Perth Barcamp 3 has been announced. The registration page is open . Off you go…

It is on Saturday 18 July 2009, Central TAFE, East Perth.

I learned so much at the first Perth Barcamp in 2007, What do you do at an unconference ? Perth barcamp 2007 , and wouldn’t want to miss this one for anything.

It would be great to have a librarian/educator contingent like we did last time.

I am happy to facilitate a session about anything that people want to pool their knowledge about. I’m really happy to co-facilitate with someone who has never done anything like this before – barcamps and unconferences are really the best places to put your toe in the water. Just email me.

I’m interested in someone doing a start to finish demo of how you can use an API to suck data out of a web app and then repurpose it – *not* using Yahoo Pipes. Come to think of it, something about how to use Yahoo Pipes well would be cool too.

We are hoping to use the same venue for the next Perth Library Unconference on a Saturday in early October, so this is a chance to get a sneak preview of  how well the venue works.

Oh my goodness! I was replying to a request for comments about using PowerPoint on a post by Lori Reed, Sleep  by PowerPoint. As it got longer, I realised that I have a philosophy of using PowerPoint – how embarrassing…

PowerPoint is just one element

I think PowerPoint works well if you think of yourself as a “performance artist” and try to work out how best to use your body, voice, interaction with the audience *and* PowerPoint together. An image of aboriginal  women in the Northern Territory in front of a library PC can add depth to a description of the Knowledge Centres there.

PowerPoint should be like a dance partner, not like a master to which you the presenter are secondary.

I’m there to talk with the audience, not a screen, nor a PC nor a bit of paper. I bring along my own wireless mouse, ask for a lapel mike and try to walk around in a way that feels natural…rather than tethering myself behind to a lectern or a screen. I try to make eye contact with audience members, plan questions that I can ask them (even if it is just a “hands up if you…”, or “does everyone know what x means?”), try to acknowledge points made by earlier speakers and to adapt what I am saying to the level of the audience as I go.

I can’t remember or tell jokes, so don’t try. I try to talk slowly and calmly, but am more often – shall we say – “energetic”…

Every slide should complement the words and actions – and there should never, ever be anything on a slide that is not clear to the audience. My pet hate is slides crammed with words where only one small point is read out. Secondary peeve is lengthy slides that are completely read out…

Something to take home?

If you want your audience  to have handouts, create handouts, but I don’t think that you slidedeck should be that.  Most of my slidedecks are almost impossible to understand without me there interacting with them – unless I add an audiotrack to them at slideshare, which I often do.

What people don’t see in my slidedecks at slideshare is that any text slide has a plain animated clickthrough for each dot point. So, as I mention each point then – and only  then – it appears on the screen. This is to emphasise the main, take-home points.

I use words in my slides  mainly to signify “chapters” in the talk – and try to make them plain colour on plain background and in the largest type possible – so they become images in themselves.

Any slide that has a number of images on it also has a rapid clickthrough for each image, so the audience gets to see the picture build.

For a 45 minute talk I will have up to 190 slides, about 80% images, with around 300 mouse clicks.

I often drop into PowerPoint slides a screencast or video clips if I am doing a technical demo – as it fits a tight time budget and is insurance against a live failure. Sometimes I goto a live demo, but know the backup option is there.

PowerPoint for a good start

I try to start each slidedeck with something that vaguely surprises the audience, to get their attention from the go-get. PowerPoint can do this well.

I have started a presentation with the words “Let’s Fly”, and shown an animation of flying through a Second Life Library.  My last presentation started with  a picture of my kids and a denial that I am learning about new technologies because of my job, but instead so I can keep up with them.  See Kathy Sierra’s Better Beginnings: how to start a presentation, book, article …. for more ideas.

I always have a “on the menu today” kind of slide early on, which outlines the chapters of the presentation. This reassures me that if I totally forget what I was going to say, at least it is there to remind me early on – and ensures that the audience knows where we are going.

Keeping audience attention

A good speaker can mesmerise me without PowerPoint – like Eric Lease Morgan, who can talk without slides and give out a one page handout summarising his talk at the start. For the rest of us – there is PowerPoint.

I think of the images on my slides as the place where my audience’s attention can go if they need a break from my words or their delivery. They may as well look at my slides than around the audience or doodle on their notepad. And the slide image should be searing a point into the audience’s brain

I use a *lot* of images in my slides.  This is partly because they are my cue-cards, and I need a lot of prompting.

