I’ve alluded to the fact that ALA is doing a lot with gam­ing these days, some of which is hap­pen­ing at our Annual Con­fer­ence (which starts June 27), some of which I’ve helped organize.

The biggest one is the — wait for it — “big” game, “Cal­i­for­nia Dream­ing.” I posted about this on the ALA Mar­gin­a­lia blog so you can get the details there, but I’m thrilled to see that more than 100 peo­ple have already signed up. I think this is going to be a lot of fun, and my only regret is that I won’t get to see all of the clues myself and play. Well, actu­ally my biggest regret is that we don’t have enough prizes to award to the extra teams who have joined. I had high hopes that atten­dees would get into the game, but I didn’t real­ize they would do it so enthu­si­as­ti­cally before we even started. You folks rock.

If you’re attend­ing the con­fer­ence, the game is free to play, and you can sign up all the way through Sun­day if you get inspired as you start see­ing clues around the con­ven­tion cen­ter. Watch for other atten­dees with your team’s color on their badges to iden­tify your team­mates to col­lab­o­rate and win. You can pick up your col­ored sticker at the Cal­i­for­nia Myth Author­ity game HQ in the new Games Pavil­ion on the exhibit floor. I’ll be hang­ing out there when­ever I can given my sched­ule, so if noth­ing else, come by and say hi.

Another mile­stone at Annual will be the first meet­ing of the Games and Gam­ing Mem­ber Inter­est Group (MIG) since it was offi­cially approved at the 2008 Mid­win­ter Meet­ing. There were far more than the 100 sig­na­tures required to start the group, and it’s great to see it form so quickly based on mem­ber inter­est. Dr. Scott Nichol­son is the orga­nizer, and he’ll be con­ven­ing the meet­ing at Annual, which will take place at 10:00 a.m.-noon on Sat­ur­day, June 28, at the Sher­a­ton Park Hotel in Plaza A/B. If you’re at all inter­ested in gam­ing, come to the meet­ing to get an update from our expert panel from the Ver­i­zon Foun­da­tion grant, exchange tips and tricks, hear what oth­ers are doing, and learn more about ALA ini­tia­tives in this area. In fact, we also have a big announce­ment to make at the meet­ing, so there’s even some mys­tery to it.

I’ve also helped orga­nize ALA’s first ever open gam­ing night for all atten­dees, which will rock out on Fri­day, June 27, from 7:30–10:30 p.m. Come play Boom Blox, Dance Dance Rev­o­lu­tion, Mario Kart Wii, Rock Band, and Wii Sports, with no pres­sure. We’ll also have boardgames such as Ham­ster Rolle, Inge­nious, TransAmer­ica, Wits & Wagers, and more. The event is spon­sored by The Ver­i­zon Foun­da­tion, so we’ll even have snacks. Friends, fun, and food — you can’t ask for more than that. We even have some prizes from The Car­toon Net­work, Elec­tronic Arts, and Microsoft to give away for the videogame winners.

The other gaming-related activ­ity I’ll be involved in is run­ning a Dance Dance Rev­o­lu­tion setup dur­ing the Well­ness Fair on the exhibit floor on Sun­day, June 29, from 10:30 a.m.-2:30 p.m. I’m get­ting back into DDR at home (which may be a whole other future post) because it’s such great exer­cise, so if you’ve never had a chance to play and you can’t make it to open gam­ing night, you can come by the Fair to try it for yourself.

That’s just the tip of the ice­berg of what’s going on at Annual around gam­ing, and you can get an overview of the rest of the ses­sions on the Gam­ing News blog.

In addi­tion to all of this fun stuff, here are some other places you can catch me to say hi:

• the Vir­tual Com­mu­ni­ties & Libraries Mem­ber Inter­est Group meet­ing on Sat­ur­day, from 4:00–5:30 p.m. at the Ana­heim Mar­riott in the Mar­quis Ball­room NorthEast
• the Empow­er­ment Con­fer­ence on Sun­day, from 8:00–10:00 a.m., speak­ing with Michael Stephens about tech­nol­ogy trends
• the panel on pri­vacy on Sun­day, from 1:30–3:30 p.m., in Room 201D of the Con­ven­tion Cen­ter, which I’ll blog more about later this week (I hope to have Cory Doc­torow sign my Kin­dle at this session)
• the Web Advi­sory Com­mit­tee meet­ing on Mon­day, from 8:30 a.m.-noon, in Room 202B of the Con­ven­tion Center

Those are the high­lights, although I’ll be rac­ing around to other meet­ings and ses­sions, too. I’m look­ing for­ward to another fun-filled, action-packed Annual and hop­ing for a lit­tle down­time here and there to catch up with friends. It’s strange being on the staff side of the con­fer­ence, as I don’t get to hang out as much, but it’s excit­ing being able to help con­nect atten­dees with each other, as well as good con­tent. I hope to see you there.