Yesterday was the one-year anniversary of my first post. I was inspired to start this blog by the 2004 ASIST Annual Meeting: there were a few sessions on blogs and blogging, & since I had been talking with Fred about Lyceum for a while at that point, I thought that I really should get some firsthand experience with this whole blogging thing. And the rest is history.

It occurred to me during the 2005 ASIST Annual that that conference should inspire some similar behavior change; indeed, every ASIST conference should inspire some change in my behavior. After all, if I don’t go away from the conference in my field with some inspiration to do something different, then what did I get out of going? Unfortunately I hardly went to any sessions at the conference (except my own); I spent most of my time talking to friends & colleagues. Kristin and I came up with an idea for a study, but we haven’t yet done anything about it. I learned about the h-index. I discussed the uneasy marriage of LS and IS with several people — nice to know that SILS isn’t alone in that. Honestly, I think what I primarily got out of going to ASIST this year was committee work. Actually no, that’s not entirely true. I had the thought during the conference — I no longer remember why — that I should download & try out Open Office. I moved over to Firefox from IE in a day & never looked back; moving to Open Office could be my big behavior change post-ASIST. But of course I haven’t done it yet. Anyone using Open Office, have any insights to share on the subject?

One thing I am particularly proud of is that I inspired (convinced? arm-twisted? hopefully not that) Marianne to submit a conference-paper-sized version of her Masters paper to ASIST, which was, of course, accepted. I say of course because (1) ASIST is clearly interested in blogs as a topic at the conference, & (2) it was a good paper. Unfortunately I didn’t get to see Marianne present, since I was flailing in front of a large audience at the time. Still, I’m thrilled that she had the experience of presenting at a conference. I love seeing my Masters advisees do things with their Masters papers. I’m all farklempt.