LSW a year old. Twitter conversation about ALA and everyone’s broke and we can’t participate in ALA. We should make our own ALA that would be free. LSW was born in PBwiki and then meebo!

Josh Neff does not mind being upstaged by porn.

Steve Lawson: LSW is a conference every day!
membership is diverse and interesting

Rikhei: personal and professional support.
Steve: two sets of colleagues. Laura in Wy has fewer people around her and can get CSS help in LSW.
R: it’s been successful because there are low expectations

A rickroll interlude

Steve: hey we’ve got this neat group wouldn’t be a great presentation. Clay Shirkey book- here’s a nice community. Our premise is “show up and have an interesting conversation” The tool has a different dynamic. You have to be there. If you show up good things might happen. LSW: we’ll never make you go to Anaheim.

Josh: you have to show up and engage with us, but if you do, we’ll play. You can show up in the LSW room and decide you hate them and leave and it’s okay. If you’re on an ALA committee and you don’t get along with your group, you’re stuck. It’s not really a viable alternative to ALA, it’s a group of people blowing off steam.

Steve: it doesn’t have to be us, it could be a different group. people might not like the swearing and casualness of LSW- it’s more like spending time with your coworkers at a bar then at the reference desk.

Josh: because all of these tools are so easily created if someone wanted to come in and talk about hookers and blow, another room/blog/wiki can be opened until the spammers go away.

What if it got too big?

R: there’s never any more than 20 or 25 people in the chat room, but even if there were more, that would be okay
J:  it’s like the Internet in miniature- if it got unwieldy, people would form groups

J: it’s like a 24-7 unconference. whoever shows up are the right people.

I lost my internet connection and didn’t get to blog the second group, who were infodoodad and very good.