... The Three Days of the Conference

Day One
My conference experience began with catching the plane to Canberra at a sensible time of the morning. This time there is no drama getting to the airport - unlike my Libraries online flat tire incident.

The flight up is quite pleasant, although we are on a Dash 8, which causes Supervisor Grand Chief K to go into paroxysms of anxiety as it is propeller driven.
Upon arrival we check in and then wait 30 minutes to have our quiet drink on the patio delivered.

The rest of my afternoon was taken up with with a visit to the Australian War Memorial. It was a great refresher of my memories from the visit with the cubs when I was ten - although the groups of school kids were getting on my nerves by the end of it. The dioramas were still as impressive as I remembered them.

When the memorial closed I walked back to the hotel through the fly-infested centre of Canberra and freshened up in preparation for the evenings festivities.

Suitably refreshed I made my way downstairs for the evenings "cocktail" reception. (Being wise to my complaints about libraryland cocktails they had declared the evening to be merely a Welcome Reception.)
After a few drinks, as many free nibbles as one could gather when the trays circulated past, and several hours of conversation, we all adjourned to the hotel bar to watch the debut episode of the new ABC series the librarians. Due to a fluke of the sound system the best place to be was on the patio looking in at the screen on the far wall. The show was well received although we missed many of the subtle spoken jokes and the subtitles were unreadable at the distance.
When the show finished we all went to bed so that we would be suitably refreshed for the serious conferencing in the morning. ;)

Or not. That last sentence was simply for the "what happens on the conference stays on the conference" agreements. In reality a reasonable sized group stayed on in the bar until it closed. After that unfortunate occurrence a smaller group returned to The Flibberty Gibbet's room to drink the mini-bar dry. Our gentlemanly manners had us leave at 2am when TFG passed out/fell asleep.


Day Two
Day two began with a restrained use of the breakfast smorgasboard followed by conference registration. After that we were into the sessions.

The LMS supplier gave their usual state of the nation session, interrupted by a morning tea of some lovely little pastries, followed by their what's new and upcoming session.
This took us to the lunch which was of the cold meats and salad style with plenty of variety.
The afternoon sessions encompassed RFID and web 2.0 - all things I knew quite a lot about but it was all still very interesting. Supervisor Grand Chief K did attempt to ridicule me during her Library 2.0 spiel but I think the audience could see through her shallow attempt to besmirch my name.

After the sessions I went for walk along Lake Burley Griffen but the masses of flies soon forced me to turn back. After a short stop at the hotel bar to socialise with SGCK and friends I returned to my room to relax and prepare for the conference dinner.
Waking from a strange dream I realised that I must have fallen asleep and was now late for dinner. Not to worry though as my timing was immaculate - I arrived just before entree - and was probably considered to be fashionably late.
The dinner was quite good, and we were 15 stories up, but I think Mr Prada is correct and it lacked that extra something that revolving adds to a meal. There was much talk and socialising for the duration of the dinner which was all quite good even though I was beginning to get an idea of the plans being hatched for the morrow.
Not long after dessert we all headed off to our rooms to rest up for the final day of the conference. ;)

The true story is that most of the attendees stayed on in the restaurant until the free wine bottles were emptied and then headed down to the hotel bar were we once again stayed on until it closed.
A slightly differently composed smaller group then retired to a room to drink the mini-bar, and several others, dry. I forced myself to leave at 2.30am when my eyelids were beginning to fail.

Day Three
The third day began innocently enough with a late trip to the breakfast table.

The morning session was the AGM for SPUN, the organisation we were members of. It was during this meeting that the insidious plans of the night before were hatched. The result being that I found myself elected as the organisations Secretary for the next term of office. My fellow electees - Madame President and The Professor(treasurer) - took it so well that I had no choice but to play along. I do think that I will have to insist on being addressed as Mr Secretary from now on.

Still stunned at my election I nearly missed out on scones with cream and jam at morning tea but my instincts prevailed before tragedy struck.

The next few sessions gave the group the chance to put the hard word on the LMS suppliers and go a little more in-depth into the reporting capabilities of the LMS.

After a nice Asian lunch we had sessions on RFID, Wireless, and the many programlets that The Professor uses in his IT duties. All were things I knew about so I may have had some difficulty focusing.

The conference closed and a group of us had a few drinks on the rear veranda baking under the hot Canberra sun. We then moved to the bar to await our taxis.
A short, but highly cliched, taxi trip to the airport later we crammed into the exclusive lounge area to freeload while we waited for our continually delayed flight home.
Eventually we were allowed to board. This time Supervisor Grand Chief K hadn't booked us seats together and I didn't have to put up with the high-pitched noise... of the engines. Which was good as the strain of the past few days of concentration on the sessions had led to some slight cranial tightness.
We were delayed coming into Tullamarine and then again on the ground when they couldn't find anyone to attach the departure bridge. Once that was sorted out we had to wait again as there was nobody to unload our luggage. (I suspect that they had been reassigned to bridge-moving).
Luck turned after then though as I walked straight out of the terminal and into the long term car park bus.

In no time at all I was on my way home to feed The Tiger and provide her with some much missed human companionship.

Fingers crossed that Supervisor Grand Chief K will accept this as my conference report - her and her damnable bureaucracy!