The rest of the InMagic interview has been posted. Find out all about what I think about social networks, the challenges of library social stuff and more!
Category: presentations
The folks over at InMagic contacted me a couple of weeks ago about a new series they are doing on folks who deal with information in some way or another. The first part of the interview (if you all hadn’t noticed by now – I’m a wordy wench and they had to split the interview into two parts to keep from overwhelming everyone…) is up now at http://inmagicinc.blogspot.com/2008/11/our-inaugural-info-pro-file-robin.html. It’s accompanied by my standard headshot. Cindi Trainor, seriously, I’m going to tackle you at the next conference I see you at and make you work your magic with your camera and make me look pretty in a photo… If you can do that, I’ll owe you more than a couple of refreshing beverages, I’m sure!
Anyway, the interview is up and available if anyone wants to take a look!
Categories
Planning for Success Cookbook
The new MaintainIT cookbook is out – with lots of great advice from librarians and library staff from all over the place (including yours truly…). This one, Planning for Success, covers planning & decision making, communication and partnerships, buying and deploying technology, maintaining & sustaining technology, networking & security and innovation. Go download it – right now! Next time you are at a conference, look for their booth – they often have bunches of these all printed up and available.
When you come to the quotes from me, however, please remember that they were given over the phone, so that I couldn’t see the person I was talking to or get any non-vocal cues for just how stupid I was sounding… I really do sound somewhat better than that in real life (or at least I hope so, since people pay me to talk!). They did a great job of transcribing my statements – word for word – all the silliness and crazy sounding-ness is mine.
Categories
The common discourse and you
I’m currently listening to a book on CD (errr, rather .wma, since I’ve checked it out from my local public library via netLibrary and am listening to it via the DRM-filled magic of Windows Media Player – but that’s another post entirely) called “Way With Words: Writing, Rhetoric, and the Art of Persuasion” that brought up an interesting point in the 4th lecture on Audience. The professor, Michael Drout, used the term “common discourse” to explain why you should go beyond knowing who your audience is and actually understand what the common culture of the audience. He used magazine articles as an example – read the magazine and understand what type of language is used (jargon; plain English; first, second or third person; etc.) and what conventions the audience expects. Since you can’t know who exactly will be in your audience, the next best thing would be to cater to what they expect from you. This comes on the heels of a post by Aaron Schmidt, of the Walking Paper blog that gives tips for being a good presenter. Michael Stephens saw that post and pointed to his own collection of tips for presenting at Tame The Web.
All of these things came together for me this morning in a sort of synthesis of information – which I’m going to share with you. Dr. Drout was referring to audience as a writer or speaker, Aaron and Michael were talking about speaking and presenting and this blog tends to talk about (when it’s not overtaken by conference posts) web sites and web site design. All of these creative endeavors require that you take into account your “audience” – but none of them have a well-defined audience at all. Anyone can read a magazine article, show up for a presentation or visit a web site. You may have a vague idea of the type of people who will show up (librarians interested in webby 2.0 stuff, such as the last conference I attended), but even within a fairly limited audience range, you will find vast differences in technological abilities, interests and understanding. Because of this difference, “writing for your audience” becomes pretty much useless advice.
Instead of writing for a particular audience type, check out the audience’s expectations via the common discourse. Use Slideshare to see what kinds of presentations were given at the last conference at which you are speaking; read a back issue or two of a magazine for which you want to write; visit similar or competing web sites that do much the same thing as the web site you are about to design/write copy for/etc. This will require a bit more work on our part as content creators, but it will – hopefully – improve the effects our words/presentations/sites have on our audience – and that’s the point of doing all this writing/presenting/web site creating, right?
Delicious.com/mamamusings/il08
Liz sees libraries moving to being just “behind a screen†– we need to embrace the tangible as well as the virtual. “social proprioception†– term that Clive Thompson used (Liz loves his skills as a tech journalist) in regards to Twitter – it’s the general sense we have of ourselves in the world. Twitter, Facebook statuses, etc. do this for us. Location is important because we still care where things are – tangible stuff is still important to us. She then talked about ambient information (much of the same stuff that Michael Porter talked about yesterday) and said that this background info helps us to keep track of information around us – not necessarily in the forefront of our attention, but keeping us aware. Home Joule from ambient devices – it’s all cool. Avialabot (availabot.com) it falls over when your buddies IM status becomes unavailable and stand up again when they come back. She showed video and it was hysterically funny. She continued the ambient, but tangible, gadgets with a Chumby.
Nebaztag – smart rabbit that can keep track of your stuff and talks to you, glows, and is way cool. Next came the mir:ror – an RFID tag reader with an USB interface. It does specific tasks when it encounters an RFID tag – and they sell stickers with RFID tech embedded within it. “give powers to your objectsâ€. Next is botanicalls – stick the sensors in a plant and it will Tweet you when they need watering and thank you after it’s done. Check the “pothos†twitter account – 441 followers getting updates about that plant. The Arduino is an USB circuit board that is open source, programmable and comes with a community to support – lets you build your own *stuff*. It can sense humidity (used in the botanicalls above), light levels, etc.
