American Library Association Conference 2024 Wrap-Up!

by Elise Aiello on Jul 16, 2024

ByWater Solutions, America’s forefront provider of Open Source library technology support, attended the American Library Association (ALA) Annual Conference in San Diego, California. We were thrilled to see so many of our partners, library colleagues, and fellow vendors in attendance!

Many of our partners gave presentations at the conference, and we hosted Real Users, Real Perspectives sessions at our booth with current ByWater partners. Brian Pichman, Head of Support at ByWater Solutions gave a presentation on AI to a standing-room only audience in the exhibit hall. Nate Curulla, CRO at ByWater Solutions, sat on Marshall Breeding's Executive Perspectives panel alongside other leaders in the library technology industry.

Many partners and fellow professionals attended our Annual Party at Fairweather Rooftop bar.

We were also able to record a special episode of Monday Minutes at our Booth.

Real Users, Real Perspectives

We hosted our Real Users, Real Perspectives Session at the booth again where we had several library partners join us to chat about their system, migration, and ByWater Solutions. Aaron Espinosa from Rancho Mirage Library and Observatory, Carol Pham from Los Gatos Public Library, Andrew Mangels and Chip Halvorsen from Westlake Porter Public Library, Daniel Barden from Cuyahoga County Public Library, Chris from Fayetteville, Laverne Mann from Cherry Hill Public Library, and Laurel Moran from the San Diego Law Library all joined us at the booth to share their stories.

Marshall Breeding's Executive Perspectives Panel

Nate Curulla, CRO at ByWater Solutions, sat on Marshall Breeding's Exectuive Perspectives panel.

The topic and questions focused on AI and how vendors will implement them.

Nate's message was passionate and genuine, letting the listeners know ByWater Solutions will work with libraries to listen to their thoughts and implement AI on internal tools first before rolling anything out.

Other panelists included:

• Tom Jacobson, Vice President, Executive Library Advocate and Strategist
  Innovative and Ex Libris, Part of Clarivate
• Mohamed Marwen Meddah,Senior Director of Engineering, BiblioCommons
• Melissa Kulmer, Director of Pre-Sales Solutions, SirsiDynix

Fun Run

We hosted a Fun Run at San Diego Bayfront park on Monday Morning! This was a great way to start the day before the last day of the conference.

ByWater Solutions Annual Party

We hosted our Annual Party at Fairweather Rooftop Bar, and many friends, partners, and fellow vendors came out to celebrate a successful conference!

Monday Minutes

We were able to record a special ALA edition of Monday Minutes at our Booth!

Watch the episode here, and read the blog post here.

The Library is Open Podcast: ALA Wrap-Up with Marshall Breeding

Guess who's back? Back again? Marshall's back! Marshall Breeding of Library Technology Guides is back on the podcast to discuss all the trends and hot topics of ALA 2024, and recap his Executive Perspectives panel (our very own Nathan Curulla was a panelist!). We also compared our step counts at the conference and our favorite AI tools.

Learn more about Marshall's work at librarytechnology.org

Join us at our FREE virtual Unlocking the Future: AI Innovations in Libraries conference! September 16-17, 2024. Learn more here: https://www.airmeet.com/e/9cd10860-38...

Listen to the podcast here: