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LinkedIn is *NOT* Facebook for Grownups

Wednesday, May 7, 2008

I’m hustling to get out of town in three hours for the SOLINET Annual Member Meeting, and I have slides that need updating and tweaking, but I heard something last week I need to nip in the bud.

Linkedin is not a Facebook alternative. Linkedin, for those who do not know, “is an online network of more than 20 million experienced professionals from around the world, representing 150 industries.”

I have an account on Linkedin, and I dutifully update my “network,” approving requests and making sure my profile is up-to-date. But I’m really only on Linkedin just to keep my eye on it.

I am aware that some librarians have proposed that Linkedin is an “alternative” to Facebook. In other words, Linkedin good. Facebook bad. Ok to let librarians and library users on Linkedin. Not ok to let them use Facebook. On the Kubler-Ross social software acceptance scale, for these librarians Linkedin factors in at the “bargaining” stage… they’ll “do” social software, as long as it’s not Facebook (or heaven forbid, MySpace or Livejournal).

(I know libraries that block Facebook. My favorite example is the library that says “no one uses Facebook” and then blocks it anyway. Well, they are correct that their users don’t use it in their library…)

I know professionals who give Linkedin a workout and find it professionally beneficial. But in my book, Linkedin answers the question, “what would Facebook look and feel like if Microsoft had invented it?” It’s chilly, picture-less, and spectral. It feels like some people want work to feel: a disembodied place where Labor is Performed. That’s a soulless way to treat the place we sock away people for 40-80 hours a week.

I realize Facebook has its silly side. After all, I just started a group called “Over Fifty is Facebook-Fabulous.” That’s trivial fun. I also don’t spend a lot of time in Facebook. I ignore actions on Facebook such as sending me “beer,” karma, stuffed beers, or the same dumb video. Once in a while I’ll play a game, but I won’t forward it to my 300+ “friends.” I check in, I tweak my profile, check messages, send a couple out, but I’m not Facebook-obsessed.

But in many ways Facebook feels a lot more like my daily life than Linkedin ever will. On Facebook I can give myself personal context — pictures I like, what I’m doing, my latest blog posts, websites that interest me. I can also see that context. I can share websites and ideas with small and large groups. I can introduce people who can find out much more about the people I’m connecting than Linkedin presents.

I also like that silly stuff happens. It happens at work, doesn’t it? We are a playful species. Adulthood involves knowing when to work and when to play and how to mix the two.

Not everyone I know is on Facebook… but I’ve connected with professionals, family members, and even someone I knew in elementary school. It’s a full environment, not just a slice of Serious Professional Life.

To the librarian who opined that I was unusual for being on Facebook and many of our users aren’t, well, but many of our users are. The fastest growing demographic is users over 25, and I guarantee you that most people I know on Facebook are not high-tech.

I once described two conferences by saying that one had more content but the other was more fun. That wasn’t to dismiss the second; just the opposite, in fact. I would learn more at the second conference. When I am relaxed, happy, and engaged, I’m a sponge for knowledge. Think about your favorite teacher: this person probably had a playful side, or at least radiated joy in his or her subject.

Anyway, to those librarians (and yes, they really exist) who have proposed Linkedin as an “acceptable” alternative to Facebook, ol’ FRL was going to find out sooner or later, and I’m slapping your wrists. Cut it out. Ignore Facebook or jump on board, but I recommend you go directly to the Kubler-Ross “Depression” stage and get it over with.

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Social hardware

Saturday, May 3, 2008



Social hardware

Originally uploaded by freerangelibrarian

I brought this small travel power strip to IA Summit 2008 (write-up pending, but it was great). I’d like to say it was my idea, but it wasn’t; I snarfed the concept from Cindi Trainor. It’s small, powerful, sturdy, folds up neatly, and is insanely useful.

Some of its uses are obvious if you’ve ever been in a hotel room where you found yourself moving furniture to get to the second plug, but as someone at IA Summit 2008 commented, “It’s very social hardware!”

If you travel with a laptop, you know the scene: you are in a coffeeshop, airport waiting room, or conference room. There are two plugs on the wall to be shared among many people. You can either arrive early, hog one of two outlets, and pretend people aren’t staring at you with sad puppy-eyes, or you can plug in your strip and invite others to share.

