talks

Social Software in Libraries, a presentation

Yesterday I was down in Lakeville Massachusetts talking about social software in libraries. It was a longish timeslot and I split it up into a small talk about software, some examples of what New England libraries have been doing and less time than I would have wanted, discussing the difference between tools and brands in the social software world.

What I mean is, a wiki is a tool. Mediawiki is a brand or type of wiki. Wikipedia is an example of a Mediawiki wiki. I decided that part of really getting the idea of social software or technology generally is that many people confuse tools and brands and examples and I think people will feel more in charge of technology if they know how to explain it. From working with novice users, I know they use turns of phrases like “My Yahoo s broken” and don’t even realize that they’re not really speaking sensically to someone who understands the terms. On the other hand, I can understand how the idea of “a browser” can be pretty transparent and ethereal to someone who only knows that you click the blue E and you get the Internet. I had an Internet before web browsing, many people haven’t.

In any case, I met a lot of neat librarians, had less time than I wanted to — a perpetual problem for me and one that I work on constantly — and made some useful handouts and slides that you should feel free to adapt to your needs. They are here

Social Software in Libraries is the main page
Social Software in Libraries: Creative Applications & Privacy Awareness are the slides
Anatomy of a “social”- ite a list of the social sites I actually use along with the Tools vs. Brands handout (fixed link!)

I only have screenshots for the examples page but they are linked from the main page. I live in fear that I’ll set up a lot of excellent links and then I’ll have no Internet access to show them off so I try to prepare a zillion different ways. I think this can sometimes lead to a less-than-awesome experience because part of what’s great about social software is the sheer aliveness of it “Oh look, my friend is doing that right now” “Hey I can add this tag and see who else has used it right now” but hopefully I gave people enough to chew on and an enthusiasm to seek out more.

SEMLS workshop on Wednesday

Posted on 03Feb0803Feb08 by jessamyn

I’m digging into social software for libraries again as I prepare for a workshop I’ll be giving on Wednesday at the Southeastern Massachusetts Library System. Usually when I do this I try to find good examples of social technology being used by librarians in whatever region I am speaking in. In Dubai this was a terrific challenge, in the SEMLS location it will be harder just to pick one or two examples. Look at their website and how nice it looks and how fresh the content is! In Googling around to find a good link for my talk, I also found their wiki, the del.icio.us tag for their learning 2.0 project and their tech watch and news blogs.

The other little piece I’m adding is some statistical perspective. Fred Stutzman — whose blog is always a great source of data about social sites, particularly Facebook and the privacy/identity issues involved with them — found that by digging around in a Pew report about peple’s use of the Internet during the presidential campaign, he could glean information about people’s use of social networking generally.

22% of Americans use SNS. Broken down by age range, 67% of those age 18-29, 21% of those 30-39, and 6% of those 40+ use SNS. Based on 1430 respondents, margin of error should be about +/- 3%. This is a nice statistic for those who have been relying on self-reports and press accounts.

My talks at the ILN Conference in Dubai

Posted on 08Dec0708Dec07 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.

talk: what do do when your change agent is broken

Posted on 16Nov07 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 09Nov07 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.