Being Seen and Heard: A webcam workshop across two conferences. Co-facillitator, Molly Tebo. 10 February 2013 and 12 February 2013.

This workshop has its own page that will in the next few weeks contain:

• information about how to join in from home via Twitter or other social media
• information for participants about how to get movies they make to us during the workshop
• little movies that are created from NLS6 for response at Information Online as we deal with them
• other useful information for participants
• the final stitched-together movie

We even made a little movie describing our little movie sessions, Greenhill and Tebo Being Seen and Heard .

• DESCRIPTION:

• New Librarians will explore their professional voice and ask questions. Information Online delegates will learn how to talk to their webcam and provide answers. By the end we will have a movie.The New Librarians’ workshop will focus on being seen within the profession and creating a “professional voice”. What does a new graduate need to do to establish a professional reputation and be known within a network of potential employers, and one day, co-workers or employees? Can one “lead from any position” and establish a leadership role early in one’s career? What are  employers looking for and what is the best advice received by established librarians? These questions will be considered using discussion and facilitated activities. By the end of the conference, participants will have created a movie containing questions that will then be answered by participants in the Information Online Workshop.

• The Information Online workshop will focus on communicating using moviemaking, particularly when you need to talk to camera. The focus will be on using common workplace equipment like webcams and mobile phones to create visually pleasing, audible and effective communication. Topics covered will include- why do it?, to script or not to script? Overcoming your inner-dork when you talk to camera, getting participant permission, setting up your gear, lighting, creating the best audio, editing, processing and hosting the final product. Bring your own webcam-enabled laptop or smart mobile device plus earbuds or headset.  If you have a play beforehand so you know how to record movies, then that would be useful, although not essential. By the end of the conference participants will have created a movie containing answers to questions that were posed in the New Librarians workshop.

NEW LIBRARIANS’ SYMPOSIUM SESSION

• DATE: Sunday 10 February
• TIME: 9:25- 10:10am
• VENUE: Queensland University of Technology, Gardens Point Campus
• REGISTRATION: Sixth New Librarians’ Symposium

INFORMATION ONLINE SESSION

• DATE: Tuesday 12 February
• TIME: 3pm – 4pm
• VENUE: Brisbane Convention and Exhibition Centre
• REGISTRATION: ALIA Information Online 2013

I am running the workshop below as part of the Sixth New Librarians’ Symposium. If you are a participant, please read the separate page that outlines what you have to do before the workshop and a link to a survey to complete before the workshop.

Get your hands dirty and build your own WordPress website. 9 February 2013

• DATE: Saturday 9 February
• TIME: 9am to 5pm
• VENUE: Queensland University of Technology, Gardens Point Campus
• REGISTRATION: Sixth New Librarians’ Symposium
• DESCRIPTION:
  • One of the best ways to show a potential employer that you understand about online identity management and that you can technically create a web presence is to build your own professional ‘home’ site. To achieve this is simple – buy web hosting and install WordPress. Participants have homework to do before the workshop – buy hosting at bluehost.com and choose a domain name. The setup will cost around $110 up front. Instructions will be provided, but it is essential to complete this a couple of days before the workshop.
  • By the end of this workshop you will have built an attractive, elegant and well-organised home site. You will understand more about the settings you need to adjust when installing WordPress, how to make the site look good using themes, how to make it do more by using plugins and how to add bling with widgets.

I just created the Happy365 group on Flickr .

Very simple idea – from 1 January 2013 post an image each day showing something that has made me happy. I would like to know what makes other people happy too, so I have invited a number of Flickr contacts and am very happy for anyone else to join in. I loved watching everyone add their daily images when a bunch of us did the Daily Image 2011 challenge. Feel free to add yourself to the group.

I tend to like a daily nudge when I am doing this kind of thing, so I have created a Twitter account that spits out a link to each image as it is posted in the group. If you follow it, then you will see lots of inspiring (I hope!) or maybe puzzling images showing what makes other people happy. It is at: @Happy365Flickr .

 

 

… and after a hiatus that I hope will be the longest that happens after six years of writing this blog.