I usually choose images from my own collection, via a Creative Commons search on Flickr, or rarely from everystockphoto.  Often I will have themes to them, like the monkey images that I used in Five Social Software Sites that Libraries Shouldn’t Ignore , or the cats in “But I don’t have time … and they don’t get it” . I do this to make it easier to quickly narrow down images – and I like the challenge and the visual jokes that can appear from these.

Flowing

I never write down what I will say, but I do practise, practise, practise the complete run through at least 3-4 times before presenting it. By that time I have cut most of the gabbly crap and refined my words into sensible sentences that fit the time frame.

I do try to keep to my abstract. As Paul Genoni says, it is a contract with the audience about what you will say.

As I build the slides, choosing images or film clips, I will often decide exactly what I will say then…so that when I have my slidedeck complete, I more or less know what I will say.

The night before a presentation, I will open up Audacity and record what I will say. This gives me an audio track to add to the slidedeck later – and it forces me to hear what the audience will hear the next day.

Technical issues

If I am using video, I try to use my own PC, to ensure that there is no problem with a missing or odd codec on the host PC.

I back up to thumb drive, DropBox and put a copy on my bluehost site.

I upload a copy of the slidedeck to slideshare the night before and make it private until after the talk. I tell the audience it will be there, so they are welcome to take notes but don’t have to.

I print out a copy of my slidedeck using a 9 slide handout view – so that if the power fails I have that. I plan what I will do if there are technical hitches, and I cannot present with PowerPoint.

These simple keyboard commands are lifesavers:

• F5 to start slideshow
• slidenumber<enter> to jump to a slide
• B – display a black screen (B returns to slideshow again)
• W – display a white screen (W returns to slideshow again)

Thats about it.

In dreaded single slide dotpoints:

• use PowerPoint as just one complementary element with voice,content, body, interaction
• be there for the audience, not the screen
• hand out any handouts, don’t use the slidedeck that you show
• use what is special about PowerPoint to create a great start
• use screencast and video slides to tighten demos
• use chapters and “today’s menu” slides to give structure
• use PowerPoint to give your audience something interesting to look at if they don’t want to look at you
• practise, practise, practise, practise the whole thing out loud with clickthroughs in real time
• try recording your audio and play back to ensure the PowerPoint complements it.
• have electronic and paper backups and know what you would do if you could not access your PowerPoint.

I like this promotion for Australian Library & Information Week from Mosman Library – Mosman Library vs that search engine. Great idea and very well executed…but can’t we all be friends ?

Simple message in this blog post.

Go and read  Stephen Collins‘ keynote Public Engagement. Public Empowerment.

Many of the issues he raises are at the heart of what libraries that want to survive should engage with – Open Data; helping the citizenry to be informed and powerful; understanding hyperconnectivity; engaging in real conversation and connections with our users. Just a small excerpt:

In a hyperconnected world, our ability to readopt these denser forms of association, made sustainable by tools such as social networks, become reality. We become the true global village, as much the neighbor to the bloke next door as some geographically remote but by association, close, neighbor with whom we share an interest.

Our families and governing structures no longer inhabit a nearby, day or two’s ride from our wattle and daub huts. Rather, we live in a 24x7x365, always-on world where our village truly is global. In a world where we can be and are increasingly, we face the very real risk of political, social and cultural hyperisolation if we fail to participate as individuals and as part of society.

Already, we see this happening in our own lives as we increasingly turn to trusted sources for information, turning our back in growing numbers on the formal media which has yet to catch up with this engaged super-community. We empower ourselves to make better, more informed decisions and to take action on those decisions.

It is from this morning’s  GOVIS 2009 – User Centred Government: More than meets the eye – a conference in New Zealand about Government and Web2.0.

If you are in Canberra, you can hear him speak on 26 May 2009 at the National Library Technicians Day event at Functions at Reid CIT (I think that is the right event- his acidlabs site says that he is speaking in Canberra for NLTD, and this is the only similar event I can find on the ALIA site).

Last Friday, I was awarded the  Jean Arnot Memorial Fellowship for my paper Why Learning about emerging technologies is part of every librarian’s job (WORD doc).

The fellowship is awarded to a female librarian or female student of librarianship for an outstanding original paper of no more than 5000 words on any aspect of librarianship.

