Online no more

This is my 730th blip, but my 2-year anniversary fell on Sunday 12th January 2014. I wrote my reflections on 2 years of blipping on the Sunday when I had more time to do so. This practice followed the tradition of my 500th, 365th, 300th, 200th, and (my illegal) 100th blips. Please click forward to the Sunday 12th January entry to see what I had to say :-) Also, if you live in/near Edinburgh and have something to say about your own experience of Blipfoto, please check this post in the forum: Blipfoto Research - we need you!

Late last night I heard that a long-running conference series that began in 1976, and which I attended every year between 1994 and 2011, has closed. There was a time when everyone associated with the information industry knew that London Olympia was the place to be in the first week of December each year to attend Online.

The conference's hey day was in the 1990s when the wider population became aware of the Internet, and the potential of online information to change the way we work and live. I have especially happy memories of the conference in this period because it was then that the organisers liked to employ students as stewards. Over several years I took the final year members of my "Online information services" module on a three day trip to London. For all of them participation at the conference, and the associated trade exhibition, confirmed that their Information Management degree offered many exciting career opportunities. In some cases it changed lives as decisions were made to pursue career interests in particular sectors of the information industry (e.g. publishing, research, financial services, consulting), or ambitions were raised to seek employment beyond Scotland following graduation.

One of the impacts of the announcement of the conference closure is that many friends and former students with whom I spent time at Online have been in touch to share their memories of the event, and to write about its impact on their careers. I plan to write a blog post on the conference series myself over the weekend.

Exercise today: 06:00am loops in a new PB of 28'26" (hurrah!), then sit-ups. I also walked to work and back again in four stages. The outward journey was broken with a visit to Centotre for my regular Friday morning meeting, and the return with a meal at PizzaExpress with Mr hazelh and our friend L.