Leaving my comfort zone

I checked on the Library Association of Ireland website for upcoming conferences and found the LAI Public Libraries Section Annual Conference which is being held November 11^th to 13^th in Cork. We are lucky enough to have an annual budget for training and my line manager is always agreeable to staff attending training workshops/conferences. There are good public transport links to Cork and seen as usually one or two members of staff attend the annual conference there is always sufficient staff to cover the library desk. The theme for this year’s conference is ‘Opportunities For All’ and has a very varied line up with talks about; the library and arts funding, the work of the library and the online cultural archive and will conclude with a ‘My life in Books Panel’ where authors discuss their favourite books. So it promises to be an enjoyable experience, the thoughts of attending a conference alone is slightly alarming but even if I only interact with a few others and make some new contacts it will have been worth the fear. I do enjoy interacting with staff from other libraries and ‘borrowing’ ideas to use in my own library but this usually happen in cyber space and not in the flesh, but I suppose I have to get out of my comfort zone at some stage.