Or you don’t arrive early, and someone is avoiding eye contact because he or she is using the outlet and feels bad about it. (At IA Summit, one of the plugs on each side of the room had the wifi router — made for great wifi, but also reduced available outlets by half.) Maybe someone promised their boss they’d cover this session in-depth, and their battery is low, so they really, really need the plug… but they know they’re using it at the expense of others.

So you whip out your new social hardware and say, “May I share your outlet? I have this powerstrip!” Relief pours over your new friend’s face, because these people doesn’t want to be hogs — they’re just looking out for their own interests in a situation that makes it hard to share.

It’s not just that you are able to share a power outlet with a stranger for a few minutes, but you’ve enriched a touchy social situation and made the world a little closer.

It’s the best small hardware purchase I’ve made in years. The only problem comes when you have to leave early and three people are plugged into your strip — just tell them it’s $17 on Amazon and “don’t leave home without one.”

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Passion Quilt Meme: Reading Sets You Free

Friday, May 2, 2008

So I was tagged for this meme by Sarah “LibrarianInBlack” Houghton, in which through captioning a photograph we meditate on what we’re passionate about “kids” learning.

The meme responses I’ve read are all well-intended, and I like Sarah’s caption, but — I am sorry, my bibliofriends and edubloggers, I realize this is not very affirming of your efforts — most responses to the “Passion Quilt Meme” traffic in Hallmarkian abstractions, to the point where I was tempted to respond with anti-platitudes such as “hide your Halloween candy where your mother can’t find it” and “Google Earth means you can never again pick your nose while walking down the street.”

But instead, I’ll say what first occurred to me, since no one else has said it.

“Kids” should be told to read widely and deeply their entire lives. Put down the cell phone, and read. Turn off the TV set, and read. Step away from Twitter and Facebook and World of Warcraft, and read.

I do not mean reading in tiny sips and nibbles, but long, sustained sessions where you are absorbed in a book or journal to the point where you do not hear family members asking you questions and the sun slides silently from from east to west and the cats give up on getting your attention and wander elsewhere, because you are deeply reading, reading, reading.

Judy's Kindle I don’t care if you read on dead trees or Kindles (that’s Judy from Manatee Community College, who told me that with her Kindle, she’ll never again run out of reading on a trip) or even on a computer — if you promise to keep your eyes glued to the book in hand — but I don’t mean skimming bippity-bop from word-snack to word-snack.

Nor do I mean gaming, which I am sure teaches you all kind of marvelous skills, and is a fine supplement to other activities in libraries (if we can hold programs about potting geraniums, what harm gaming?) but is still not reading.

It’s a different muscle, this reading muscle, as a writing student shared with me earlier this year, and you can’t fully exercise this muscle by the equivalent of walking to the end of the driveway 100 times a day; you need to sit down, focus, and let your brain engage actively and deeply in words on the page, a sustained marathon of reading that pulls you into new worlds. (I’ll even give you pictures — what is reading without Maus or Fun Home? — but no, you cannot substitute Guitar Hero.)

Reading — deeply, truly reading — is a wonderfully subversive act, one that undermines everything we are told about learning in this society. The world tells us that learning happens in boxes approved by government (school) and business (the commercial world). We are plopped in chairs for twelve or sixteen years and told how to think, and during that time and for the rest of our lives we are bathed in messages designed to shape our thoughts and actions.

Reading snaps smelling-salts under our noses, yanking us out of our cultural slumber with the sharp tingling scent of minds at work. Reading tells us that learning is a highly private and yet communal, idiosyncratic, lifelong adventure, one we can shape simply by picking up one book, and then another and another. Reading places us on a continuum with all other readers and the great chain of writers.

I suspect our core troubles — just to start with, a five-year war, longer than the U.S. Civil War; a planet in sharp physical decline; a near-broken political system — result in part because we are not reading enough. As a nation, too many of us skim the froth on the roiling info-ocean, our thoughts commandeered by the constant bombardment of flickering images and scrolling texts. We don’t focus. “Attention must be paid,” but not enough people pay it. The signs are around us, but we ignore them.

Reading is the real conversation.

Make room in your life for reading. If you are not reading at least several hundred pages a week, in at least one sustained reading session, you are not reading enough. Push out something that doesn’t matter, and read. Because you matter, and reading matters.