She then showed us the Make: and Craft: – 2 magazines that all libraries should be subscribing to. She showed ravelry.com – a knitting social networking site – and etsy.com which is a marketplace for handmade stuff. She next went to Moo cards – tangible representations of our Flickr/websites/other web stuff. Lulu – self-publishing, create book portfolios of websites you have done for an interview.
Social hardware – little, travel-sized power strips – social in a tangible way, not necessarily a social way. Libraries can play a role in bringing people together in a geolocal way around tangible objects.
She finished up with a couple of library cafes and the fact that a welcoming, physical space that is technologically enabled (wifi,etc.) and social –these are popular spaces!
http://www.tinyurl.com/ILwhatshot
Readers – not much new – Feedly, changes the Google reader experience – enhances, no real “new stuffâ€. Allows tweeting directly from the reader. Firefox introduced Snowl and it really failed.
Google reader is becoming more popular – he went through some of the features including the Mobile and Most Obscure features in the Trends. Searching feeds is cool – Cohen thinks that Google should get into searching because they are doing a good job with searching through your feeds
What’s going on with RSS these days? Lifestreaming (FriendFeed & Tumblr) – Tumblr’s features allow you to push the info to an URL that you own.
RSS Tools:
• Feed Sidebar in Firefox
• Libworm
• Techmeme
• YouTube – search YouTube http://www.youtube.com/rss/search/*term*.rss
• Twitter Search
• Open Congress – seach by person, bill, issue or whatever and get updates every time something happens
• Justia Dockets
• Justia Case Alerts
• Ebay – 3rd party tool – rssauction.com
• Delicious Tags
• E-Lis
• Google News, Blogs
• Flickr Tags
Page2RSS – get RSS feed of changes for any page – whether they have a feed or not. [ed note – this going into Pipes would make things really easy – no more scraping for data yourself!]
Update Scanner – scans for updates (Firefox extension) on any page and highlights the changes
Staying current – sites he uses to stay current – check the link above
Know who your FOL’s are and do good shit for them.
Showed Firefox extension called ScreenGrab which lets you save part of a page as an image. Next was Cool Iris – lets you open a new browser window easily, next shows invisible-auctions.com
Categories
Petcha Kutcha
I’m not going to be able to take notes about these – the format is 4 people doing 20 slides for 20 seconds each – I’ll just note the topics…
Rebecca Jones – Planning: Passionate about getting from where you are to where you want to be
Stephen Abram – Trendspotting Weak Signals from the future
David Lee King – The Librarian… Is The Product
Nancy Dowd – A Marketing Manifesto: A foundation for planning
Michael started it off with introductions, then Chris introduced himself – they both pimped their webjunction.org and maintainitproject.org sites
Ubiquitous computing – a model of human-computer interaction in which info processing has been thoroughly integrated into everyday objects & activities. Computing happens when and where we need it – enabled by calm tech that just works
64G flash drive was $5469.99 in Oct. of 2006, in July of 08 that same storage was down to $300 and TB hard drives at Best Buy this month are $69.99. Ubiquitous computing in library – RFID tech. eye-fi card is another example of UC (Ubiquitous Computing). Ambient umbrella – wireless connection gives a weather update via the color of the handle. Wow.
Convergence – phones, hardware, software. Android phone is one example. Lederhosen with iPod controls in the pockets – Michael is gonna start wearing more lederhosen, now that he knows how cool they are. Chumby – passive, UC.
SatTV, Slingbox, Apple TV – all pretty much UC. Pico Projector + infrared keyboard + phone pen = UC.
Terminology:
• Ubicomp – Ubiquitous Computing
• Pervasive Computing
• Ambient Intelligence
• The Internet of things
Visions of UC
• Low cost info processing embedded in everyday objects
• Post-PC environment
• Computers should be invisible and unintrusive
• Tech should create calm
• Embedded
• Context Aware
• Personalized
• Adaptive
• Anticipatory
• Happens at the scale of The Body, The Room, The Building – different levels
What trends & tech will power UC
• Cheap info processing
• Cheap memory & storage
• Wireless networking
• Interoperability and open standards
• Universal addressability
• Sensors
• Position awareness
• Power
The above list includes hurdles, too – those are issues that we’ll have to perfect before UC is really *here*.
Spimes (space & time concepts combined into one made-up word)
• Everyday objects have
o Location awareness
o Social awareness
o Time awareness (history)
Examples of calm technology: picture of a scene that pays attention to your email inbox, as email comes in, more people show up in the picture; umbrella that glows to give you the weather report – glowing handle means that you need it; Ambient orb – changes colors based on stock market prices. Examples of location based services: showing specific coupons for restaurants within a block of where you are.