The award is administered by the State Library of New South Wales and describes Jean’s legacy thus:

Jean Fleming Arnot, MBE, FLAA, a former staff member of the State Library of New South Wales, who retired as head cataloguer in 1968 after a distinguished career of over 47 years of service. Miss Arnot was active in women’s organisations and a pioneer in the campaign for equal pay.

The Jean Arnot Memorial Fellowship is funded by a generous donation from the National Council of Women of New South Wales Incorporated and the Australian Federation of Business and Professional Women’s Associations Incorporated as a memorial to Miss Arnot and her achievements.

Equal Pay for Equal Work

Jean Arnot began as an apprentice librarian at the Public Library of New South Wales (as it was then known)  in 1921. She retired in 1968, the year that I was born. For 42 years – just over how long I have been alive – she was paid less than men in the organisation, even those in less senior positions.   In 1952, for example, when Jean Arnot was Head Cataloguer at the Public Library, she was paid 1009 pounds p.a. Her deputy, Mr Bolt, was paid 1101 pounds p.a ( NSW Office of Equal Opportunity in Public Employment (1998) Pay Equity Case Study: Librarians and Geologists. OEOPE, Sydney p31 cited in the Schmidmaier  article below) . It was only the last 5 years of her career that she received equal pay.

Although women within Miss Arnot’s organisation eventually received the same payment as men within the organisation, this did not mean that professionals in this female dominated workplace were paid the same as professionals in male dominated workplaces. I have no idea whether Jean Arnot’s example was an inspiration for those who pushed for what became the  Pay Equity Enquiry 1996 – 1998, but her efforts surely  paved the way. It was not until 28 March 2002 that a decision was handed down in the NSW Industrial Relations Commission that librarians in the State Public Service should be paid the same as other professions. The practical result of this was pay rises of up to 25% for librarians. That’s just seven years ago. I agree with Dagmar Schmidmaier , who was CEO of the State Library of New South Wales during this period:

librarians need to be absolutely vigilant and take advantage of all opportunities to ensure that the undervaluation of their profession does not occur again.

For more on Jean Arnot and the New South Wales pay equity case please see Dagmar Schmidmaier  and Anne Doherty’s paper presented at the World Library and Information Congress:  71th (sic) IFLA General Conference and Coucil,  Pay equity for the library profession: a State Library of New South Wales perspective.

…or maybe not…

Librarians need to know about authoritative sources of information. Librarians need to teach other people how to evaluate the reliability of resources.

Nothing new there.

What is new is how widely distributed the sources can be and how important context can be to their authoritativeness – and how much librarians need to understand about these new contexts.

Three examples of the need to understand context crossed my desktop this week.

EXAMPLE ONE: Twitter is evil

Swine flu: Twitter’s power to misinform .  Evgeny Morozov, Foreign Policy, net.effect. 25/04/09. In Evgeny Morozov’s opinion Twitter is noisy and full of misinformation about Swine Flu and likely to scare people who will encourage others to panic.

I can’t quote the article due to possible copyright restrictions.

Instead, here’s a cartoon from xkcd, Swine Flu .

EXAMPLE TWO: Elsevier is evil.

Elsevier published fake medical journals: Elsevier published six ‘fake’ Australian medical journals on behalf of pharma companies Kate McDonald, Australian Life Scientist, 08/05/2009 .  The Australasian Journal of [insert term here] will no longer be taken quite so seriously now that Elsevier has revealed that the Australasian Journal of Bone and Joint Medicine was actually funded by pharmaceutical company Merck, contained only reprints or summaries of articles from other Elsevier journals that contained positive references to two of the company’s products and only had advertisements for the same two products.

I can’t quote the article due to possible copyright restrictions.

Instead, here is a link to a great conversation  from a mob of librarians on Friendfeed.It starts with a comment from Steve Lawson and continues with over eighty comments that range over the deficits of academic journals in general, I think the LSW needs to get Elsevier to publish the Australasian Journal of Library Science.

