Today began with the Newcomers' Intro Session and then the Opening Ceremony. We're officially open now!
The
Newcomers' session was helpful, but mostly in a review sort of way.
Information on the program, how the schedule was set up, how best to
make the most of the conference. All very good information, but a
little bit of a review. Still, always good to have reminders.
The
Opening Ceremony was impressive, as opening ceremonies tend to be. The
key speaker was very interesting. Dr. Rob Adam works on the Square
Kilometer Array, or SKA. It's a massive radio satellite array, an
international collaboration aiming to create the most accurate radio
telescope. The dishes are spread in South Africa and in Australia (need
lots of isolated desert for clear reading). So why was he speaking at a
librarianship conference? His work falls more on the Information
Science side of the spectrum. The total area covered by the radio
dishes is the titular square kilometer. Which means that's an awful lot
of data processing. So, his work has some interesting implications for
information science and Big Data.
Besides
the speeches, there was interpretive storytelling, and lots of music.
I'm not much for interpretive storytelling (or poetry readings, so
similar) but I really liked the children's choir who closed the show.
Very dynamic, and good music choices - some more popular stuff. The
lady behind me was singing along to one medley of songs they did, and I
was singing along to Circle of Life (written by a South African,
apparently!).
I
have to say, I like all the music. I know I've heard about it before,
but it really does seem to permeate life here. It's like going to
Memphis, I think, and not hearing blues or jazz.
The
other thing I liked seeing today was how similar we all are, even as
different as we all are. I people-watch, being the little wallflower
that I am. So after I'd taken several pictures of the Marimba players
before the Opening (the picture right above), I was watching the crowd
who was also taking pictures. And in the same crowd of people, were
several in more traditional dress. I.e., the sort of eye-catching dress
that others might stop and take pictures of. In the few minutes I was
watching (and then getting my camera out), I saw lots of sports coats
and similar business casual, a bright pink sari, several different
traditional African outfits (sorry, can't narrow it down more), a
handful of hijab, and an East Asian nun. I think you can see several in
the picture below, all snapping pictures (mostly on their cell phones)
of something that's new and different to them. I like that about big
travel like this - the world is both very big and very small all at the
same time.
No comments:
Post a Comment