A Passion For ‘Puters

Updates
I’ve finally gotten around to posting links to the last couple of presentations I’ve done on my Presentations page, as well as the latest information about the Publications I’ve put out (a link to purchase the Library Mashups book and a tentative publishing date for the Twitter/Friendfeed book). Also, I’ve updated the Raves and Reviews page with a new section called Awards. I found out on Friday that I’d won an Honorable Mention in the 78th Annual Writer’s Digest Awards in the Magazine Feature Article category. I’m not sure how prestigious that really is – I’m not among the top 100 listed winners in the category on the Writer’s Digest site, but the letter that accompanied the award certificate said that, “your success in the face of such formidable competition speaks highly of your writing talent”, so I suppose it is worth something…
Cache Clearing
– Google Wave – I’ve got an account and have been using it to conduct extended group IM-like chats with people and to follow the Real-Time Web Summit that happened in Mountain View, CA (Google’s backyard…) last week. The use of the conference wave was one of my favorite uses of Wave so far. Lots of great information at my fingertips!!!
–Drupal – I’m still in the process of working out the kinks in the new MRRL site, but it should be available for “sneak peeks” by the middle of November – it’s going live on the 17th of November. I’ll be posting more about my adventures with Drupal, but lets just say that I still have most of my hair… not quite all, but most. And, if anyone has a lead on a kick-ass editor that won’t eat my PHP code or re-write my content folk’s stuff at random, but will still give some help to those who are HTML-challenged, I’d appreciate it. That’s where most of my hair is going right now – crazy editors that either do too much or to little.

David Weinberger, of the Berkman Center for Internet and Society at Harvard, provided our Saturday morning keynote address. He’s the author, by the way, of the Cluetrain Manifesto, which I posted about on the 10th anniversary of that publication on this very blog.
He’s going to discuss what happens with knowledge in this age of abundance. The abundance (1 trillion pages on the web) would have required a mobilization on the order of several world wars – but we did it in our spare time. The age of information (which we are leaving) was about reducing info so that we could control it. Now, the age of the web (?) is about LOTS of information and abundance.
What knowledge was: grew up in a time of scarcity 1) only one knowldege 2) same for everyone 3) binary – at most one can be right 4) it’s simple 5) doesn’t matter who says it – if it’s true, it’s true 6) it’s scarce (most things are opinions) 7) knowledge is settled ordered and orderly.
“our view of what knowledge is is influenced by the media we use to contain it”
Everything going digital changes our tools and changes the way we think.
The authority of knowledge
We create experts who are “expert” in their small chunk of the world – we can ask the expert and then *stop* looking for info – you’ve got the knowledge. Paper (books) is also a stopping point (even footnotes are difficult to follow) and non-transparent.
From disconnected media – to hyperlinks which are transparent and definitely not stopping places.
The new knowledge – a network of differences. The smartest person in the room is not the “sage on the stage”, but rather the room in total. The network of people is smarter than any one.
How networked knowledge can make us stupider

• can’t find info – no formal distinction between metadata (what you know) and data (what you are looking for); makes things hard to find – the amount of data/metadata is always going to outrun our ability to manage it; good enough, however, is good enough. Most questions are more like “which hotel is best in Silicon Valley”, fewer are like “what is the atomic weight of Silicon” – a factual, one answer question.
• needed skills make digital divide worse – even as you scale access, if you don’t scale the skills, you are doing nothing – maybe making it worse.
• only find what we agree with – we stay within our comfort zones (We “flock it all up”). Most conversation is not about changing minds – and very few do. “It’s not a flaw in the system that we have an echo chamber in politics – it is the system. It’s how the system works”.
• makes us lazy – we can see the argument (Wikipedia’s talk page), but we don’t bother to look at it

The architecture of morality and the architecture of a hyperlinked world are exactly the same. Hyperlinks allow us to link to others and discover their views of the world.
Compassion and curiosity are our bulwarks
Questions
A general theory of love was recommended as a book that would complement this keynote well.
another questioner asked if we should be pushing students to go farther than the “good enough” Google search; as librarians, we are instructing them in what is “good enough” for their discipline & needs as well as expanding their view to consider what they otherwise wouldn’t have.

