Wicked tongues have it that it’s the lack of wireless that’s the reason for the question mark in the title of this conference: AoIR 5.0: Ubiquity?. I found the computer room, after a while, hidden away but with every (working) computer busily being used. I miss the net.
But it was pretty cool that when I found Torill, Lisbeth and Anders, who’d been waiting for me with hordes of Danes, Lilia was there! As she said “Hi, I’m Lilia,” I realised that she must be that Lilia and yelped, “Lilia Efiwhatsit?” And instantly blushed, because how embarrassing not to quite remember her last name. I could have sketched the layout of her blog for her with fair accuracy, but I’ve never before spoken her name.
I arrived late so missed all yesterday’s sessions, but had a great dinner with lots of chatting with Lilia, and with Torill, Anders and Lisbeth who are really among my closest colleagues though they live in Volda, Oslo and Copenhagen and I only see them once or twice a year.
This morning there were so many sessions I skipped them all out of confusion. I bumped into Alex on the way to registration, discovered that though breakfast is officially over at 8.15, you can actually eat until well past nine, and sat munching bacon and working out which of the hundred or so sessions I’d like to attened. Tomorrow’s the most interesting day. There are blog papers all day long, unfortunately at the same time as the social network and community sessions, and one on hypertext by Jenny Sunden and Lisbeth’s on deaths in games. And Nina Wakefield’s giving the keynote, just as she did at ISEA.
I’d better get myself over to the “Discourse Analysis and Uses, Collaborative Writing, Wikis” panel. If I can find it. There was a sign at breakfast with a warning that Arundel 401, where that panel is, is hard to find. Complicated campuses are very difficult to navigate… And it’s started raining. Oh dear.