The ALA Annual Conference will soon begin, and an event I always go to when I'm at the conference is the LITA Top Tech Trends panel discussion. It is usually in the same time slot: Sunday, 1:30-3:00, just prior to the LITA Awards Reception and President's Program. Typically what happens is that each panelist has a short period of time to talk about the top trends in library and information technology that they believe to be the most important, then we throw it open for questions and discussion with the audience. It's usually an interesting and provocative session.

I'm particularly pleased to have these colleagues join the panel this year:

John Blyberg
Karen Coombs
Meredith Farkas
Jeremy Frumkin

The LITA Blog has short bios of our new experts. We would have added another woman to the panel, thus moving closer to gender parity, but Dorothea Salo declined.

Due to schedule conflicts, etc., we will unfortunately be a relatively small panel this year, but some of those who can't make it are posting their trends, such as Meredith Farkas. We should nonetheless have an interesting time, with probably more time for audience participation. I hope to see you there!

Whenever we discuss who we should invite to join the panel, we inevitably air some of our own insecurities about being deemed an "expert". I doubt that anyone on the panel feels like an "expert". Rather, we are mostly just librarians who read widely, are known for having opinions, and are reasonably effective at communicating those opinions. Prediction is a perilous sport, as I've discussed in a recent Library Journal column.

I'm fond of saying that only fools and geniuses predict the future. I try to avoid making predictions for just that reason -- it's better to allow people to imagine me a fool than to remove all doubt. So mostly what you'll hear from Top Tech Trends panelists (notice how I avoided the label "expert"?) is our sense of what's happening now, or in the very near term, and it's potential challenges and opportunities for libraries. In my book, that's still plenty.