Caveat Lector

Because I’m perverse that way, I’ll start the London recap with the last day I was there, that being Talk Day.

Well, no, actually, I believe I’ll start the evening before. After we left the Wellcome library, I limped to the King’s Cross underground while David went back to the place we’d been staying to retrieve our suitcase and meet me there. (David is a hero. It isn’t everybody who’ll put on their spouse’s right sock without demur, much less haul heavy suitcases all over London without a break.)

We proceeded to the conference hotel, checked in, and sank gratefully onto a much nicer bed than we’d had for the previous several nights. (I’m a librarian. I can’t pay conference-hotel rates when I’m touristing. Therefore we’d been in the supposedly “dodgy” but certainly less expensive King’s Cross area.) David fell asleep, poor soul, but I couldn’t—I’d been invited to the presenters’ dinner that night, so I rather painfully got myself dressed and met my co-presenters in the hotel lobby.

I can’t tell you where we went, because the place would be appalled at having to admit that they’d allowed some scruffy American librarian blogger inside the front door—that’s how posh it was. I’d fortunately packed a decent burgundy-velvet dress, so I did manage to look halfway reputable, though I couldn’t wear proper shoes owing to the bad knee. It was a lovely meal in a lovely setting, however… and at the end of the evening I felt decidedly intimidated, that I’d gotten into something distinctly above my grade.

This is unusual for me. I’ve spoken to audiences from three to a hundred fifty, and I just don’t get rattled the way some people do. (Mild jitters, yes. Really rattled, no.) But I left that night feeling about three inches tall. For a few moments I contemplated scrapping my preparations and throwing something else together in an all-nighter, but I came to my senses quickly.

David got me dressed and breakfasted the next morning over vociferous protests from the bad knee, and delivered me to the seminar room in time for me to spend much too much time futzing with Keynote before Geoffrey Bilder sailed in to rescue me. I almost had to give the talk without my notes! Could have done it, but wouldn’t have been happy.

It didn’t help my nerves to be on a slate with Allen Renear and Leigh Dodds (who has posted a fine summary of the day that saves me the work of recounting what we all said). These are Certified Smart People, who have gone well beyond any imaginable Smartness Certification to prove over and over again that yes, they really are smart.

Me, I’m just an upstart librarian with a ragtag background and a lot of chutzpah (most days, anyway). Not in their league—but, hell, what could I do? So when Allen wrapped up, I gimped my way to the lectern, popped Nova open, took a deep breath, and launched in, resolved at least not to embarrass them.

The striking thing for me is how well our three presentations fit together, without any prior coordination on our part or Geoffrey’s. All three of us reinforced each other’s presentations without repeating them, and each of us added novelty to the whole. While of course I’m pleased beyond words that attendees responded so well to what I had to say, I don’t see how it could have had such an impact if it hadn’t fit the way it did, and that is owed to Allen and Leigh.

Jason Scott’s after-lunch talk gave me to think hard about Internet-enabled collaboration experiments and what we have yet to learn about making them work. Scott is a funny guy and a sharp speaker; I suspect everyone came out of his talk with different ideas to ponder, there was so much richness there.

I must shamefacedly confess that I skipped out on Ted Nelson’s talk because I was in danger of falling asleep—no shame to the speakers, just an ordinary adrenaline crash. Nelson is of course a hypertext legend, and I’m honored to have met him, however briefly.

David and I dined in, which isn’t what it sounds like—as budget travellers, we’d learned the uses of Tesco Express and Marks and Spencer Simply Food. The previous night’s dinner had been enough posh for me anyhow, as I have strictly limited tolerance for posh. We were about to turn off the telly and go to sleep, since we had to ship out early the next day if we were to catch our 10:30 plane home, when—

—the fire alarm rang. No worthless St. Louis peep this, but a deafening siren. So I struggled into a pair of pants (which is harder than you’d guess when your knee doesn’t want to bend!), grabbed Nova (but, stupidly, not my bag with my passport in it!) and blocked everybody else’s progress down the stairs because I could only go one step at a time.

I was prepared to be out there for the duration, because there did appear to be smoke coming from the roof and I had already seen how hard it was for emergency vehicles to get anywhere in traffic-choked London. But the whole thing was over in half an hour, and I could take the elevator back upstairs without impeding anybody.