The URL for librariansmatter.com was not redirecting to librariansmatter.com/blog. After poking about and talking to my very nice and patient friend Blake, I found that the .htaccess file had been altered to point somewhere else and that the installation had some very suspicious files injected into it. I spent yesterday backing it all up, blowing away what was there and re-installing WordPress.

My life, similarly, has been feeling a bit hacked in the last 12 months, but I am hoping that in 2013 I can focus a little more on doing some of the things I prefer to do – like blogging here and at FQ.

I am facilitating three workshops and am chairing a panel at two conferences in February in Brisbane next year, so I hope to provide more details in separate posts over the next couple of days.  Given that the day-long workshop is all about installing and using WordPress, rebuilding my blog was a (great? welcome?) opportunity to take some screenshots of how to install and tweak a WordPress site…really, thanks hackers…

I am also hoping to start another Flickr project for the new year. Having done a daily image for 2009 and then again in 2011 I am aiming to take an image each day in 2013 of things that make me happy… so if you are in my Flickr contacts and were part of the Daily Image project in 2011, you may be getting an email from me soon…

(I’d like to say thanks to Melanie in Germany who took time out when she received an automatically generated “hello world” post in her RSS feed to find out what had happened and send me an encouraging email).

I just completed giving my part of the Creativity and libraries keynote Library 2.012 Conference Thursday 4 October with Mal Booth. .

Here is the little movie I created when I did my run-through a couple of days ago, showing my slides and what I said, Creativity and libraries: you keep using that word. I do not think it means what you think it means.  I did not wear a rainbow-striped top when I did the real thing.

.. you keep using that word. I do not think it means what you think it means.

Mal Booth and I are teaming up to keynote the Library 2.012 Worldwide Virtual Conference at 21:00 WST on Thursday 4 October.

Here is a summary of what we will say:

TITLE: Creativity and libraries: You keep using that word. I do not think it means what you think it means

 tl:dr summary: Creativity. Kathryn will talk about how libraries and researchers talk about it. Mal will talk about how UTS library does it with flair.

 Abstract: Libraries often claim to increase the creativity of their communities, with an implication that this is an important role for our future. “Creativity”, however, is defined by creativity researchers in many different ways. Kathryn Greenhill’s section of this keynote will give an academic’s point of view, looking at how libraries use the term “creativity” and whether different definitions of creativity can help us be more precise when we talk about it, measure it and use it to justify our futures. Mal Booth will take a practitioner’s view and discuss the exemplary initiatives and approaches to creativity implemented by the University of Technology, Sydney.

 This conference runs non-stop for 3 days, presenting continuous sessions of up-to-the-minute issues in libraries from practitioners around the globe. 150 sessions with 10 keynotes. FREE!  You can see the schedule using Perth Western Australia time here: http://www.library20.com/page/library-2-0-schedule-gmt-8-1 .

You can browse the topics here http://www.library20.com/forum/categories/library-2-012-accepted-conference-presentations/listForCategory . Topics  are as diverse as:

•  library services to youth in prisons
• digital storytelling for information literacy development
• ebook delivery models
• outreach using mobile apps
• recruiting library volunteers
• social media tools for job searching,

Here is some more information about the conference.

>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>

The Worldwide Library 2.012 Virtual Conference is next week, and kicks off early Wednesday, October 3rd. We have an amazing (and packed!) global schedule of 150 accepted presentations and 10 keynotes that will challenge your ability to get any sleep during the two days of the conference.
1. The full hour-by-hour schedule for the conference has been posted, with instructions on connecting and participating. http://www.library20.com/page/sessions-and-schedule. Once on this page, choose your time zone, and click on the links to the individual session titles for more details and, starting on October 3rd, the links to the specific virtual room for each session.

2. We still need volunteer moderators! You don’t have to be a Blackboard Collaborate expert, but if you are, or you take the one-hour training, then you are qualified and we could really use your help. 🙂 Please see the information for volunteers (and join the volunteer group) at http://www.library20.com/group/volunteer-group-library-2-012.

3. Spread the word! Library 2.012 is free to anyone to attend, so please let others know about the conference. Last year we had almost 10,000 attendee logins, and we’d love to see even more people become aware of the conference and the terrific community. Logos you can use for blog posts, emails, etc. can be found athttp://www.library20.com/page/2-012-press-media. At the bottom of this note is a short text message you can use as well, especially for emailing. Please take the time to send to your colleagues or community.

