The blog post formerly known as “notes on David Lee King’s presentation”

I just lost the entire first part of my notes in a horrible wireless incident. All I can say is that for an INTERNET LIBRARIAN conference, I’m not getting much Internet. There are a lot of people tweeting about how crappy the wifi situation is and it’s bad enough that it’s distracting from the conference experience itself. Funny, since David is talking about digital experience, and my particular digital experience during his talk is not good. Not his fault, of course, and my “meatspace” experience is wonderful – he’s a funny presenter who has a LOT of great knowledge (and he rocks) but I’m having trouble concentrating on the message because the digital experience of this conference is so very bad. The really bad part – you all are getting this rant instead of reading about what David has to say. The good news? He’s written a book called Designing the Digital Experience that you can buy from Amazon and get all the good info there.
Our first keynote, which was part of the notes I’d lost in the wireless incident, was by Harold Reingold. He spoke about his recent book, Smart Mobs, and discussed the idea of collective action. He traced it from early man collecting together in order to bring down a big beast (mastodon steaks, anyone?) to the first cities and the birth of writing, to the printing press and finally to the advent of texting and the Internet. It was an interesting keynote and I took some kick-butt notes, but they are gone…. He also mentioned that, instead of keeping up with technologies, keep up with literacies. That struck me as a really good idea and well put, too!