Amazing. Who could have a thought that in two years time we would be back in London as keynote of the second day at Internet librarian International. It seems yesterday when we were illegally filming at Internet Librarian International 2006 after buying tickets to the conference. The first time we met Marydee, Dick Kaser, and many others and luckily we were able to persuade them to let us make a video for their website. Our thanks still go out to them.
We have made such good friends since that moment and saw so many inspiring libraries and librarians. We also put the word Shanachie back in many people’s mind, which I particularly think is good.
London 2008 was fun. The first time we laid our hands on the book. Wow what a great job they did at ITI. Artwork looks great and the size makes it the perfect gift for librarians worldwide. Geert’s photos, all in color, look so good. We are proud and after the keynote we had a long line of people waiting for a signed copy of the book. From all over the world came the invitations for a new tour. We will have to think hard where to go after Australia.
New ideas came up after dinner with Michael Stephens and Michael Casey. Well the Beetroot will have to turn into the Meatroot before we come back, but the company is something I would like to be in everyday.
Then after a short night the three Shanachies split up and on to Monterey it is. Geert is flying over Houston, while we fly straight to San Francisco. After a long flight with four ridiculous movies we land and pick up our favorite editor Miss Dempsey. She is amazed by the fact that we did not reserve a car in advance, but in twenty minutes we are well on our way in a new Pontiac to Monterey. It is good to be back in California. The sun is shining and the sights are awesome. We are a little nervous. Last year was such a success. It will be hard to top that. But we have some good ideas and we know we are going to meet with good friends.
It is less than 15 minutes after arrival that we meet with Mr A.Schmidt and his bottle of Belgium beer. The man is evil and about to take us on a Tequila trip. After long hours of traveling and no sleep it takes less than half an hour to kill this baby and after an investigation into how close we can get to the Sea lions without midnight swimming we head home. Kathy is so kind as to wait for Geert, who we see in the morning.
There are a number of sessions we have to do and the first is the gaming session on Sunday.  We manage to get the consoles out in time and have a big crowd showing up. Rockband, Wii sports and DDR is working fine in bringing librarians together. For some it is the first time to play these games and they are really exited.
Geert is falling in for someone and does a great speech on online marketing, moderated by Aaron. Lovely dinners with Jen, John B and many others brought us new ideas, of which we will tell more soon. These conferences are besides a great source of information very important for networking. The keynote was great. Greg Schwartz and Michael Sauers on the couch as guests and Jennifer Johnson through Skype. The interview with the cow in Jamaica about future of libraries was well received. The book signing was fun and the introduction of the game Dark Ink a success. Monterey thanks again for having us. It is a treat and we hope to be back soon. For now it is turning our focus to Australia. In three weeks we will be on our way for three weeks in the outback. From Perth to Brisbane to Sydney to Melbourne. Like we said before the ending starts at the beginning.

Internet Librarian 2008: ShanachieTour from Jaap van de Geer on Vimeo.