Tag: access2011

Access 2011 – You shoulda been there.

This past week I had the privilege of attending my first ever Access conference. I had a great time and thought I should do a bit of a write up.

The venue

Access was held in Vancouver this year, which is an absolutely beautiful city. I spent most of Monday exploring Stanley Park. I got to see otters eating what looked to me like a flounder, and an eagle catch a fish too. it is a really neat place here are a couple of the photos I took on my crappy phone camera.

Tuesday started with Dim Sum, great food and great company, which I think was the theme of the entire trip. Following that I got to have a look around Tara’s library and then spent a few hours on Granville Island.

The Conference

The conference proper was awesome, there was really only one talk that I wasn’t interested in and lots that were great. The ones I enjoyed the most were:

  • Open to the Public: Indigenous Collections and the Ethics of Openness : Kimberly Christen and Alex Merrill
  • Open research data: fun, important, and in need of librarians : Heather Piwowar
  •  All together now: creating software ecosystems from open, interoperable components : Bess Sadler
The social events
These were fantastic, again great food and great company, adding in to the mix great beer too. As with any conference the talks are good, but the most important thing (for me anyway) is the hallway track. That is the conversations held with people after the talks spark some ideas in the brain. For me, hanging out with the Sitka team was a real highlight.
Id like to thank the organising team once again for the fantastic job they did and in particular Shirley and Tara for being utterly fantastic hosts.