Read fully and deeply. Read fiction and nonfiction and history and poetry. Read newspapers and magazines and books and everything else. Read for pleasure and read for education and read to simply read.

When you particularly like a book, read it again and again, marking it up (if it is yours to mark up) and making notes. Find more like it and read those as well. Read in grocery lines and waiting rooms. Use sudden stolen hours for reading. Read on weekend afternoons and on evenings when you would otherwise surf from channel to channel, looking for something “good to watch.” Dedicate a vacation day to reading.

Be an apostle for reading. Talk about books with your friends. Share books you love. Start a book group, or join one in progress. Write about your reading. Keep track of what you read and think critically about the direction of your reading.

Always have too many things to read. Fold library trips into as many activities as possible; even if you think you don’t “want” a book that day, pass through the new-book section or wander the stacks, and see if a book wants you. If you don’t live near a good library, buy cheap used books online and swap books with friends. Subscribe to good magazines and journals, and treat their arrival like the birth of a friend’s child: drop everything, and read.

Clear your brain of buzz; read. Chart your own course in life; read. Stick it to the Man, and read. Read, read, read as if your life depended on it — because it does.

I’m tagging Roy Tennant (slick URL there, Roy — LJ spared no expense), Gypsy Librarian, Ocean in View, Lipstick Librarian, and Michael Golrick.

The original meme:

1. Post a picture from a source like FlickrCC or Flickr Creative Commons or make/take your own that captures what YOU are most passionate about for kids to learn about…and give your picture a short title.
2. Title your blog post “Meme: Passion Quilt” and link back to this blog entry.
3. Include links to 5 folks in your professional learning network or whom you follow on Twitter/Pownce.”

Filed in Librarianship, Writing | | Comments (34)

Linko de Mayo

Thursday, May 1, 2008

Will you be at the SOLINET Annual Member Meeting? I’m keynoting Friday, May 9. Would love to sync up with you! Sandy will be with me as well. I’m going to get a little tea time with fellow keynoter Michael Stephens, woohoo!

Some people’s kids: The LITA BIGWIG gang has established a nifty presence. (BIGWIG more or less translates to the Blogging Interest Group, though they do much more than blog.) I wish all ALA committees/IGs/Task Forces offered this kind of place to hang out and do work with one’s bibliopeeps.

Twitterprose marches on with its daily links of great lines from creative nonfiction, most recently with an improvement to the pesky link problem and some great excerpts from the latest issue of ZYZZYVA. For several essays I’m revising I’ve been chomping through a barrel of food writing (some of it yummy, some of it inedible) and haven’t had time for the growing pile of litmags and magazines sitting on the table in the foyer, but when the latest ZYZZYVA arrived, I stretched out on the couch and lapped it up.

Spring FRBR: The latest issue of Current Cites features two reviews by me about absolutely and highly readings biblio-essential readings about FRBR. (Wow… I just realized Current Cites is almost old enough to vote!)

Localvores gone wrong: on the April 29 episode of Law & Order SVU, Robin Williams plays a nut who cons restaurant staff into tying up women. At one point Williams blurts out that he’s a localvore — that is, he only eats local, seasonal, organic food. That explains the end of the episode, which I won’t spoil for you Tivo types but demonstrates that healthy food builds strong bodies twelve ways.

“Should Writers be Readers?” Sheesh, I hope so! Interestingly, this came to me as a recommended link through del.icio.us — a capability I wasn’t familiar with and still don’t really understand.

I helped Dinty Moore make a Facebook fan page for his book, Between Panic and Desire. (I know, that was so “librarian” of me — “PLEASE let me help you with that technology,” tail thumping wildly.) Apparently that was too risque for Facebook, which blocked the word “desire.” When I complained, they wrote me the next day to say, “We have resolved this issue and you should be able to register your Page with the desired name at this time.” I can’t decide if they were trying to be funny. N.b.: In this book, at least, “Panic” and “Desire” are towns in Ohio. Oh, and it’s a marvelous book!

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Two Weeks, Four Conferences

Sunday, April 27, 2008

A long-overdue post about the best of the best from Connecticut Trendspotting, NISO Discovery, a Kent Campus visit, and Computers in Libraries. (I have since attended IA Summit and Florida Library Association…more about them later!)

