Monday, October 31, 2011

The DALL Experience: SLA Texas Chapter Annual Fall Meeting

On October 28th I and several of my fellow DALL members attended the 2011 SLA Texas Chapter Fall Meeting at SMU's Cox School of Business. For me, it was great to see familiar faces in the legal and specialty field because I have not seen them in a couple years.

Our first presenter was Gilliam M. McCombs, Dean and Director of the Central University Libraries at SMU. She discussed the technological changes and future of libraries in the present and future.


April Kessler and Laura Young of Austin, TX presented tips and guides in utilizing social media applications such as LinkedIn and Twitter to search for job opportunities and career advancement.


August Jackson of Ernst & Young provided an excellent presentation on using the internet to research privately-held companies. Jackson mentioned different information resources, techniques and approaches that would benefit one's information hunt such as strategic planning, choosing the right analytical frameworks, knowing the the kinds of information is commonly sought, the best secondary sources (Privco, Capital IQ, Hoovers & etc.), dissecting a company's website, viewing source codes, and utilizing Google's link operator, legal regulatory filings and understanding the code of ethics as a intelligence researcher.


After our lunch break, we had a session called Speed Daing with Technology Tools and Applications. Seven tables had a session on a particular product that had a unique function such as Google Goggles, an image recoginition mobile app that translates a text in a different language and identify images or paintings instanting. Mailtester allows a user to confirm email addresses and is very useful when conducting business research by tracking down email address for company executives. Flipboard is a digital social magazine app that aggregates web links from social media sites such as LinkedIn, Facebook, and Twitter. The content will be displayed in a magazine format on an iPad. DALL's own Barbara Fullerton of Morningstar, Inc. presented shortcuts on the iPhone such as creating webclips, moving icons, organizing home folders, voice control and more.


Last but certainly not the least was our keynote speaker Jack Plunkett, CEO of Plunkett Research, Ltd and author of The Next Boom. Plunkett discussed occurrances in the previous boom (1982-2007) such as population growth, soaring global trade, growth of the middle class and increased access to credit. Later, Plukett stated the foundations of the Next Boom (Between Now and 2025) in our world will be based on growing population, increased consumerism, less financial debt, advanced technology such as Biotech, Nanotech and Remote Sensors and a rise in the middle class.

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