For the last six months I had been promising my eight year old son that I would show him how to make rainbow flowers.

On New Year’s Eve we spied the perfect flowers – eight white chrysanthemums – in a bunch at the local deli. Here is a little movie showing what we did, how the flowers changed over a couple of hours and how they looked after 24 hours. We used the Open Source time-lapse photography program, Gawker .

How to make rainbow flowers

Someone asked me to join a daily photo group in 2009. I got as far as 281 photos, and found it a surprisingly confronting and interesting activity. By looking at how I presented myself in a still image each day, it changed the way I thought about how I interacted with other people in real life.

I’m trying it again in 2011 and am really interested in seeing what other people make of the exercise…

If you’d like to play along with the Daily Image 2011 group, please join me by going to the group page on Flickr: http://www.flickr.com/groups/dailyimage2011/

HERE IS SOME MORE INFORMATION

WHAT?
One photo/video/drawing each day with yourself in it, uploaded to Flickr.

HOW?

You do not have to create the image, but you do need to be in it somewhere – hand, slight image in mirror, photo of self on PC screen in background…

If you don’t manage one photo per day, feel free to add what you can when you can… but only one photo from each day.

WHY?

I got as far as 281 photos doing this in 2009 and was really confronted by the choices I had to make about how I presented myself. Did I always want to show myself as a healthy, cheery sort of person? How much of the ugly and everyday was I prepared to show?

I discovered that – contrary to my comfort level – photos with myself smiling really *did* look better. This freaked me out, as I always thought that forcing myself to smile looked worse than showing something “genuine”. This flowed on to my everyday life where I started smiling at other people more…

There is a Daily Image 2011  group pool RSS feed. There is also a Twitter account that is feeding out each image as it is added: Daily Image 2011 Twitter Feed.

How would you answer these questions:

1. How long ago did you look at your RSS reader?
2. How often do you do so?
3. Why has this changed from 2 years ago, if at all ?

I was idly wondering whether there is still a point to setting an exercise in my library tech unit that gets students to subscribe and watch a few RSS feeds. I send out the message above on three of my Twitter accounts and obviously touched a nerve – around thirty people responded. (Not everyone answered each bit of the question).

My prediction? Twitter had turned RSS readers into roadkill. No-one was looking at RSS any more and anyhow, no-one is blogging any more.

Nope. 20 out of 33 check their RSS reader at least daily. Yes, around a third (31%) reported looking at the readers less than 2 years ago. 24% reported no change, but 27% reported an increase.

I know the people who responded and I guess that about 1/3 of those who were looking more did not really use RSS a couple of years ago.

Many of the comments attribute the way they use Twitter to a decrease or to a change in RSS reading patterns. Some now read more, but by skimming headlines. Others use RSS for “newspaper style” in-depth reading and Twitter for the more shallow quick links. Generally people reported RSS reading as a more social activity than two years ago – either obtaining new feeds via Twitter, pushing out a lot of links from their readers to Twitter, or just sharing via their RSS reader. Changes  – of circumstances, jobs, interests and the patterns of blogging for the feeds they had followed –  all were reported to change RSS reading habits.

So – the RSS exercise stays on the course, but maybe I should consider emphasising the sharing possibilities that using an RSS reader can involve?

The comment I most enjoyed, however, came from one of my followers immediately AFTER he had answered my question. His comment:

I just sent the best out of context tweet ever.

… because he had just tweeted:

@libsmatter 1 hr ago, many times a day, more than I did 2 yrs ago because now I have a smart phone

Oh dear. I then read back over some of the other responses, equally out of context. I’m sorry…. I laughed….

(AND A BONUS FOR THE COMMENT BOX BELOW – DID YOU READ THIS POST VIA RSS READER OR FROM A TWITTER LINK… ?)

MARKING

Shhh… go away… I’m marking….not meant to be here…you didn’t see me …

CONFRONTED

My first semester marking student assignments is confronting. By the end of next semester I should have a lot of tricks and shortcuts, but at the moment I am still learning where the corners are in this job, let alone when and how they can be cut. Marking is making me look very hard at:

• my own ethics
• my own writing style
• my preconceived opinions
• how I manage my time
• what I believe students deserve in terms of my attention and time
• what I believe is authoritative information
• what I think students need to know – both information and as skills in communication
• what the profession is likely to want from students
• and what the university is likely to expect of me

HARVARD

Now, when the minifigs visited Harvard University last year, they did not see Mark Zuckerburg, founder of Facebook. He had moved on by then, and they were looking at minifig concerns like tiny doors and Sesame Street sweatshirts.

But – if you want some intellectual stimulation from two of the Harvard minds that I admire most, please get yourself a cuppa, pull up an easy chair and take some time of sheer pleasure to enjoy the lucidity and careful writing of Lawrence Lessig and Zadie Smith .

In an interesting pastiche of popular culture, web culture and careful consideration about knowledge-making, both have independently written reviews of Alan Sorkin’s The Social Network movie about Facebook . They both were at Harvard in those years and are reflecting on this and much more.

Ever cutting and subtle, Lessig starts with:

In 2004, a Harvard undergraduate got an idea (yes, that is ambiguous) for a new kind of social network.

…and continues in the same vein.

Zadie Smith ends with:

…The Social Network is not a cruel portrait of any particular real-world person called “Mark Zuckerberg.” It’s a cruel portrait of us: 500 million sentient people entrapped in the recent careless thoughts of a Harvard sophomore.