Quick Takeaways:

Complimentary Slippers

Clearest tech trends rippling through the presentationsphere: mobile interfaces, intelligent folksonomies, open source

Favorite presentation: Helene Blowers, Computers in Libraries, “Innovation Starts With I”

Most significant ah-hah moments: grasping the implications of FRBR; hearing Blowers talk about how to strategically “sell” innovation in a library organization

Best casual conversations: John Ockerbloom & Peter Murray (FRBR and system design); Alane Wilson and Cliff Landis (benefits of 2.0); John Blyberg (SOPAC)

Best late-night rant at the hotel bar: Marshall Breeding and Roy Tennant (I would tell you all about it except it was a rant)

Best conference trend: “Lessig”-style PowerPoints– heavy on graphics, light on bullets, plain backgrounds, kewl fonts

Social Software du Jour: “Tweeting” (using Twitter) to microblog conference presentations

Noticeable travel trends: fewer flights, more airports with free wifi

Best meal: Allen & Sons Barbecue, Chapel Hill, NC

Best tourist side-trip: A Southern Season (cookware store), Chapel Hill

Best travel moment: finding a pair of courtesy slippers in my room in the Holiday Inn Crystal City (even if they were more like skis for me)

Say Whatta?

Computers in Libraries 2008 featured a “Pecha Kucha” (peh-chak-cha, more or less) — a fast-paced session with six presenters, each allowed 20 slides to address a topic (such as podcasting) and a theme (such as creating content), and 20 seconds to display each slide.

Many CiL presenters at Pecha Kucha and elsewhere used the “Lawrence Lessig” presentation style I began using in my own talks after attending Defrag last fall and watching Dick Hardt from Sxip do his thang -a move away from page after page of PowerPoint bullets on Microsoft-generated backgrounds toward image-heavy screen shots and graphics and single-word slides. In addition to being visually pleasing, this style of presentation makes the presenter look in command of her topic.

I Iz Somebody

Helene Blowers did such a fabulous job at Cil2008 with “Innovation Starts with I” that I really hope she gets tapped to present in these parts. The wifi worked well in that room and I heavily Twittered her main points. Some key points:

  • Creativity is about ideas. Innovation is about doing new things. (Theodore Levitt’s distinction)
  • Workers are responsible for doing the initial legwork and tying new ideas into the MVV – Mission, Vision, Values
  • Sell your vision personally
  • Managers are responsible for creating an environment where mistakes are welcome and even encouraged

Social Skills

SOPAC is the Social OPAC – software John wrote last year, when he was at Ann Arbor District Library. I learned all about it at Connecticut Trendspotting, a one-day conference in Hartford, focused on open source… not in the morning’s talks, but that afternoon, when I had a long discussion with John Blyberg and Kate Sheehan of Darien Library about SOPAC version 2. It’s their beans to spill, but I look forward to hearing more about SOPAC.

Watch out, it’s a Brontosaurus in the 500s

Borders Concept StoreKate Sheehan, new head of public services at Darien, had been the innovator who had led the first implementation of Librarything for Libraries. Kate told me that when she saw the video for the Borders Concept Store she said to herself that they must have read her mind, because this is the design, more or less, for public services at Darien, which is building a new library right now-a place not only for traditional library services but also a place where patrons can mix/remix/download/create. She plans on having mixing stations and “knowledge glades.”

You Give Me FRBR

NISO Discovery and FRBR. NISO had a two-day conference in Chapel Hill about next-generation discovery tools.

For me, the “discovery” for that trip happened on the flight to Raleigh, when I read Robert Max

Miss Peggy Lee

well’s FRBR: A Guide for the Perplexed, and through this short, clear book I really “got” FRBR-strengths, weaknesses, implications for system design–and then at the conference I went out to dinner with John Mark Ockerbloom, a PhD in Computer Science at Carnegie Mellon and active participant in the Digital Library Federation, and we talked about developments in library software. (We were joined by Peter Murray, who did a nice job of summarizing many open source library projects related to opacs and ILS’s; see http://dltj.org/article/niso-discovery-presentation-links/).

This discussion with John prompted me to download and read the DLF ILS and Discovery Systems Draft Recommendation (https://project.library.upenn.edu/confluence/display/ilsapi/Draft+Recommendation ) which has been discussed at some recent conferences.