Fabbing
• Digital fabricators
• Rapid prototypers
• 3-D printer
• Desktop manufacturer
Biotelemetry – computers that keep track of your vital signs – picture Chris showed was embedded in the toilet – it does urinalysis on the spot, measures body fat and takes your blood pressure while you are sitting there. Brain wave controlled wheelchairs – cool stuff…
Library applications
• Location-based reference
• Anticipatory reference
• Information therapy
• Emotion mapping of the library
• Community manufacturing center with a 3-D printer
Slides at tinyurl.com/6jrrs2, links at tinyurl.com/5lw9es
Data is from research study done by LRS. First question is, why? ‘cause he’s a web geek – and the fact that there was a lot of great info coming out on blogs and in conferences, however, he wasn’t seeing a lot of “who†was using it – no information on the prevalence of how many are using it. Soon, he’ll get numbers on how successfully we are all using it – but that’s coming in a future study. The study focused on public libraries. Next he talked about the methodology – either survey or observational methods. They decided to use an observational study – actually going to library sites and seeing what they do. They visited 600 sites to conduct the study – lots of time, but perfect response rate, consistent response rates (since they are doing it themselves) and avoiding survey fatigue. There are limitations, as well, however. Hidden technologies were just missed – and the information was a snapshot in time. Both means that they could have missed some tech that was either advertised locally or not present at the time they checked the site. They also couldn’t check intranets for 2.0 tools used.
Sample size was split into 5 population groups (including a special “all Colorado libraries†group). They then had to define just what Library 2.0 was. They used the Wikipedia definition – loosely defined and user-centered change. After that they defined what library 2.0 “tools†were. He then went through the survey process – to make a long story short, they went through a lot of work to create the “pieces of Library 2.0†part.
Pieces of Library 2.0
• Online catalog
• Personalized Library Account
• Blogs/RSS
• Virtual Reference
• Wikis
• Social Networking
• Podcasting
1st point – web/catalog presence – ubiquitous in a 25,000+ pop group, after that it starts to fall off. Under 10,000 pop group had only 73% with a web site. 2nd point – online library cards – many more allow you to log into your library card, fewer allow you to get a library account online. 45% of 100,000+ libraries have online library card signup – surprised the survey takers. 3rd point – blogs/rss feeds – blogs seemed to be different – more in the less than 10,000 pop group than the next 2 groups up the chart. Email & chat reference was also very well represented in the upper ranges, not so much in the under 500,000 people ranges. Social networking isn’t yet into more than a third of any size library group. Under 10,000 libraries – fewer than 2% of those have any social network presence (MySpace, FB or Flickr).
Results – we are still moving forward pretty slowly. Fewer than half of the libraries in the states have anything 2.0. “There are a lot of libraries doing cool things with 2.0 – but it hasn’t reached critical mass yetâ€.
Early adopters scale – 29 point scale that allowed them to identify early adopter libraries. He then started in on characteristics of early adopter libraries. They tend to have 50% more staffing than libraries that don’t do all this stuff. They also have more funding. Audio/Visual collections are much bigger than non-early adopters – Zeth thought that was telling because it shows that they are innovating all over the place. These libraries are also getting more use – visits and circ stats are higher.
2 ratios that didn’t affect the survey – number of books and number of public access computers. The last one, PCs per capita, was *almost* statistically significant, but not quite.
What this tells Zeth – libraries that are successful are choosing to put resources in Web 2.0 technologies. Next step is to see if it helps *make* them more successful.
Questions
PDF of presentation is at lrs.org blog – they are 2/3 of the way done with the print report.
Greg Schwartz – Personal Branding
You don’t own your own identity – personal branding is “stuff you do to present yourself to othersâ€
Tips:
• Have a home base – someplace online that you can point people to – blog, webpage, ClaimID page, etc.
• Own your user name – consider what name you want to use carefully – not necessarily your own name
• Aggregate your lifestream – FriendFeed is a good single place for people to go to find out everything that you are doing.
• Join the conversation – make thoughtful comments, be as much the ‘real you’ as you can
• Follow what others are saying about you – Google alerts, technorati, twitter searches, etc.
• Be Authentic – be real, don’t effect an online persona
Experiences Implementing – Joy Marlow and Sam Davis, Columbus Metropolitan Library
Challenges in integrating 2.0 tools & tech into their websites – selling ideas to administrators and other staff members, our own learning curve, keeping up with new technology, bringing the customer along, being at the mercy of 3rd party vendors, terms of use issues (fair use of photographs, requirements for a linkback for some services, etc.), and unclear strategy. Solutions for those challenges include engaging your staff (learn & play program, based on the LL2.0 program from Helene Blowers), engage your customers (trust your users, listen to what they are saying – CML used a “power tools†page with a blog where they occasionally ask what tools they are using and where they would like to see the library), believe in what you do (be able to show how everyone will benefit because of your idea), and beta/experiment (test things and manage expectations).
They followed up with some tips & tricks to help you get through all of the above issues. Prototyping will help you sell your ideas to admin and staff without having to devote a lot of time. Let your ideas/applications be torn apart – put it out there, let customers use it and get feedback. Do not be afraid to fail – sometimes things don’t work, just take it down and learn from the experience – but at least try.
