by Brent Mai, SLA President 2012

The Future Ready 365 Blog has been an outstanding success!! The vision that Cindy Romaine, 2011 SLA President, had for this endeavor was planted more than a year ago. It was carefully tended and nourished by Cindy and her team (led by a couple of indomitable ladies – Meryl Cole & Michelle Mayes), and it blossomed a thousand fold throughout the year. She brought together leading thinkers on the spirit of being Future Ready, not only from within our profession but from disparate corners of the information-seeking world. Both Cindy and I, and perhaps others, have borrowed generously from the marvelous contributions when making our presentations to colleagues worldwide in 2011. Thanks, Cindy!

Cindy’s presidential theme of Future Ready definitely inspired what I chose for the 2012 presidential theme: Future Now. As I read the daily blog posts, it became evident that in many respects, the Future Ready concepts being postulated were already underway, and if we were going to be truly prepared, we needed to be thinking “in the future” already. And how can we best be prepared for this future, which is already here? We’ve got to be agile – nimble, quick to adjust to new forces, new ideas, and new solutions. So I added a subtext to the theme – Future Now: Operation Agility.

The momentum generated by the Future Ready blog must not be allowed to wane. At a brainstorming session I had with the SLA staff in December, we began to think about how to best make use of the inspiring concepts generated by the blog. It will be a challenge to keep them alive and fresh in the minds of SLA’s Future Ready members. Cindy has accepted this challenge as her first task as SLA’s Past-President in 2012. Thanks again, Cindy!!

Brent Mai is University Librarian at Concordia University in Portland, Oregon, and 2012 SLA President.