The Whiteboard of Your Dreams

The day before I taught a writing workshop at NEFLIN in March, I visited with Billy Thomas, director of Learning Services at Kent Campus. Wow! Billy has some amazing ideas. He walked me around the library and talked about something that sounded very similar to Kate Sheehan’s “knowledge glades.” We also talked about alternatives to library classification, student work/meeting areas, etc. In one area he plans to make the walls giant whiteboards, and comments that students do this already with paper-they then take pictures of their work and upload them.

Library Spin the Bottle

In their Computers in Libraries co-session, Michael Stephens and Michael Casey had slide shots of librarians playing “library spin the bottle”–not a kissing contest, but a brainstorming exercise. Spin the bottle, share an idea! (Update: Michael Casey just wrote me to say it was a slide from the presentation of the “Dutch guys”) — thanks for the clarification!)

You Wish You Were Amazon

Cindi Trainor’s talk at Computers in Libraries (part of a two-session, four-speaker series I emceed) compared four popular websites (Amazon, Pandora, Flickr, and Wikipedia) with library software, using a scale she had developed that measured a number of quality variables. The top score was a possible 32 points. Here’s how four products stacked up:

  • Encore: 10
  • Libraryfind: 12
  • Scriblio: 14
  • WorldCat Local: 16

Cindi will have more data up later this month, after she finishes a round of speaking engagements.

Other speakers included Kate Sheehan, now of Darien Library, who demoed LibraryThing for Libraries and showed how at some sites OPAC users could now add reviews into LibraryThing; Roy Tennant, who did a walk-through of open source ILS software such as VuFind, Blacklight, and LibraryFind; and John Blyberg, who got all mystical and theoretical in a great way about data architecture.

From Tool to Benefit

Among the many good hallway conversations and gabfests I had, in one we talked about the recent “social software” classes, such as the popular model 23 Things, and how these classes (however useful they are) miss an opportunity to educate librarians about the benefits of social software. Maybe that’s something we could address here at CCLA-perhaps hosting a regional unconference on how to tie in social software with your MVV?

Filed in Hot Tech, Librarianship, Uncategorized | | Comments (4)

With writing and teens, it really *is* all good (but we need to be good, too)

Friday, April 25, 2008

Pew released a report this week about teens and writing. The report confirmed that texting jargon has crept into traditional writing, and I’m sure some teachers and parents are rending their loincloths and keening over the arrival of “lol” and “brb” into homework assignments.

But the report also points out — directly and quite affirmatively — that “teens write a lot.” This is nothing but good news. What a wonderful world we are in where teens are writing exhaustively, all day and night. There are postmodern fabulists chanting that the Word is dead, and who’s proving them wrong? Fifteen-year-olds with cell phones. Rock on, you crazy texting kids!

Before you turn up your nose at cell-phone text discussions, pick up a traditional industry journal. I had two on my desk today, so toxic with bad writing I watched them etch their pages through the Formica. Texting jargon may be peculiar — r u thr god its me margrt — but it’s full of form and expression.

Teens themselves sense the limits of traditional pedagogy. They are surfing the wave of new forms of writing — online, continuous, engaged — and where are we? Still teaching the standard stuff. Still writing the standard stuff. They seek, they crave guidance and education. This is hard, because we, the teachers, grew up before their printing press was born. So as the Pew report points out, they don’t see their texting and email and Facebook postings as “real” writing or reading — though of course it is.

To be clear, I am not rejecting the value of SROCT (the Sustained Reading Of Complex Texts — what Michael Gorman accused bloggers of being unable to master). I also admit to being cool to the idea that the experience of reading can be replaced with, say, a few hours of Guitar Hero or Dance, Dance, Revolution. Reading is reading, and we are born to read just as we are born to enjoy sex. It’s a human privilege, and not one discarded lightly.

Teens sense this too. They say that writing is important. What do they want? More writing instruction. (Again, is that not marvelous?) “Overall, 82% of teens feel that additional in-class writing time would improve their writing abilities.” Yes, it would. When I last taught “Writing for the Web,” one student commented that writing is a “muscle” we need to exercise so it will be trained and fit.

Imagine a world where we required students to write every day — a full hour of sustained, focused writing — then reviewed this work carefully and gave them full feedback. We would be a universe of writers — the full flexing of human potential.

Great report, Pew.

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FRL Continues its Inexorable March Toward World Domination

Monday, April 21, 2008

O.k., this blog isn’t really after world domination… I suspect I’d have to post a lot more often, for starters, and besides, I have to get ready for the Florida Library Association conference.

