Ahhhh....Fall!

It is officially Fall here in Hood River! We've been having, and should continue to have, the most beautiful week of fall weather. The sun is out, the air is crisp and fresh, and the fall colors are out in full force! This is what I had been missing all those falls in Florida. I am now reminded of all the beautiful and fun falls I spent in Indiana, and am glad I can experience this once again. I love this time of year, and when you can be outside and enjoy it, it's even better!

I'd have to say that the beautiful colorful leaves are my favorite. The golden yellows, the firey reds and oranges. I especially love the tress that are multiple colors, in the midst of changing. Some green with some yellow, changing into orange. The most amazing one's I've seen so far are bright orange towards the bottom, with red spreading down toward the orange from the top. They are so amazing and striking and truly remind me of fire.

But the leaves are even more beautiful when the sun is shining on and through them. They light up with a glow that fills me with happiness. The sun also brings warmth to both the temperature and the colors that is missing when it is not there. It feels so good to have the sun shining down on me, and I am reslishing it in case I don't see it for a while this winter.

When I get to walk around in a cozy sweater or jacket or sweatshirt (very few of which I got to wear in Florida, ever), breathe in the clean, crisp, fresh fall air, feel the warmth of the sun, and admire the beautiful colors of the trees and bushes, I feel very happy and content with where I am, and who I am.

Now all I need is a bonfire party to go to! :-)

InfoCamp

I attended my first professional conference last weekend in Seattle (called Info Camp). It was actually an unconference (which basically means that the participants decide on and present the content of the conference), but it was still the first time I've attended anything like a conference. And it was awesome!

The first day was a bit overwhelming since I had no real clue what to do there. I mean I knew the basics: attend the sessions, meet people, discuss and participate. But putting that into action was harder than I thought. I'm not super great at just going up to random people and talking to them. And since this was a conference based on user experience and I have no professional experience with this topic, I've only studied it, I didn't feel like I had a lot of input that would be interesting or beneifcial to other people there. But I did enjoy attending the sessions and learned a lot. It was really cool to see what people are doing in this field, and that there are so many people making a living in this field. I did learn that if I really want to do this professionally, I've got a lot of work ahead of me creating a portfolio of volunteer website design or "just for fun" website redesign.

I think I enjoyed the second day a bit more. There were less people there, and I felt there were more sessions based on libraries, which I can relate more to since I do have professional experience with those. One session focused on the invisible library (online resources such as databases) and creating an open source ILS (integrated library system). I found this session to be the most interesting, and amazingly enough, I actually had thoughts on what they were talking about so I could particpate in the discussion.

So, what came out of me attending this unconference? Well, I learned the importance of a portfolio, I met a lot of people interested in the same kind of work I am interested in, found out about a professional organization that hopefully I can get involved in, got that "first time" out of the way, learned there are many opertunities in user experience work, learned that many librarians (or library school students) are also interested in this phenomona, and that many librarians actually make a living doing what I would love to do. So in a way I guess it gave me some hope.

I'm looking forward to attending next year, and to hopefully attending other similar conference between now and then, and hopefully having something more to contribute in the future.