LibraryTechtonics

Bentley College - The Bentley Conference Center
LaCava Building, Third Floor, 175 Forest Street, Waltham, MA 02452

This is where I am today. I bartered my time as a volunteer for free registration, which meant that my library didn’t need to pay for it, but I did get time off from work to come, since it applies to my job, which is awesome.

You can view the entire schedule online, but this is how my schedule shakes out for the day:

9:15-10am:  Web Apps: The Collision of Design and Business - Jared Spool

10-11am: Volunteer at the registration desk

11am-12pm: Floater volunteer, just make sure everyone’s happy, well, and working properly

12-12:30pm: Lunch

12:30-1pm: Registration desk

1-1:45pm: Winning the Case for Usability-Tonya Price

2-2:45pm: Innovative Interfaces–Transforming Data Into Insight-Eva Kaniasty

3-3:45pm: Metaverses & User Experience-Stephen Denning

4-4:45pm: Moving Up the Usability Food Chain: A Cross-Disciplinary Holistic Viewpoint-Alex Conn

5-6pm:  Registration desk

6-7pm: Cocktail hour & networking

Should make for some very interesting postage later, when I have more time to iron out the wrinkled notes in my WordPress drafts.

There are several sessions that, upon reviewing the schedule, I decided I really wanted to go to because of their applicability to my job, and especially the project of redesigning the library’s web site.  However, upon reviewing the spiral-bound presentations book (which is brilliant, by the way), I decided on the better way to pick the sessions I would go to: sessions where the slides with the *least* text.  I want to see a presentation, and if you’re slides have so much text on them, what’s the point in going when I can just read your slides?

If you work for a library or other non-profit in Massachusetts, and you wouldn’t mind 3-15 FREE extra hands on deck to help you get things done, consider submitting a proposal to the new Commonwealth Corp program:

The mission of the Commonwealth Corps is to engage Massachusetts residents of all ages and backgrounds in direct service to rebuild communities and address unmet community needs. The Corps will provide opportunities for skill building and leadership development and will encourage and enhance a lifelong civic vocation for Corps members. Corps members will provide direct service, build capacity, and recruit, organize and mobilize additional volunteers, thus building a grassroots movement of volunteers dedicated to service.

Nonprofit organizations and public entities are encouraged to apply to become Corps sponsors and host a team of 3 to 15 Corps members. The RFP provides Commonwealth Corps sponsoring organizations with the flexibility to structure service opportunities for full-time, part-time and flex-time members based on an annual service commitment.

A deadline for applications is not posted, but I’m guessing “the sooner, the better” is a good guideline to follow. There will be a series of free presentations to cover the program and application process in detail, as well as to offer an opportunity for questions. See the site for the schedule and how to register.

My husband just shared this with me, so I, naturally, had to share with you.

Dear Reader Takeaways:

1. Don’t treat social networking like collecting business cards. Seriously, Social != (does not equal) Business [sometimes, maybe, but certainly not all the time].
2. Social networking is a [slightly] obnoxious term. Most hoity toity terms for things are, indeed, hoity toity. Not taking them so seriously is healthier.
3. LJ is full of “self-indulgent maxi-musings.” I agree, and it’s just not my scene, which is a big part of why I’ve all but abandoned it. It’s got it’s own culture, see?
4. Sometimes it’s better to be out rescuing a baby from a burning submarine than being online all the freakin’ time (I say, typing away at midnight on a Saturday… hey! Whatever, see, cuz I was out last night for shabu shabu then 2 hours of mead sampling, at work all day today, and I’m going to a craft/artist market tomorrow with Yelpers and then craft night with a whole other set of friends, so it’s my social night off this weekend!). Go out, get some sun, and talk to real people.
5. Random hash brown batches make interesting tweets. Especially to nomPr0n freaks like me.

At the Boston Media Makers meeting in April, Steve Garfield, BMM master extraordinaire, mentioned that they were hoping to expand things a bit, offering possibly two more meetings a month: a presentation sort of deal (no vendor pitch, just talkin’), and one that serves as training (media making), like, say using a Nokia N95 to broadcast on Qik or something.

The first ever Boston Media Makers training session, dubbed a “Tech Tonic,” is coming up later this month, and it’s free!

Boston Media Makers presents Media Tech Tonic #1
What: Blogging with WordPress: A Crash Course
Where: Massachusetts College of Art and Design
When: Wednesday, May 21, 2008, 6pm - 9pm
Instructor: David Tames
Fee: Free and open to the public
Optional: Bring a laptop w/ wireless card
RSVP: david@kino-eye.com

Building and Room TBA (RSVP via email and you’ll be sent the room and location)

Agenda:
1. Setting up a WordPress blog
2. Basic care and feeding
3. Using a custom template and tinkering with a custom template
4. Questions and Answers
5. Resources for further study

If you’re in the Boston Metro area, and you’ve always wanted to know how to do this, sign up, since this is a FREE workshop taught by a super guy.

