VALA 2022 conference is the week after next.
You should go.
So should I.
I’m not.
I attended every one for the last decade, and presented at most. I had to think hard, research, enquire, open myself up to scrutiny, learn to be a designer and work a stage. Bloody good professional development.
My underwear and shoe drawers are richer for the experience… I seem to only buy them when I travel interstate to this kind of event.
I get to see people I know, meet people I didn’t. Force myself into a far more forward and social space than I am comfortable with. (I am still unsure just how to DO a canape event…). Find so very, very many people who think about the same things I spend my work days thinking about, who are motivated to solve the same problems using a similar set of tools and values. Really enjoy introducing two people who I KNOW will be on the same wave length, but don’t know it yet.
There were also satellite events held either side VALA to take advantage of everyone being in town. The Research Support Showcase days. I helped organised several GLAMR unconferences the weekend after some VALAs. Often Australia Preserves, the community around digital preservation in the GLAM sector.
In 2020, as well as those kinds of events, I also spent a day learning about running workshops around helping adults and kids understand how to stay healthy when doing a lot of eSports (A. Adults could chill, try to understand, communicate. Kids could do regular mental health things in the fresh air. Game together. Walk together). I also managed to see complete Harry Potter and Cursed Child production in one night, one of the last times before it shut down for over a year.
I love catching up with people for coffee and brekky and dinner and… for the last four? six? years to go on a whisky crawl and gin crawl with snail and Gareth. Who not only know the beverages. They want to share what they know. Communicate about the subtlety of ingredients and processes and histories. Hearing them talk about it on Twitter was when the FOMO started.
VALA 2020 was the last big event I went to where I remember life feeling normal. Even THEN I had researched P2 masks and had a ten pack with me. Nothing to do with what was around the corner with the pandemic, and everything to do with being an asthmatic flying into one side of the country that was still on fire. I could still buy the masks in Western Australia, although the entire East coast was sold out. I remember one morning thinking it was pretty smoky, so I should probably slip one on…. but NOBODY else was wearing one, so I think it stayed on for about five minutes before social conformity got to me.
I really am totally absolutely flat out at the moment so could not go , but ALSO, I am not sure how I would go with a new VALA right now. Normal is gone. All those wonderful things, replaced with new wonderful things… but I am not sure I would be ready to remake my impressions and memories to fit that just yet.
Maybe I have FOGO? Fear of Getting Out into a newly made world?
Beautifully put Kathryn. FOGO is so real and I’m afeared of becoming even more of a hermit.
I am sure FOGO is real. But I like to think I have reframed my life and in many ways I find a lot of things more convenient online? Ah introvert land!
Yes, thank you for the word for it! 😊. I looked it up in Wikipedia, thinking it was an “Australian” word…. 😀. I try to fight FOMO for things I loved doing, like going to
an outdoor festival. Germany is mainly behaving like there is no pandemic, that makes it harder for me to explore the new world, they still play the old one.
You seem to have missed the obvious FOMV – Fear of Missing VALA 🙂 I feel all the things and I know I need to go. I cannot not go. Whatever VALA is this time is what I will make work for me. So few are going this time and I’d like to think that means I’ll be forced to get to know a bunch of folk I don’t know. It will be scary and exhausting. I like online and participated occasionally in ALIA’s virtual chats – a glass of wine with folk around the country. That flow of personal and professional with familiar and unfamiliar faces.
FOGO! Definitely experiencing that here in the northeast US too. I’m astonished at how many people here are just “over it” and are back to living life without any precautions. Glad to be retired and no pressure to do things I’m uncomfortable with. And, ironic that our first masks purchases were in reaction to the Australian fires of 2019/2020. Last big trip, left Australia days before the world started shutting down. (Glad to see #blogjune lives on!)