Thank you, and see you online!

Steve

Steve Hargadon
Co-Chair, Library 2.012
http://www.stevehargadon.com

As promised in my presentation at the State Library of Queensland, here are my slides with audio commentary that I recorded at my desk a couple of days before flying to Queensland.

The event was called “Libraries in a Google World” and aimed at public librarians. I was the first speaker so I wanted to set up some background information, ensuring that we were all on the same page for the panel discussion afterward. I also wanted to raise some ideas that may be worth debating afterwared.

I ended up really focussing a lot on Google search and how it is different from the information environment that public libraries are creating for their users. I wanted to make sure that when the audience next heard “semantic search” or “triples” they realised that they should actually be paying attention and working out how this may affect them, rather than presuming that someone else has to think about these concepts.

Here is the video of my slides, G is for Google, H is for Harry and L is for Library .

The ten ideas that I suggested for public libraries were:

• Idea 1: Use consortia to provide the generics. I don’t care if you think that you can’t get along
• Idea 2: Focus on the deeply local. We have a remit to get our local information and history digitised, metadata added and available for online search and remix.
• Idea 3: Not all of our potential users obey the law when obtaining content
• Idea 4: Illegal content supply is a hidden competitor
• Idea 5: Public libraries should not be funded to serve everyone. Everyone should be welcome, but many users will use other information sources. We should focus on those who really need us – those without information access due to disability, illiteracy, poverty, discrimination or age.
• Idea 6: Hybridize. Drop the word “library” if necessary. We may find ourselves converging with art galleries, museums, archives, records offices and public broadcasters and will probably need to share expertise, staff and venues.
• Idea 7: There is no Gympie branch of Google. Value Venue.
• Idea 8: Democracy, advocacy and community are out points of difference from other information suppliers
• Idea 9: Report outcomes not outputs
• Idea 10: Stop doing one thing, then another

 

I am at the State Library of Queensland, talking at their “Libraries in a Google World” conference. My slideset with audio is being published at 10am in a separate post.

Here is a CoverItLive window displaying all the tweets from my @libsmatter account and those with the hashtag #LiGW2012.

I love it when the Internet makes me feel clever just because I can follow instructions. I just used the Automator that comes with the Mac. I created a little application to do what Powerpoint could not.

Smug Windows users do not need to read this. Your version of Powerpoint allows you to insert an album of images and instantly have one slide created for each one.

For the Mac, this functionality does not come with Powerpoint.

I decided to use Keynote for the first time when creating my presentation for the State Library of Queensland on Thursday. I used one of the funky fonts that came with Keynote and – of course – when I exported my slideshow to Powerpoint and tried it on someone else’s PC, all the pretty font formatting disappeared. I knew that I would have to do what Kate suggested – export each slide as an image and then import it into a new Powerpoint slideshow.

I *may* have *cough* over 100 *cough* slides, so did not fancy inserting each image one by one.

So – bless the little cotton socks of Stephen Rinsberg who created the PPTTools site. His page about how to BATCH Import Images into PowerPoint page showed me how to open the Automator, add in an “Ask for Finder Items” Variable, then add a “Create PowerPoint Picture Slideshow” , save the thing to my desktop, click to run and SOLVE MY PROBLEM. It did leave a white border around each slide, but since most of my slides had a white background anyhow it does not look bad enough for me to manually adjust each one.

Note to self: Play with the Automator. Find out more about it. It looks fun and powerful.

Next week I am flying to the State Library of Queensland to be part of a forum discussing public libraries in a Google World. Thank you very much to SLQ for the invitation.

Five of us are giving our opinions on the topic, then we are part of a panel discussion.  I will be joined by Kate Davis, Jemima McDonald, Caroline Gauld and Francis Kneebone. My talk will touch on Harry Potter, underwear, planets, pirates, Angry Birds and Lego – the usual fare from me.

Registration closed today (Friday 15 June) for those in Queensland (contact details are on the flyer below). If you cannot make it, you can watch it webcast live through the SLQ website and follow the Twitter tag #LiGW2012.