I had the unique pleasure last week of meeting many brilliant, innovative, and engaging libtech (library + tech) folks at the code4lib conference in Raleigh, NC last week.
Instead of writing all my feelings and thoughts, (and anyone who knows me knows that I have a lot!) I'm going to share my notes and impressions in bullet form below.
The pre-conference kicked off with a super workshop on project management called PM4Lib, taught by the amazing Rosalyn Metz and Becky Yoose. They spoiled us by baking incredibly delicious treats, so every other talk was definitely less sweet, though just as good. :)Ā My notes are here
I cannot even begin to express my appreciation for the incredible keynote speakers! I am so admiring of the work of Sumana Harihareswara and Valerie Aurora, and to hear them speak was dreamy.Ā Also, it meant a lot to us to have both keynote speakers be around and open for conversations throughout the conference.Check out Sumana's talk and Valerie's interview
One awesome part of the conference was getting to hang out in the Hunt Library again.Ā This was my third time there, and it's so cool and fun!
Similarly, the work of the NCSU librarians is incredible!Ā After meeting many of them a few weeks ago, I was impressed to hear about their innovative work
I gave a lightning talk on "How to be a part of an open source community." My slides are here, and the actual (super enthusiastic!) talk is hereĀ (begin 1:04:50)
I still have so much Mozilla swag that I don't know what to do with it!Ā Let me know if you want a sticker or a necklace or a pen!
There were quite a few talks at this conference that went way over my head, further solidifying for me that what's important about conferences is the connections you make and the people you meet. People "threw up code" a lot, which was about as inscrutable as it sounds, though certain speakers did a good job making their code more friendly, in particular Jason Ronallo.
What stood out to me was the conference's focus on social justice as a library and a tech issue, demonstrated by the choice of keynotes. I have become increasingly disillusioned with the academic library world and what I see as a mostly head down approach to many of the issues that concern us as librarians like access, feminism, and class struggle. To me, social justice and librarianship are deeply intertwined, and to hear librarians cross-functionally stand up and assert that there is a class differential in librarianship was extremely powerful.
Further than that, the safe space of the conference and the constant +1-ing was sweet! Supporting each others' work made me so happy!Ā One thing I'd like to see next year is a greater inclusion of public libraries in order to expand the scope to include folks who may be disenfranchised or disconnected from the larger community. Academic libraries may be the most prominent sources of technological innovation, but it doesn't mean that they are the only source.
code4lib was inspiring, but also frustrating because the issues of gender, class, and race within my field were brought into even sharper relief for me. As Valerie Aurora said in her talk (paraphrasing), "Notice when you feel discomfort or guilt. That means you are learning something." In this regard, I suppose that the my experience at the conference was a success.Ā We may not solve these problems overnight, and I am not sure that we'll solve them with code, but I look forward to continue working for positive change in my field as a librarian, a coder, and a feminist.