But on a whim I created a Facebook page for Free Range Librarian, and then posted it to my Facebook profile, and then made myself a “fan” of the page, to break the ice (since no one ever wants to be the FIRST fan of anything). Then others began making themselves fans as well. Someone even created a page for the Fans of the Fans of Free Range Librarian.

As I browse the list of people who call themselves “fans” of this blog, I hurtle down a sweet corridor of memory. I see friends from library school, California, New York, New Jersey, and elsewhere. I see friends I’ve known forever and good folks I’ve just met. I see friends who have walked with me through some tough times and friends who I’m just getting to know.

(The demographics are fun, as well. 70% of the “fans” are under 45. Take that, Father Time!)

I realize we’re supposed to qualify the notion of “friendship” on Facebook, and I do know the difference between someone who has walked with me through thick and thin and someone I met in an elevator or know through someone else. But I just revised my Facebook profile to note that Ed Wood is one of my favorite movies, and that’s because there’s a scene I consider to be the best description of friendship I know: where Ed Wood makes a terrible movie and his friends all show up at the theater and applaud him. That’s a great description of life and the people who make it survivable.

The page/fan meme will no doubt quickly exhaust itself, part of the Facebook silliness we’ll remember someday. But I hope I don’t forget the warmth I felt when I saw old faces and new “fanning” themselves for this little blog.

Filed in Blogging, Family Values | | Comments (4)

Even the Links are Bigger in Texas!

Wednesday, April 16, 2008

I’m on my way to the Texas Library Association annual conference, where I will square off in the ring with the likes of Stephen Abram, Roy Tennant, and Joe Janes for a “Great Debate.” Good luck guys, I plan to mop the floor with you!

So as I mosey westward, here are some links for your delectation (including one shameless plug):

Treat your ears to this delightful batch of music to accompany National Library Week, from Miki, a librarian and digital DJ.

Twitterprose continues to live! Yes, subscribe by RSS or Twitter and get a choice line of creative nonfiction every day. Great for readers and library collection builders, and of course I love suggestions.

Flickr now accepts short (up to 90-second) videos. This puts them in an interesting space on a continuum with YouTube (10 minutes max, unless you’re a “director”), and blip.tv and Google Video (much longer film). It definitely feels more “Flickr” — perhaps because most videos this length will be self-produced.

The Big O swells its midriff with the latest news that Orbis and OCLC will be “working together” on a consortial borrowing solution (the way a shark “works together” with a minnow), a move explained most clearly in this blog post. All poking of OCLC aside, this is fascinating and important news, particularly for those of us who believe that no matter how we get there, we have absolutely got to move away from proprietary, hidden data-silos.

The Digital Library Federation issued a statement about ILS development and interoperability, and the world fainted… no, not quite, but it’s certainly interesting, and many organizations and vendors signed on, except a certain three-vowel company that had just been jilted (see previous paragraph) and was last seen standing in the corner of the dance hall stomping on its corsage.

Can you Pecha Kucha? Computers in Libraries featured one program in this new presentation format, where each presenter had 20 slides with 20 seconds per slide, for short, lively presentations that got to the point. See this clip on blip TV!

I’m not really having a big ol crush on the Big O, but I think this ability to limit WorldCat to digital images is interesting, though doing so via the “CNTNT” limiter may not catch on quickly with the masses.

Filed in Librarianship | | Comments (2)

My ALA Council Ballot, So Far

Wednesday, April 16, 2008

The ALA election ends on April 24, and I’ve really got to get my ballot filled out and submitted. In no particular order I list the people I’ve already added to my ballot for ALA Council (the governing body for the American Library Association, which elects the Executive Board, which really runs the show):

Chris Harris — outstanding go-getter in the school media world; as the developers say, “++”
Marilyn L. Hinshaw — Marilyn’s a good person, hard worker, good rep
Christine Lind Hage — Christine is smart, fun, and a thinker, and knows ALA well
Courtney L. Young — Active in NMRT, good rep
Peter D. Hepburn — Smart, forward-thinking, a diplomat
Aaron W. Dobbs — Please! Vote for Aaron! He’s a tech type with many great insights… that we can’t elect Aaron drives me crazy (and he *won’t stop* until he’s elected!)
Trevor A. Dawes — Astute, creative, wide-ranging thinker/leader
Dale Poulter — Strong tech background, would help move us forward
June A. Pinnell-Stephens — A long-time ALA leader in intellectual freedom, a lot of fun, and a good soul (as are all these folks, really)

