Al Gore @ SLA

Al Gore addressed the opening general session of the Special Libraries Association annual conference in Denver last night. Since I couldn't be there, here's a round-up of blog posts about the event:

[6/05: edited to add several new accounts]

Ann Perbohner reports that Lexis-Nexis introduced Gore with a presentation visualizing the impact of An Incovenient Truth on published news reports. She also bullet points some highlights of the talk.

Eli Edwards appears to have liveblogged the address, including answers from the Q&A at the end. This is the most thorough report of the event that I've found.

[ETA] J's scratchpad has even more detailed notes and quotes.

Robin Niedorf says he pointed out that getting information isn't a problem; the problem is figuring out how to interpret, organize, and present it.

Tracy Z. Maleef calls him a rockstar, and says the event was "like a librarian revival meeting."

Judith Sweet speculates that librarians have a low humor threshold, due to Gore's ability to get people to laugh at the same jokes, even in the book signing line. She also has paparazzi shots of Gore signing books.

Stephen Leary says that Gore's address wasn't quite what he expected, but he was still impressed.

Chris Zamarelli notes while he included some material on global warming and promoting his new book, the speech was clearly written for the SLA audience. As such, it wasn't perfect, but it was enjoyable.

[ETA] Jane Dysart sums it up as articulate, funny, and compelling.

[ETA] Lyndsay observed a warm atmosphere in the hall; "his stance is very much ours."

Finally, Jill Hurst-Wahl has the social networking angle, noting that social networking sites can help to create the dialogue that Gore emphasized is so important to our collective intake of information.

The consensus is that Gore definitely gets it re: the power of information. He recognizes the importance of our profession in helping to harness that. The audience appreciated that he gave a mostly original speech, and found him humorous and engaging.

I hope there will be video available eventually. Hey Stephen Abram, does SLA have a YouTube account? Don't you think they should?