipitous moments that ALA fosters. For those who are following this blog from Anaheim, please say hello. And for those following it from home, let me know if there’s anything you’d like me to investigate on your behalf.

Press credentials in hand, I headed down to the show floor (a.k.a. The Exhibits), which was still under construction, with Kathleen Hughes (Manager of PLA Publications and Editor of Public LIbraries magazine), to drop off booth stuff. John Chrastka was busy setting things up, and showed me the brand-new ALA libcast podcasting booth:

and I got to give it a whirl:

Hear all about it:

(if the player doesn’t appear, click here)

Recently, reader Sean Aragon wrote in and asked “Where are some good places to eat around the Conference Center?” If you’re heading to ALA yourself, you might be thinking the same thing.

I’ve never been to Anaheim, so I don’t *personally* know what’s good, but here are a few places you can check out to help plan your food itinerary.

• The ALA 2008 Conference Wiki does have a page on eating options, and I think they are mostly taken straight from the recent conference preview issue of American Libraries.
• If you don’t want to eat alone, check out the Dine-Around program, also listed in the conference wiki. Several restaurants are listed for each night in varying cuisines, and interested parties can sign up to be a part of the big table experience. These dinners are not free, but there is the added benefit of a) not having to make your own group dinner plans, and b) being able to share big dishes with colleagues.
• Need more than a map of restaurants in the area? Check out reviews on Yelp for restaurants near the convention center, and filter the results to suit your cost, cuisine, or rating needs. Not near the convention center? No problem. Just enter what you’re looking for (Yelp offers reviews of more than just restaurants), and put your address in the “Near” field to really get super local to you (especially if your accommodations are not so close to the convention center). If you need more personalized advice for all things local, post your queries to the Food Talk section of the site. Don’t forget to post reviews, too!

Happy eating!

What are your food plans? Any recommendations or must-tries on your list?

How will the business of public libraries shift to meet the needs and preferences of next generation learners? How will libraries support knowledge creation in communities in 2020 and beyond?

That’s what I’m hoping to find out today.

I landed in Anaheim yesterday, and I’m doing a twofer this trip.  The day before the beginning of the ALA 2008 Annual Meeting, I’ll be blogging the Foresight 2020 conference, presented by the Urban Libraries Council.

The one-day program includes sessions like “What Does Learning Look Like in 2020?” presented by Dr. John Seely Brown, Visiting Scholar and Advisor to the Provost at the University of Southern California and Independent Co-Chairman of a New Deloitte Research Center, and “Taking Action and Innovation Ideas Further – Key Tools, Partnerships and Strategies to Consider, Pitfalls to Avoid” presented by Omar Wasow – NBC Internet Analyst and BlackPlanet.com founder.  The program is delightfully rounded out by interactive Talk Tables to discuss and learn from the presenters and each other.

I’ll likely be tweeting the session like a fiend, so if you want to follow along real-time, check out my Twitter stream for anything hash-tagged #fs2020.  I may even post a few Utterz from the conference, we’ll see.

If you could ask Jamie Lee Curtis a question, what would it be and why?

I have been granted the distinct pleasure of interviewing Jamie Lee Curtis after she speaks at the PLA Preisdent’s Program on Monday night, and posting the interview to the blog (in text format). Since the interview is for you, our readership, we at the PLA Blog thought it would be fitting — nevermind just super keen — to gather some questions from our audience.

Please click on the “Leave a reply” button at the bottom of this post to leave a comment with your question, as well as your name, title, and library, if you’d like us to quote you. Tell us what you want to know!

Via an email alert from our friends over in the Public Relations and Marketing Section of the Library Administration & Management Association (LAMA):

Libraries of all types and sizes, share your creative, great public relations efforts with your colleagues! Gain international exposure for your library’s marketing and promotional items by sending them to “Swap & Shop: Hot Ideas for Cool PR,” at ALA Annual Conference in Anaheim.

The annual Swap & Shop event will be held from 11 a.m. to 1:30 p.m. Sunday, June 29, in the Special Events Area in Hall D of the exhibit floor at the Anaheim Convention Center. ALA attendees will have the opportunity to fill their free Swap & Shop tote bag with the very best samples of library public relations (annual reports, newsletters, reading promotions, and more). More than 950 library professionals attended Swap & Shop in 2007.

Your items must be received by Friday, June 20. All shipments (please send 50-200 copies of your items) MUST have a Swap & Shop Shipping label – [please see the link at the bottom of this post for the shipping label download].

We will display your materials proudly at Swap & Shop, which will also feature the winners of the Best of Show contest (a juried selection of the best PR materials produced in the past year), the John Cotton Dana Awards for outstanding achievement in library public relations, PR Makeovers of an academic and public library, and more.

Questions? For more information contact: Luke Vilelle, the 2007-08 Swap & Shop Committee Chair, at 540-362-6592 or .

See also:

• Swap & Shop Shipping Label (.pdf)
• Swap & Shop Printable Entry Form (.pdf)
  
• Swap & Shop FAQ (.pdf)

The Public Programs Office is offering 5 sessions by talented and interesting presenters at the upcoming 2008 ALA Annual Meeting, with a focus on arts and humanities programs in libraries (see the PPO Upcoming Events page for session descriptions):

• Traveling Exhibits for Libraries: New Opportunities
  Speakers: Denise Smith and Frank Summers, Space Science Telescope Institute, Baltimore, MD; Susan Brandehoff, Program Director, ALA Public Programs Office.
• We the People Picturing America: Presenting Programs in Your School or Public Library
  Speakers: Thomas Phelps, Director, Division of Public Programs, National Endowment for the Humanities; Lainie Castle, Project Director, ALA Public Programs Office; Nancy Davenport, Acting Director of Library Services, District of Columbia Public Library; Mary L. Chute, Deputy Director for Libraries, Institute of Museum and Library Services; Kathie Burns, Library Media Technician, Arnold O. Beckman High School, Irvine, CA; Dornel Marie Cerro, Head Librarian, Sequoyah Educational Center, Pasadena, CA
• Soul of a People: Voices from the Writers’ Project
  Speakers: Andrea Kalin, President and Executive Producer, Spark Media, Washington, DC; David Bradley, Author and Associate Professor, University of Oregon; Susan Brandehoff, Program Director, ALA Public Programs Office.
• PRIME TIME FAMILY READING: Bilingual Programs Expand Nationally
  Speakers:Thomas Phelps, Director, Division of Public Programs, National Endowment for the Humanities; Lainie Castle, Project Director, ALA Public Programs Office; Faye Flanagan, Director, PRIME TIME FAMILY READING TIME, Louisiana Endowment for the Humanities; Pat Lawson-North, Executive Director, Vision Literacy, Santa Clara County Library, California; Anne Masters, Director, Pioneer Library System, Oklahoma.
• Let’s Talk About It: Love & Forgiveness (speakers not posted)

The PPO is also presenting an impressive line up of authors for the LIVE! @ your library Reading Stage.

If your division, roundtable, or committee doing something interesting at ALA? Want us to post your upcoming ALA session, social, or other event on the PLA Blog? Send us email with the session/event details.