Category: me!

My talks at the ILN Conference in Dubai

Posted on by jessamyn

So yesterday was the big day. A keynote talk, a Q&A session, and two blog/wiki workshops at the Information Literacy Network Conference in Dubai, UAE. I’ve been feeling, before this trip, that I was going someplace really different compared to places I’ve been before. I’ve never travelled out of the country on my own before (except to Canada) and I’ve never been to the Middle East before. I have a friend, Step, who lives out here, so its been a great chance to see a place through the eyes of someone who lives here, not just out a hotel window. My pictures are on Flickr though since Flickr is sort of blocked here it’s been a bit of a challenge getting them all uploaded.

The absolute weirdest thing about this trip so far is the number of people here who I wasn’t expecting to know, or who knew me. The director of the Zayed University library and I served on an ALA committee together. Two people at the conference had seen me speak before — one in California and one in Perth Australia. Another two people had attended the same conferences that I had been to. One woman grew up in a small Australian town I had driven though in March. One woman owns a house literally five miles from my own house in Bethel. Another participant had grown up in Vermont. Keep in mind that this is a tiny conference with just over 100 registrants.

So, I gave a talk on Library 2.0 technologies which is an interesting thing to do when some of my favorite technologies — Flickr, Twitter — are actually blocked at a country level and so are completely unavailable to these librarians and educators. During my workshop we actually got to mess around with a locally installed version of WordPress and a locally installed version of Mediawiki. It was tough to do a bit blog/wiki workshop in just under an hour but one of the neat parts was that for a workshop of 40 or so people, we had 20 wired laptops available so that people could actually use the software, not just hear about it.

So, the two notes pages from my talks are here

If you’ve seen my other 2.0 talks, this is a slightly different version with a little more background and links to more handouts. Thanks so much to the nice people who brought me out here. I’ll be heading back to the conference today just to sit in and maybe take a few photos.

How to “Get More from the Web than Google Will Tell You”

Posted on by jessamyn

CIO, the companion website to CIO magazine, talked to me a few weeks ago about what people who only know how to search Google are missing out on, especially in a business/market research fashion. Here’s the article: Six Techniques to Get More from the Web than Google Will Tell You.

I don’t talk about it much lately, but when I was fresh out of library school I did some work doing market research and other miscellaneous stuff for a recruiter who worked a lot for Amazon.com and it was fascinating to look at the questions she’d ask to try to help them find the right person for the job. I had a sort of sideways approach to some of the topics we researched and that seemed to help her find good people. I like getting to talk to people about the importance of primary source material and the difference between going to a library’s list of good links on their website and talking to the librarian (in person or over IM) directly. I have mixed experiences talking to reporters but I was really happy with how Margaret Locher, an MLS holder herself, represented the things that Ann Cullen from Simmons and I told her.

talk: what do do when your change agent is broken

Posted on by jessamyn

I gave a talk yesterday at the NEASIS&T event in Providence Rhode Island. I was psyched to present with John Blyberg and Jill Stover (also at Designing Better Libraries) who have very different backgrounds but both gave great talks. I pulled the “after lunch” slot which is sort of what happens when I ask to not speak before 11 am but I thought it went really well. ASIS&T get togethers are generally a really good time because they are often filled with accomplished and interesting people. I’m not sure why this is, but it’s definitely something I’ve noticed. The topic for the day was From Guerilla Innovation to Institutional Transformation: Information Professionals as Change Agents which to me sounded a little silly, — I have change agent reflux disease — but everyone made really nifty stuff out of it and we had a good time despite being in a really weird room with iffy wireless.

Buoyed my my recent presentation in Michigan, I decided to write the talk I really wanted to give and talk a bit about how my activist background has informed my current work. Sometimes you have to say that something sucks [my suggestion is to go for “suboptimal”] and write a manifesto to get noticed, but that these are okay tacks to take if you’re really solving the problems and can do it without being a jerk yourself.

Anyhow, I did another Keynote presentation — I’m still in favor of a no-PowerPoint approach generally but I’m learning other methods for other occasions — and you can see my slides and links online here: Sleeper 2.0 – Agitprop problem solving. Thanks to Jill and John for giving such excellent talks and thanks also to ASIST&T for inviting me.

Michigan Library Association – talks and notes

Posted on by jessamyn

I gave a talk today at the Michigan Library Association: What Works: More My Library Less MySpace.

It was an all new from-the-ground-up talk about appropriate social technologies with some decent (and local!) examples of libraries that are doing Library 2.0 stuff, especially Twitter. I almost always rewrite my talks somewhat, but using the excuse that I wanted to learn to use Keynote, this time I started from scratch. Unfortunately I don’t have a sleek 150K html page to share with you, but I do have the slides in PDF or flash format. The librarians in Michigan are always excellent to talk to and with, and have a great sense of humor about forever being compared to Ann Arbor District Library in things technological. They liked my John Blyberg joke. I heard that Kevin Yezbick was supposed to be live Twittering my talk but blogocoverage seems to be thin. I have gotten a few Facebook friend requests, Twitter adds, and one really nice MeFiMail (MetaFilter’s in-house mail system) from a member who came to my talk and enjoyed it.

This morning I wandered around downtown Lansing and marvelled at some of the lovely buldings including the downtown library. I’d show you some photos but despite all my blabbing about 2.0 Tech, I left my USB cable at home. I get back to New England tomorrow and will be chatting Scriblio with Casey before heading home to a snowy Vermont and a sock sale. Thanks very much to everyone in Michigan for making me feel so welcome.

Hello Chronicle of Higher Ed readers/listeners

Posted on by jessamyn

I knew something was up when I got an email from the President of the Vermont Library Association this morning saying “Wow nice podcast!”

I was pretty sure she wasn’t referring to the MetaFilter Podcast — though those are quite nice — so I emailed her back asking wtf as politely as I could. That’s how I learned that the interview I did with the Chronicle of Higher Education from a hotel room in Halifax (setting the alarm so I could be alert at 9:30, do I sound like I just woke up?) was part of the CHE podcast and was excerpted, along with the succinct commentary from many other “young librarians” (oh gosh, I laugh and laugh) including my pal Casey and other names you’ll recognize. I’m not entirely sure how to link to CHE articles for non-subscribers, but you can maybe see the article and the amusing iphone photo here. Apologies, as always, for swearing.