Folks I don’t know as well but I’ll vote for based on “friend of a friend” recommendations:

Linda Shippert
Clayton S. Garthwait
Tiffani Conner

Did I leave off anyone else? Do not go cry in your pillow… it’s a very long ballot and though I agree on mixing the order on it, I get a bit overwhelmed. I won’t necessarily agree with your suggestions, but you’re welcome to post them. (There are some people I’m very intentionally not voting for, but you’ll have to go off-blog for that info.)

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Crowdvine versus SWIFT

Sunday, April 13, 2008

Some post-Computers-in-Libraries reactions are floating in about SWIFT, the conference software purchased by ITI. (Note: before I get into this, I want to underscore what a fabulous time I had in my drive-by attendance — trip report forthcoming, I promise! — and I bow and offer my humble thanks to Cindi, Roy, John, and Kate for putting on “a really good shew.”)

Jason Griffey summed up my conclusions almost to the letter. See, there was this meeting with the Otter Group. I was only at the meeting with the Otter Group for twenty minutes, since I had to catch a flight, but it seemed o.k., as far as meetings go.

I’d add that at the end of a long day at a conference, trooping into a classroom setting with no food or beverages didn’t improve anyone’s opinions of the software, but then, it really takes more than that. If DRA came back from the grave with shrimp and steak, would we love them? I hope not.

Then again, what was the point of that session? If you have to explain what your tool is really supposed to do, then your software is broken. Stop talking and stop making excuses. If you are the developer, go fix it, and if you are the customer, check your deliverables and ask yourself if you need to choose another product — or if you need the product to begin with.

I’ve been at IA Summit 2008 since Friday, and here’s the difference. The Crowdvine software actually works (and I could see how it worked BEFORE I signed in). It allows me to connect with other attendees, view sessions, and follow the zeitgeist. I didn’t have to sign a crappy term of service. It wasn’t broken the first time I logged in. The interface is pleasingly pulled together, the fonts are not squinchy-tiny, and yes, rumors to the contrary, it “interfaces” with Facebook–and with RSS, Flickr, and other social software.

Deep down, I don’t care about Crowdvine, but I care a lot about how well I can function as a conference attendee, and from that standpoint, it works. Also, Crowdvine isn’t perfect, but I suspect if I had to give this product grief, ASIST would take it in stride — because they too aren’t invested in Crowdvine. They’re invested in making IA Summit a success.

Not only that, but the wifi access at IA Summit has been fabulous. They don’t have the electricity thing down — people huddle around outlets, and the small power strip I tote with me (an idea from Cindi Trainor) has been a smash hit — but wifi has been consistently fast and smooth. ASIST realizes that a conference hosted by an organization with “Technology” in the title needs to deliver the T.

I’ve stoutly insisted that ITI puts on good conferences. But I’m going to qualify that now, and I have the credentials to do this. ITI puts on really good conferences… for LibraryLand. Grading on that curve, they’re an easy B+. Compared to conferences that serve technology communities outside of our profession, ITI conferences are a D, and that’s a kindness grade.

That doesn’t mean I won’t attend ITI conferences; the content is often worth it. But I feel so bad when LibraryLand makes do with crappy technology. It’s like we’re living out our own worst stereotypes.

Now someone might bring up how broke we are as librarians. Fair enough. But we’re talking here about the difference between one conference software and another, and the difference between burpy or nonworking wifi and wifi that is “just there” when I open my laptop. We don’t want cheap stuff that doesn’t work. I am better off “off the grid” or using a simple wiki than I am trying to cope with broken tools.

Which brings me back to my original suggestion. Given limited resources, I suggest ITI focus on providing incredibly good wifi and encouraging us to live blog conferences with the slides posted to slideshare.net or other high-traffic sites.

If ITI can’t afford truly functional conference software that meets the needs of the people who would actually use it, then you know what? Don’t trouble with it. A factoid from today is that when people like a product, they tell three people, and when they don’t like a product, they tell seventeen people. I would update that to “seventeen bloggers.” Why not focus on the happy 3? We’ll all be better off for it.

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