The Association of American Law Schools’ annual conference is happening now in New Orleans. I’m in Iowa, and it’s cold. While I had no idea where my legal education would take me when I entered law school in 2008, my mind was filled inspiring opportunities after seeing what was happening on the tech side of legal education at the 2009 CALI conference. I met a lot of great people last summer, and have stayed in touch with many online. Most of them, and many more progressive and aggressive educators, librarians and technicians are in Louisiana this week. Wish I were there. I’ll be following #aals and #aals2010 on Twitter. Any attendees are invited to send some warm weather, great music, fabulous food, and/or job opportunities my way! :)
Anyone who knows me (and apparently career services-types who read their email newsletters) knows that I got my 1L job through Twitter and this here blog. There a lot of reasons why social media, and Twitter in particular, is good for finding a job. Just last week, I got a DM from one of my online heroes asking if I was looking for a job this summer. That’s a nice surprise when you’ve been kicking yourself, even just a little bit, for saving yourself some grief by deciding not to participate in OCI.
Here are two recent Twitter experiences that made my life easier and, most importantly, made me realize that there are people out there, and they are listening:
- Bluebooking nightmare. After complaining about some inexcusably lame Bluebooking problem I was having, a few lawbrarians (@richards1000, @stephdavidson, @hmorrell) immediately jumped to my rescue on Twitter. That led to a conversation about my love for law librarians (more on that in the recent Legal Geekery podcast, episode 2), and accolades for one of my school’s key librarians, who I then emailed and encouraged to join Twitter. If you want to follow what more law librarians are doing, find links here.
- Babysitting assistance. Last night my niece and nephew spent the night, visiting my daughter. After putting the little ones to bed, I was up with the 11 year-old and a promise that she could use my computer for some online flash games. Problem with that was that I never play online games (although that may change now…). I quickly Googled “circle the cat,” a game my husband is fond of. That entertained for a few minutes, but then I tweeted for help. In just a few minutes, shortened links were pouring in. Here are a few we enjoyed:
I appreciate what Twitter does for me, and I know I’m not alone.