…and between the two of them there is much richness and delight to be had…

I’m back from Spain, France and Singapore with a bump… ready to get into marking student assignments solidly for two weeks. I had a wonderful time – learning, eating, talking, laughing, visiting, cycling, flying, shopping and generally saying “oh wow!”. Many, many thanks to the Spanish Ministry of Culture for inviting me and to all the wonderfully clever, interesting and accommodating folk that I met on the way.

I hope to provide more reflection on the conference and some of the places I visited, but it will need to wait.

The minifigs enjoyed themselves too. Each time I travel, my sons give me a couple of Lego minifigs to photograph in interesting places. You can see their previous travels around Australia, New Zealand, the United States, the Netherlands and in London here in this Flickr set,  Minifigs go travelling . They are not the only minifig world travellers – Jo-Jo and Frikke from Denmark also saw the world – on their own….

The chef inspected croissants at Charles De Gaulle airport as we passed through Paris, so that by the time we reached Gijon in Northern Spain he had them almost perfected:

The minifigs came with us on our “Gaudi Day” in Barcelona, as we explored the architect’s apartment block, La Pedrera and what is now a public park, Parc Guell:

The minfigs visited the Louvre in Paris:

They had great fun in the retrospective of video games over the last 30 years, Museogames, held at the Musee des arts et metiers in Paris:

I am not sure that they enjoyed almost being eaten in Singapore on the way home, but they should be used to it because it also happened two years before.

Today I am at the V Congreso Nacional de Bibliotecas Públicas at the Laboral University in Gijon, Spain, where I am on a “Round Table” panel where we will be discussing the public library as a hero in the digital age. As you can see from the link below, I am using my “Deeply local at the library” video. There is a live video stream of the proceedings.

Here is the Spanish description of the participants and topics:

Reflexiones sobre el valor de la biblioteca pública en la sociedad digital

Eppo Van Nispen Tot Sevenaer, Director Ejecutivo de United Promotion for Books (CPNB) (Holanda)

Kathryn Greenhill, Profesora asociada de Biblioteconomía y Documentación, Curtin University of Technology, Perth (Australia)

• Vídeo de su intervención

Martin Palmer, Director de las Bibliotecas del Condado de Essex (Reino Unido)

Daniel Cassany, Profesor titular en la Universidad Pompeu Fabra de Barcelona

• Ficha C.V.
• Intervención completa

Régis Dutremée, Jefe del departamento Biblioteca Digital, Biblioteca Pública de Información, Centro Georges Pompidou (Francia)

• Ficha C.V.
• Resumen de su intervención
• Intervención completa

Modera: M. Ramona Domínguez Sanjurjo, Directora de la Biblioteca Pública del Estado en Salamanca

• Ficha C.V.

I am tweeting the conference from @libsmatter .  The hashtag is #vcnbp . Here is the CoverItLive window of my tweets.

It’s a no brainer. Public libraries must help their communities to tell their stories digitally. I agree with Jo Ransom from the Horowhenua Library Trust.

She was a driving force behind Kete, a digital collaboration engine for her community.

I interviewed her via Skype in October for my talk for the V Congreso Nacional de Bibliotecas Públicas on 4 November 2010 .

Jo talks about the impact of Kete on her community. Please watch and be inspired by how we can change lives.

Today I gave my keynote talk for the V Congreso Nacional de Bibliotecas Públicas, Hacking the Public Library.

The presentation included four very short videos with four people working on library hacking projects talking about hacking and what libraries can learn from them. I also made some eight minute versions of the same people talking also about their library hacking projects and the role of public libraries in creating digital content with their users.

You can see all the videos on this page of my blog Keynote for V Congreso Nacional de Bibliotecas Públicas- movies, slides and written paper.

Here is the abstract:

HACKING THE PUBLIC LIBRARY: from print curators to digital content creators.

Public library staff worldwide are embracing the spirit of hackerdom by taking matters into their own hands and creating their own digital platforms, tools and content to better connect people and information. Libraries are creating online environments that connect the stories of their local communities. They are creating social layers in their catalogues. They are exposing their data to remix and repurposing.

Hacking is a nimble, creative act of using existing elements to better serve a new purpose. Hacking includes the following practices – finding new uses and combinations for existing elements; exhibiting high technical skill and going beyond expectations; playing creatively; building freely on the efforts of others; and, finally, working collaboratively in community

In this keynote, Kathryn Greenhill examines what public librarians can learn from four of our colleagues who are already hacking the public library, and how these hacking principles can be used to repurpose our public libraries as we move from curation and access of content to collaborations with our local communities to produce local digital content.

Here is my slideset:

Today I am at the V Congreso Nacional de Bibliotecas Públicas at the Laboral University in Gijon, Spain, where I am speaking about “Hacking the Public Library” in about half an hour. There is a live video stream of the proceedings.

I am tweeting the conference from @libsmatter .  The hashtag is #vcnbp . Here is the CoverItLive window of my tweets.

Today I am at the V Congreso Nacional de Bibliotecas Públicas at the Laboral University in Gijon, Spain, where I am speaking tomorrow and the next day.

I am tweeting the conference from @libsmatter .  The hashtag is #vcnbp . Here is the CoverItLive window of my tweets after the first half of the day.