Other brief notes from the April meeting:

Steve is also pitching the idea of gutting this little internet cafe attached to the Apple store in downtown Boston and making it into a new social media meeting space… a trend that’s happening all over the world. I kinda think libraries should do this, too. I kinda think libraries are ideal spaces for this, if for no other reason than to continually prove to teens that we’re relevant, and give the 25-38 year old unpatrons a reason to come to the library.

Gravityland: apparently, episode 6 was written entirely by viewers! Nice.

Jason Praymus talked about Open Media Boston, which sounds super cool, and like a great, well-managed application of the future of user-generated content:

Open Media Boston is an online media outlet dedicated to regularly publishing fair and accurate news, views, arts, and entertainment content in text, image, audio and video formats from a progressive political perspective for the Boston, Massachusetts, USA metropolitan area. We are an audience-centered publication that will constantly solicit submissions and commentary from the general public using the latest social media technology while maintaining professional journalistic standards at all times. We will always strive to balance open participation with editorial control in the service of this goal.

Steve will be happy to know that, attached to this post, is the *super long* recording that I made of the April BMM with my snazzy new Zoom H2, acquired a PLA in March. It’s a whole different ballgame from a cutie little Olympus D-70 pocket digital recorder, and I’m still feeling out it’s maximum potential. Feel free to listen to (or even skim) the Twitter-style madness of one of our breakfasts!

 

 Boston Media Makers 4/6/2008 [1:46:31m]: Play Now | Play in Popup | Download (34)

Twitter started as people just sharing. Twitter users love the simplicity of the app (which is why there wasn’t a mass exodus to the feature-rich Jaiku), but often want for more in terms of features (grouping people, following memes, tags).  At the same time, and as with anything web and popular, people specializing in The Sell have realized that there’s massive amounts of useful data to farm for money.  Slowly over time, people have been taking advantage of the Twitter API (Application Program Interface) to build external things that do what they want Twitter to do, the way they want Twitter to do it.

I found this post from an online marketing blog by way of a new mutual follower on Twitter, and gave it a quick read.  The interesting angle of the post is getting information you need to help your business, and how you may be able to outsmart your competition by using the tools intelligently.  It strikes me as treading that fine line of using Twitter for evil… but marketing isn’t always bad, and libraries could use some help with that.  Plus, these tools have non-library, non-marketing applications.

Of the five tools outlined, I’m really interested in:

• Summize:   May be the Twitter search people have been looking for.  I do love Twemes (I included it in the interesting experiment with hashtags for the PLA Blog during the national conference), Summize doesn’t require any tagging, it just searches tweets.  The advanced search is Google-esque, including options to find tweets with links, positive/negative tones, questions, and more.  Something exciting to play with.  Heck, I might start searching proactively for questions and answering them.
• Twitt(url)y:  All about tracking URL-based memes without needing to follow “the right people” on Twitter.  The most tweeted sites are at the top, each listing includes the popular link and recent tweets.  See what the Twitterati are reading and talking about, catch memes faster, learn about new things sooner, especially if your following group tends to be a bit… insular.
• Twistori:  Reminds you of the humanity of most of Twitter (you know, the part that isn’t trying to sell you something as of late).  Totally anonymous — unless you’re like Chris Brogan (nice new brand, btw, totally you) and follow so many people that you might recognize some of this stuff ;D — Twistori grabs data from Summize and lists out tweets that include “I love/hate/think/feel/believe/wish” statements and scrolls the new posts one by one on the screen.

Other things of note I’ve found in my travels:

• Twitter Answers: Um, why didn’t librarians build this?  Are we so obsessed with how broken our catalogs are that we’re missing the easy stuff like this?  If you’re a librarian playing around on Twitter Answers, do let me know.  It’s a sort of Twitter MetaFilter, built by Mosio, a service that allows people to text message a question and get answers from “real people” (where were librarians for this, too?).  Granted, when I work the Information Desk at my library, I tweet that I’m taking questions, and the answers I send out count towards my stats, and I know a few other librarians, like self-proclaimed guerilla librarian Connie Crosby, who do also.  But this is a whole application answering questions where people are.  I don’t have an account yet (I haven’t had time), but I’ll get on that soon, likely.  Librarians should consider this a form of outreach to let people know that librarians can answer questions like this.
• My Tweeple: Another mutual follower, Shannon Whitley, is working on one of a few new whitelist/blacklist apps for Twitter, and I kinda like this one.  When you’re receiving 10-50 new follower notifications a day, it can get quite unruly trying to figure out who everyone is.  Since most Twitter spammers pick up names from other large Following lists, it’s helpful to block spammers, but knowing who the spammers are is the trick.  My Tweeple helps with that.

It’s a struggle, keeping Twitter simple, and yet adding the features everyone craves.  Just take a look at the Twitter Fan Wiki, and you’ll see all the informational ruckus such an elegantly simple yet wonky system has created.  And this isn’t even touching the Twitter Packs concept (the online marketing post mentions sites that do the same “figure out who to follow” stuff mechanically), it’s a whole other ball of wax!