What worked was that attendees maintained a robust backchannel to the conference that took on a life of its own. Twitter became a driving force of communication that helped me keep in touch with salient points happening at many of the other sessions. The Blogger's Cafe wiki was a great way for us to update information real time. I am SO proud of my librarian colleagues for sharing so much of themselves selflessly for others at the conference and those who could not attend in person.

I participated using the bThere access pass as an AASL member. It was terrific - made me wish I had all access, but I got a lot out of the site, the tweets, the links. Really appreciate this and hope it continues!

I am still mulling over my notes and thoughts from Charlotte.

What worked?
The three keynote speakers were all riveting.

The Exploratorium gave me the opportunity to see the successes of some of my colleagues.

The Blogger's Cafe and backchanneling - allowing more people to take an active part in the conference.

What was lacking or did not work? bThere has been frustrating to navigate. I am hoping that work will be done to it to improve it since it is a resource we can use for a year.

The Exhibit Hall closes too early each day! Attendees should not have to miss sessions in order to get the full experience of the Exhibit Hall. I understand the vendors can't work 12-14 hour days every day, but surely something can be done to extend hours past session times each day.

Instead of just giving out daily newsletters about the conference events, I would love to see a kiosk or display with live feeds or recorded information.

Overall, Charlotte was a wonderful experience.

I had a great time at AASL!
Pros: the keynotes and the sessions I attended were great. The hotels were so close to the convention center (compared to Reno), which made it easy to get everywhere with time to spare, the Blogger's cafe was a great experience - it could have been in a bit bigger venue though!

Cons: I agree with Fran that there was little time to see the exhibits, but I disagree with her in that I didn't like the exploratorium that much. I think it was difficult to get a lot out of the displays - I wish they had more of a blogger's cafe style.

I am sure I will come up with more pros and cons as I have time to reflect.

Thanks so much Joyce for leading an open and digital-based evaluation / reflection process. Given AASL's committment to "going green", seeing thousands of paper evaluation forms distributed at each time period of the conference, coupled with the enormous staff resources that will be needed to compile, analyse and synthesize these, and hopefully report on these, I am surprised that there is not some formal web-based process using research and data analysis tools to do this. Did I miss it? My apologies if I did!

I thought the Bloggers Cafe was impressive - and thanks to you and Buffy for your creative leadership, expertise and forebearance! It was grassroots learning activism of the richest kind, creative, inspiring, participatory, building community, partnerships - knowledge creation, sharing and use. Stunning stuff. That it took on a life of its own was so exciting. Twitter was viral, eh! So fantastic to see this kind of sustained engagement. Overall the availability of the wireless technology was appalling, and frustrating. In one session I was part of on Saturday morning, we planned to have groups of participants led by one person per group working in a wikispace - we abandoned it because of the impossibility of connection; when connection happened, it was slow at best, and at times totally ineffectual.

As a researcher and school library educator, I valued those sessions where research was featured. I thought the session "Reporting the Research" was fantastic - nice to hear about current research and such accomplished researchers forging a sustainable path for school libraries through research. In this climate of evidence-based education, we need to see more of such sessions. Perhaps AASL should follow the lead of IASL in establishing a research forum as part of the conference so that there can be some more sustained discussion and debate between researchers and practitioners. That is why Treasure Mountain (which is not part of AASL) was so rewarding this year - there was some really passionate discussion and debate. And on that basis, I was so perplexed to read in the program guide about a session titled: "Data Collection: Practical Applications for your Media Program". Fantastic to see school librarians engaging in data. Having championed evidence-based practice for a decade now, this was great to see. But the last sentence in the program totally perplexed me: "This session is intended for action-oriented professionals only; those interested in theoretical discussions will not be admitted!" What? Was this intended as a joke? To put limits on discussion surely in a violation of intellectual freedom, and it surprises me that AASL endorsed such a statement. Is there no room in our profession for reflective, metacognitive discussion - conceptual discussion - that asks us to think beoynd the immediate action. It was great to hear dana boyd. Her research (yes, research) is ground-breaking, and compelling, and her insights were powerful. She made excellent links to professional practice - provocative and challenging, none-the-less.

A perspective from a first-time exhibitor (Dulcinea Media): it was startling to see the camaraderie among attendees. I've been to dozens of conferences and this group was the tightest-knit one I've seen, by far. This accounts for the back-channeling & sharing discussed above, and perhaps comes from the crossroads the profession is facing. I too would have loved the exhibit hours to be longer; I truly enjoyed meeting everyone and sharing thoughts and ideas, and never wanted a session to end.

What worked? I think this was the best conference yet. The sessions I attended were terrific. Great content, effective presentation, got me thinking about what is next. My mind is still spinning!
What didn't work? Wireless access was not reliable for presenters or participants. At the very least, presenters should have reliable access to the Internet. If the conference intends to stay green, then better wireless access is required for participants. Better electrical access also needs to be provided during full day and half day conferences in particular. It was great to be able to walk to the convention center from the hotels.
Loved the Bloggers Cafe concept. Perhaps in Minneapolis the cafe could be broadcasted via podcasts to reach a broader audience.
Hope to participate in the Geek Squad!
I have created a wallwisher for posting reflections @ wallwisher.com/wall/aasl2009
Thanks to all of the wonderful folks I spoke with for sharing their passion, ideas and expertise!