Rikhei Harris asks some good questions about conference attendance in her post Computers in Libraries: some initial reflections. As she points out, she’s picking up a bit on what Ryan Deschamps was getting at in November when he wrote The Ethics of Conference Attendance in a Networked World. Is it ethical to spend your library’s money and time on attending national conferences when the two main purposes of those conferences–learning new things and creating and maintaining a professional network–can be done online all the time at virtually no cost? And what does it mean to “bring something back” from a conference these days?

Let’s get another question out of the way first: Rikhei asks “was it right for me to have so much fun at Computers in Libraries?” Yes. It was right. Information Today did not invent fun. I’m sure Cutter and Dui and all those dudes had fun back in the day when they got together to talk about libraries. Plus, one assumes it is OK for librarians to go out and have fun during our normal work week as long as we make it in to work bright-eyed and bushy-tailed the next day. So, assuming that you aren’t so hung over you can’t make it to the morning sessions the next day, I think fun is nobody’s business but your own. (Note, though, that when I pointed out this photo to my boss, she said it looked like I was having “too much fun.” I’m sure she was joking.)

The fun also gets to the question of “what am I bringing back?” There is one thing you are sure to bring back from every conference: yourself. Did the conference make you more excited, more engaged with the problems of your library, more ready to tackle the next project or challenge? Then I’d say that you brought something valuable back. Like Rikhei or Jenica Rogers-Urbanek, I didn’t come home with a long list of things that were brand new to me, or that I want to immediately try and implement in my library. But I did hear some new details, see some new sites, hear some points of view that I hadn’t heard before. That’s a little hard to quantify, but I think it will pay off in the long run.

I still think there is a value in meeting people face-to-face. Yes, I get most of my professional networking done on Twitter and in the Library Society of the World chatroom these days (which probably sounds kind of like Clay Shirky’s “we get our Thursdays from a banana” to many librarians), and yes, my CIL presentation was about professional networking online. But getting in a room with those people deepens the bonds you form online and expands the network. I met many people at CIL this year who I knew of, but had never communicated with directly before. You can always expand your professional/social graph.

Lastly, what do Rikhei, Jenica, Ryan, and I all have in common? We presented at Computers in Libraries (and Jenica blogged the heck out of it). This is not to say that we have nothing to learn anymore, just to point out that we contributed to what all those other librarians are “bringing home.” I’m thinking also of what Dorothea Salo is getting at in her post Single spray and steady stream: many librarians don’t do this keeping current and networking thing every day. Many librarians go to the conference and get their learn on once or twice a year, and we are doing something important for the profession (if, admittedly, not for our “home” libraries) when we put together good presentations and deliver them in person at these conferences. Someone has to deliver Ronco Spray-On Professional Development, and if we can do it and have fun at the same time, so much the better.