Viking Village-online learning commons (western’s online forum). Andy Peterson started off with a tour of Viking Village. Lots of personalization stuff, profiles, links to student blogs, galleries of media, creative writing, etc. I may not be able to do a great job of this, though, because she is occasionally talking so fast that I can’t quite follow.. Oh! She’s discussing Drupal and how to use it to create communities online. Very useful for me!!!
Quick discussion of LL2.0 programs. If you don’t know what this is 1)why the hell are you reading my blog? and 2) check the April 07 issue of Library Journal for my article on our LL2.0 program.
Now for their Drupal experience – I’m all ears!!! She suggests using the WYSIWIG editor, which makes installing whatever editor you want easier. She explained taxonomy menu very well, too, as well as taxonomy filter. Sort of odd for a “creating communities that people will come to” session, but useful, nonetheless.
14 days to have your say: ideas posted online for voting and discussion at Andy’s institution. Ok – now I get why she’s spending so much time on Drupal – she has done amazing things to create community with Drupal – it wasn’t as obvious with the staff web, but this 14 days project makes it crystal clear – Drupal has some excellent community features!
Community – Viking Village – used students; gave assignments to “seed” the forums and such with content to give people how to use the site; collaboration is critical
Advice:

• educate, empower and involve your staff at all levels
• and way more, but she is still talking a bit fast…

Regan Harper is presenting on converting face-to-face training into a web-based environment. The idea is to take face2face training that we give for LITA and adapt it for online environments.

• 2 tips fof online – 1)give less of it & 2) organize into small units
• planning – is the topic good for online? synchronous or asynchronous? what do I need to change to make it work?
• breaking into chunks is important – end each session with a complete thought
• make sure attendees know your tech people – put tech support # for the tool up for them, for example
• keep it simple!!!!
• delivery – set ground rules, use appropriate pacing (slow!), appeal to all learning styles
• “be as engaging as you can, without being annoying”
• keep visuals moving – not just animations, but use highlight/pen/pencil tools to add movement to the screen
• ask lots of questions of the audience – keep ‘em involved
• gesticulate – wildly – it will be reflected in your voice – be dramatic

Now that I’ve had my itsy-bitsy laptop for about a month, I’m ready to give you all a full review of it. I love it! Ok, that’s enough, right?
No, alrighty then… The specs for my baby (the Acer Aspire One in sapphire blue) are:

I got the 6 cell battery option, which gives me around 6 to 6 1/2 hours of regular use between charging – which is pretty freakin’ nice! That makes it a touch bigger/heavier than it would be normally, but not so much that it bothers me at all. It’s got a standard keyboard layout with the keys at about 90% of the standard size – so my little hands have no problems and even men with larger hands seem to be able to use it easily. The sapphire blue is gorgeous – but shows fingerprints like nothing I’ve ever seen – I’m constantly wiping the cover down…
It has a quick boot time – under 30 seconds – and is pretty speedy, considering the limited amount of processor in there! The screen is 8.9 inches and it’s fairly small for everyday work (though I end up using it a lot – I only use my desktop setup for writing, and that’s just because I’ve got a dual monitor setup for that one) but absolutely perfect for traveling.
I took the netbook with me to Internet Librarian this year and found that it was just about perfect for carrying around during sessions and such. There were a bunch of folks with these tiny little laptops around, but I still got a bunch of comments about it every time I sat down and fired it up. Helene Blowers has one of the original netbooks – the Asus – and we had to set them down and compare our teeny tiny laptops – you’ll note mine (on the left) is a touch bigger, but not so much as to be really noticeable.

All in all, I love my little tiny laptop and I’m pretty sure that I have found the perfect traveling companion (at least until my phone beefs up and can start to compare with some of the specs I posted above…). For the price ($400.00 at Amazon.com), it just can’t be beat!

Now that I’ve been back from Internet Librarian for a couple of days, I’m ready to write the final overview post for the conference. My big take-aways from this conference were the theme of experience – libraries & librarians providing experiences, not just service – and the absolute utility of Twitter. It seemed like many of the presentations I went to discussed the need for libraries to provide experiences for their patrons, not just books or “customer service”. The obvious presentation was David Lee King’s Designing The Digital Experience, a presentation based on his new book, aptly named “Designing The Digital Experience“. While his presentation was all about the experience, there were other presentations that just touched on the idea – but so many of them did that it stood out to me as a theme for this year.
As for the utility of Twitter – one anecdote comes to mind as the defining moment for the conference. One of my Twitter “tweeps” (twitter + peeps) sent out a tweet announcing $3 margaritas at a local establishment in Monterey. Within 20 minutes there were at least 20-25 people wandering in saying that they had heard that there were cheap drinks available (and yes, I was one of them…). One of our keynote speakers, Harold Rheingold – author of “Smart Mobs” – spent some time discussing the rise of groups of people who congregate where ever the tweet, text message or other “update” message says their friends are. This was definitely a case of a smart mob of librarians getting together for excellent conversation over so-so margaritas.
Finally, I did spend a good number of bytes complaining about the wireless access at IL 2008 this year. I stand behind that – I didn’t get a really good wireless signal until the last half of the last day of the conference. On the other hand, this year’s conference included a “blogger’s row” of tables set up at the front and back of every room. They were a really good idea (though they would have been more useful if we’d have had wireless access…) and something that I’d like to see at more conferences. The conference, in general, was useful and – as always – the bar/restaraunt/hallway conversations were among the most useful parts of the conference – because of the quality folks that attend this quality conference!