Oh, and a cartoon from Organisation Monkey, Australasian Journal of Bone and Joint Medicine

EXAMPLE THREE – Wikipedia is evil

Student’s Wikipedia hoax quote used worldwide in newspaper obituaries Genevieve Carbery , Irish Times, 06/05/09.  When composer Maurice Jarre died at the end of March 2009, newspapers around the world carried a beautiful quote from him: ““One could say my life itself has been one long soundtrack. Music was my life, music brought me to life, and music is how I will be remembered long after I leave this life. When I die there will be a final waltz playing in my head, that only I can hear,””. The source? Wikipedia. The problem? A 22 year old student had placed the quote in Jarre’s Wikipedia page the night of Jarre’s death, and kept adding it even though Wikipedia’s editors deleted it several times.

I can’t quote the article due to possible copyright restrictions.

Instead, here is a quote from the discussion page for the Wikipedia entry for Maurice Jarre: ” Although I may agree it’s something of a rude experiment have a bit of proportion. This is not equivalent to getting someone arrested or poisoning their Tylenol. It’s more like doodling on a library book or at most streaking at the Oscars.–T. Anthony (talk) 05:38, 8 May 2009 (UTC) ”

What conclusions can we draw from these articles?

1. Twitter, Elsevier and Wikipedia should be legally stopped before they can do any more damage?

2. There is no context in which Twitter, Elsevier and Wikipedia will be a reliable or useful information source?

3. Librarians don’t need understand the many different ways  Twitter can be used, the funding patterns of academic journals nor how references are quality controlled in Wikipedia?

Nope. Librarians need to understand how information on Twitter, in academic journals and Wikipedia  is created, distributed, re-used, re-purposed and the criteria for sensible evaluation.

I am attending Educause Australasia 2009 : Innovate, Collaborate & Sustain here in Perth from Monday 4 May – Monday 6 May.

Although there is a closed social networking site provided by the conference organisers, I don’t think I will use it, for many of the reasons that Peta Hopkins gives here in her post about Preparing for edaust09 . Peta is right when she talks about a “subversive back channel”. For me, often the most enriching comments via social networking come from someone several time-zones away who is watching remotely. I can almost see the point of a closed chat channel for attendees, but I’m puzzled about why we have to log in to a walled garden to find the tag being used for the conference or to see tweets and photos that use the conference tag.

If you are interested in seeing the public tweets and Flickr photos that have been tagged with the conference tag, edaust09, I have set up a TwitterFountain in this post. It updates every three minutes.

Peta and I (and maybe a few others) are feeding our live tweets from 8am – 6pm each day from @petahopkins and @libsmatter into three CoverItLive sessions.  I’ve embedded them over at LibrariesInteract.info, as we are officially reporting for librariesinteract.info, Educause Australasia Conference 2009 – Librariesinteract.info reporting. It updates in real time and anyone can make comments or ask questions.

I will be presenting two sessions for the conference, both on Tuesday 5 May.

Personal Learning Environments: What Works for Librarians Tuesday 5 May, 10:00am to 11am, Meeting Room 8:

Educational Institutions no longer provide all the tools required for librarians to keep up to date with new technologies, collaborate with colleagues and share professional knowledge. Journal articles, conferences and formal coursework are no longer the primary methods of keeping up to date.

In this panel discussion, Kathryn Greenhill and Penny Coutas from Murdoch University, Peta Hopkins from Bond University and Constance Wiebrands from Curtin University discuss the online tools they use daily to create their own Personal Learning Environment. They describe how some of these tools work, what suits their daily workflow and may even vigorously defend the merits of their personal favourites.

Why Learning About Emerging Technologies is Part of Every Librarian’s Job Tuesday 5 May 4:00pm – 4:30pm, Meeting Room 6

In the last two years, several libraries have conducted formal learning programmes to familiarise staff with emerging technologies. Learning about new technologies should not begin and end with a formal learning programme, but should become part of every librarian’s job.

As staff learn about disruptive new web tools, then it is likely that the workplace will change to become a more flexible and nimble environment – reflecting the rapid change and flexibility that is happening online. Managers should be prepared for this, and for resistance to this change.

There are several objections staff raise when asked to make time for learning about new technologies in their already overcrowded day. Anyone implementing a staff learning programme needs to listen to these objections with respect and try to address these concerns.

If library staff understand why they should learn about emerging technologies, then they are more likely to find time to do so. This paper outlines twenty one reasons why learning about emerging technologies is part of every librarian’s job.

The paper concludes by offering some techniques for motivated staff to find time to learn about new technologies – either in a formal programme or as personal and professional development