Day 2: Exhibitors ACM Breakfast

Day Two:

Renee's laptop has to charge so I'm starting the blog this morning for us.This morning the ACM breakfast was all about the exhibitors! Woohoo! It is raining we have not gone outside since noon yesterday because it looks cold and it’s wet. But it looks beautiful through the window.

We got to eat standing up at cocktail tables and a woman from Utah joined us. We think her name might have been Sandy, but we haven’t had enough tea to process that information or remember. She said her museum moved to a new location and altered their name to try to encourage a wider audience to their museum. They felt “children’s” limited who came through their door. I think they changed their name to Discovery Gateway?

She informed us that she used to work at a medical library and thought a bout a library degree. She tired to give us some library jokes about ILL being capitalized in ILLiad. Unfortunately Renee and I were the wrong crowd early this morning for library jokes. We tried to explain that we were a public library not a medical library. I don’t think she got it.

She was curious what a library was doing at the conference and Renee filled her in on our PAL story. She really wanted to tell us what we should be doing. She felt we should be partnering more in the community. We informed her that we were – working with local universities to get the word out about play. She felt we should have local partners who would travel with the exhibit. She felt that everything was all about partnering now.

She told us about a neat rock art exhibit with paintings and actual rock art to touch. They were working with local universities to talk about the importance of preserving this natural art. Then she went back to suggestion about how we should improve our PALs. Renee and I had to refill our tea and start hitting up the booths so we excused ourselves.

Exhibitors

This was very exciting! I rate the exhibitors second to my awesome session yesterday. The exhibit booths at this conference are what the exhibit booths SHOULD look like at CLA (ALA is a better, but could improve). I think as “buyers” “shoppers” consumers, I think we expect a certain level of marketing. We have such limited time now – we want a good reason to come to your booth. Show us why we should come over – pictures, things to touch. Each exhibitor had banners, photos, sings, portfolios, items, samples. I felt like I could gage based on their exhibit booth what they did and what their style was.

I’ve been taking photos of each exhibitor booth (they were my notes). So I’ll post those to the I drive when we get back (I’m having issues loading photos). So far we made it through about 1/3 of the exhibits with another 2 hour go over lunch. We got to visit Bill Breeves booth – from VA we sat with him yesterday morning. He was very nice and had a really unique booth with fishing line stringing photos of his portfolio work. He seems to specialize in small museums with small budgets. His previous work seems nice – not a “slick” as I think we’re accustomed.



We visited a booth with our gears – I think Universal systems. Our gears were still fun to play with. They’re designing storage systems now.- using the same laminated work style that our fabricators used. I mentioned that we’re having a bit of trouble with that material on one of our PAL prototypes and asked what the benefit was for using it. He said it’s really popular right now because it’s attractive and lighter. The alternative he offers is the plastic coating (same as the gears) – hmmmm – easy cleaning :).



We also stopped by a "mining" type booth. It was a water trough where kids could “mine” – wash and rinse dirt to discover rocks. It looked really cool. This would be really neat at the local history event – CA history – not sure if rock mining etc. is part of Rancho history – but it could be part of someone’s story.



I think Renee’s going to cover the great visit at the Lexington booth with Patti and the pig.




We’ll post again later – we’re tuning in for Dan our keynote …