It’s not enough to just create an account anymore, and it’s not enough to shove your bad services into a new space. He’ll talk about new ways of planning & implementing things today. Why use emerging tech? Outreach & service – we need to get away from designing for the user and start designing by the user. How do we approach new ideas? Planning approach – takes too long, jump through hoops, eventual success or failure – slow! Committee approach – take an idea and destroy it.
Association professionals through the ages video from YouTube – very funny!
The evolving library – where we are headed – try, assess, reflect, repeat ad victorium.
Action steps:
• Try – Yoda was wrong
• Be fast – try to do it within 3 months
• Be human – be real, be patient with yourself
• Don’t over-plan
• Assess – assess our relationship with our users and their relationships with our services
• Write assessment into your plans
• Get user feedback – and use it
Write a 3-minute plan – who will coordinate, what are we trying out, when it will be complete, how do we know it will be successful. Be willing to fail – spectacularly! What made your most amazing user experience amazing? Use that information to fix things and improve things
How to gather the tools – surveys, focus groups, user observations (jing), have conversations
How to gather your volunteers – have something to offer, get out of your library, remember that everyone loves to give their opinions, embrace the power of selling out – get some free stuff by doing a bit of advertising, offer swag (pickups at conference)
Implementation – something will go wrong, it’s ok.
Get the boss’ buy-in: data & stories, make it publishable – The Practice of Social Research by Earl R. Babbie is a good book to help you with getting the data into publishable form
Do it half-assed – you need the data and don’t need to wait ‘til its perfect! You can always refine & redo later.
Being user-centric – our users are the center of our universe, but we aren’t the center of theirs…
Be willing to do the work
Evolution will take care of the bad ideas. Create a culture of innovation – be brave and stop the naysayers in your library
Question time:
Talk a bit about how you set up a structure for getting user feedback? They are dealt with in meetings and spread as far as possible, reflected back to the users, and told to everyone who will sit and listen.
How do you deal with people who aren’t coming up with ideas and aren’t forthcoming? Ask ‘em what the hell they are doing if they aren’t coming up with new ideas.
What do you do about haters? Let ‘em hate – that’s why they are called haters, they are out there to hate, let them do that and don’t listen to ‘em.
How do you deal with the librarian who is still working in the libraries of 20 years ago? Expose them to new ideas, telling them what you are doing and what kind of ideas you are being exposed to (audience member said to pair them with new librarians with fresh ideas)
Do you have an opinion on pop-up surveys? No, he tries to stay away from those, finds them annoying – he’d rather people be pulled to a survey than have it pushed on ‘em.
What made his library’s blog so awesome, that everyone wanted to participate? Giving folks freedom will get them excited about the blog – let them go with what they want to write about.

I’ve been looking forward to seeing this particular keynote since I heard danah (this is how she spells it – no caps – even on international capslock day) was going to be here at the conference.
She began her talk by telling us that she wants to talk about what’s going on with different kinds of social media and how to apply it. Web 2.0 – tech crowd sees it as a shift in development/deployment – a change in the way you get information out there. Web 2.0 – business crowd sees it as hope, coming right after the big crash.
Social network sites include: profiles (change from being “an IP address” to a digital body), public articulation of friends (used as social leveraging – getting social acceptance in return for being in the “top 8 friends”), comments – or wall – section (form of social grooming, even when their comments are banal and dull), status updates (peripheral awareness of everything that’s going on around you).
What are people doing on these sites? All kinds of social purposes – gossiping, flirting, making sure people around you are ok – stuff that we used to do because we were allowed to go out in physical public spaces, kids today really don’t have that kind of freedom because of fear.
“If you’re not on MySpace, you don’t exist” – Skyler (16, Chicago)
Properties of social spaces:
• Persistence – what you say sticks around
• Replicability – copy and paste things from one place to another
• Scalability – potential to reach millions with the reality of reaching pretty much nobody, possibility of broadcast but not necessarily the ability
• Searchability – you can make yourself searchable – or not
• Invisible audiences – public articulation of friends is an articulation of their perceived audience
• Collapsed contexts – socializing with different people in different contexts, but in the same place
• Public = Private –
What does this mean? A change in both social and information ecologies. Wikipedia is the most transparent information creation project EVER. Teach our young people how to read the information & histories in Wikipedia – teach them media literacy.
This is an attention economy – what bubbles up isn’t necessarily the best, but what gets the most attention.
3 points where intervention are desperately needed:
• Net Neutrality – all bits are created equal – she is a Comcast customer and she can’t use YouTube at all
• DRM – defectivebydesign.org, runs the risk of killing off the ability for people to interact with text
• Defending Fair Use – it’s only a defense, you have to be sued before it comes into play
Web 2.0 is going to become very mobile – cluster effects aren’t happening because of a lack of mobile standards, we need to get over that.
Technology is radically reshaping public spaces and “public” as we know it.

