Yesterday I flew from San Jose, CA to Salt Lake City, UT to Orlando, FL. I'm here in the land of the Big Black Rat for the Wilshire Metadata Conference.
Flying cross country is always an adventure, especially for your digestive system. I'm not sure if the lack of food on airplanes these days is a good thing or not. I flew Delta out here, and they give you no food, except for some granola bars. Oh, and about a tablespoon of raisins (ok, they also give you Oreos and cheesewiz and crackers, but I didn't partake in the effort to save Points). Because I knew I wouldn't get any real food on the plane, I decided to get something to eat while I switched planes.
Somehow I found myself in line at Burger King. Why you ask? Because it was the only place in whole the Salt Lake City airport that had a veggie burger. The cashier was in training, so it took forever to get up to place my order. And of course, I had to order the one item on the menu that had never been ordered before, so he had no idea where to find the little key for it on the cash register. Oh, and I wanted it My Way, so no mayo. Or onions. Or tomato.
Finally he was able to ring me up and I thought I would quickly be on my way. But no. I also managed to completed stump the entire kitchen crew with my order. First, they couldn't find the veggie burgers in the freezer. They had to get the manager (who was helping the new cashier) to find them. Then they somehow burned the first burger in the microwave and had to ask the manager again how to do it. After about 10 minutes, I finally got my burger and salad. It actually wasn't that bad (it's just a Morningstar Farms patty). And I was able to keep well within my Points for the day. Yay.
So far the conference has been interesting. Though everyone is a lot more male, a lot more middle-aged, and a lot more geeky than I thought they would be. I guess the IA Summit really is a lot more unique than I think it is. Everyone who I've talked to and told what I do have been amazed that people actually do what I do. Yes, it really is a matter of same planet, different worlds.
What is cool though is these folks get it. They are really excited about metadata. No, I mean really excited. And I've been to librarian conferences before. Unfortunetaly, these folks aren't thinking about the end user. The one that actually has to use the data in the database. They don't seem to be thinking about interfaces and usability. They build these systems to help other members of IT. But they know how to do some really slick programming. And they know how to get buy in from executives. As in, getting the CIO to mandate that everyone follow the metatagging rules. Can you imagine a web marketing team being able to get that kind of support?
If we can just get these worlds to work together, imagine what we could do. I'm really looking forward to hearing about the other sessions and what people have done.