Cliff started with a quote from the ‘net from someone asking if there is some kind of rental store for books – is this the user or the library failing. Bookswim is competition for us – we don’t trust our own users so we don’t do this. Users are willing to pay for this kind of service. Valdosta, where Cliff works, just did some user testing and found that things that are obvious to us are obviously not obvious to the library’s users. Sex, drugs & disease – gets attention and interest immediately. Beware the super-user ego-hug – really grateful and really heavy users of the library – watch out for assuming that everyone can figure things out just because they have. We also forget about the “out” part of outreach – do more advertising to people who aren’t already in your building – have a conversation with your non-users. Find out why they aren’t using your stuff!
Cliff is talking about teachable moments – I had one of those last night. The security at the karaoke bar was talking about getting a computer soon and being able to find the pictures online – once he got his computer – of us crazy library-types. I told him to get his butt down to the Monterey Public Library and do a Flickr search. Teachable moment!! Next he mentioned that we need to remember to ask our users for how they want to be contacted, etc. Picture of a porcupine with a tube on its head and the caption “utube – ur doin it wrong” got some big laughs.
Talking about user studies – use Jing or something to record their screen.
Kelly started talking about her library’s “Mobile Literacy Vehicle” equipped with laptops and staff to go out to underserved neighborhoods to do programs and such. Their other project is outreach to incarcerated populations – they do have some who come to the library after they’ve served their time. They also do these through virtual outreach – some of the kids have access to computers so they meet there occasionally. They also have an account with OPAL (www.opal-online.org) where they offer information and outreach for their – and other – libraries. They stream some of their programs so that they are available for people even when they are unable to attend. Ustream (www.ustream.tv) helps with that as well. They are also developing an Alternate Reality game to advertise their “one book” program.
Take homes:
• Market the library outside the library
• Find out what your (non)users want and need
• Are you doing it right? Measure and find out
• Involve staff in fundraising efforts of the library
• Develop out of the box partnerships
• Blend the traditional/nontraditional
• Create blogs and sites that are interactive
• Hire non library staff for programs and other perspectives
Question time!
How are they developing their alternative reality game ? It’s still being developed, but they’ll have a blog (written by one of the main characters in the book, To Kill A Mockingbird) that will be the main “starting point” for the game. They’ll have phone numbers that will have messages that will help people get farther into the game. Puzzles and clues will branch out from there.
What kinds of user behaviors did you see during testing? Cliff said that he noticed about 2 minutes of attention, then they’ll skip over to Google
How do you respond to a website that is imposed on you? Valdosta’s library goes wild – within the constraints that the University gives ‘em
What is the best way for a library to learn about their users’ interests? Cliff said that conversations are the best – he pays attention to the patrons and occasionally just sits there and smiles at folks and strikes up conversations with them instead of working and appearing busy at the desk. Kelly gets to play with stuff at her library and that play gets teens and kids interested and
Kelly asked if there are any success stories from folks in the audience.
Susan, an audience member, said that they provide books to kids who are waiting to see their incarcerated parents
Eunice gives away dictionaries (used & picked up a garage sales) to anyone who asks to use the library’s dictionary.

Last night, after a lovely dinner at a very nice French Bistro, I made the fateful decision to go to karaoke at the Mucky Duck. This was fateful because, while it was great fun, I did end up actually doing the singing thing – and there are pictures to document it. Ruth Kneale and I got up there and sang – and danced – to Sir Mix-A-Lot’s classic song, Baby Got Back. It was a lot of fun and we got a lot of good “networking” in, as you are supposed to do at a conference, but it was a late night and made today a somewhat challenging day. I did make it to some of the sessions, and I did wander the Farmer’s Market – a very cool Tuesday night tradition that brings in farmers, vendors and food stands to the 3 blocks leading up to the conference hotel. After that Nikki & I ate dinner and then I went to go see the Shanachie Tour guys (Erik, Jaap and Geert) talk about their work. That was a nice end to the day. I’ll go back and post the notes to the sessions I attended now, but I wanted to let you all know what was going on “around” the sessions – because as anyone will tell you, it’s the hallway/bar/restaurant conversations at a conference that are the most important. [photopress:2962019778_e44a48a964_m.jpg,full,alignleft] (photo by library_chic)