Lise Summers who is a lecturer in our department, the president of the History Council and she works at the State Records Office.
Meg Travers who is a research student of 20th century electronic music at the Western Australian Academy of Performing Arts, and also works at the State Records Office of WA.
Speakers for the negative are:
Andrew Bowman is an independent researcher who has been involved in a number of digitisation projects, including a very successful one for the Carnamah Historical Society.
David Fricker who is Director-General of the National Archives of Australia
The event will be adjudicated by Bobbie Oliver who lectures in history at Curtin University.
The event is also an icebreaker for the start of semester for our students, with a wine and cheese for all attendees at 6pm before the debate which runs from 6:30pm until 8pm. There has been so much interest that we have had to change the venue to accommodate the numbers. We have also had several requests to livestream or record the event. In the interests of encouraging the speakers to be candid and robust in what they say, we decided not to do this. The irony, given the title of the debate, is not lost on us. The speakers have given permission for people to blog and tweet about the event, so watch for the hashtag #digideath13 . I am general bossy boots and MCing, but if I have time to tweet, I will be doing so from @infoventurer tonight.
There is a very nice downloadable paper that sets out three future scenarios for public, academic, school and special libraries plus collecting institutions. An short annotated bibliography accompanies the paper. You can download both from the ALIA Futures Wiki .
I spoke for 15 minutes at the start. My idea was to spark ideas rather than explain concepts . I wanted to highlight some areas where I think librarians should be listening and learning. I think that we connect people and information and that there have been great changes in the way that connection occurs and the form that information takes. I wanted to just suggest that we maybe need to pay more attention to these changes and work out how they relate to what we do.
Our team – Kim. Gaby, Vlad, Khoa, Catherine and I – worked on a project described as ” Make Perth’s transport and housing accessible to everyone. Make Movement Easier”.
We rapidly prototyped over 10 ideas in 10 minutes by drawing them only. We then took just one of those ideas and rapidly prototyped 10 ways to make that happen. We spent the rest of the morning working up three ideas, before going out to a shopping centre to road test them with real people and returning to the venue and killing off two of our darlings. For the next 24 hours we focused on a single solution.
We decided pretty early on that we wanted to focus on the train system and, given that it would take a lot of resources to cope with the uneven demand during the day that causes crowded and delayed trains at rush hour, we wanted to decrease the pain of the commute for regular commuters. We wanted to encourage more people with regular journeys to take the train to free up demands on the road system.
We killed off an idea to provide regular commuters with free wifi, special movie/music content exclusively to use on the train, pre-ordering of coffee to be delivered at the exit station and “frequent flyer” kinds of bonuses with partners at their destinations. I wasn’t so sad to see that one go. I found the other dead idea – which would have involved specially built big-arsed carriages that not many people could use and re-engineering the train energy supply – much more fun and attractive. We had “bicycle only” carriages where someone could see via an app before they got to the station whether there was space for their bike, then slot the bike into a special stand that allowed them to CONTINUE PEDALLING AND HELP TO POWER THE TRAIN. The app would connect to the “passport” function on their iPhone and let them on and off the train without doing more. It would tell them h.m. KJ they had burnt and how much power they had generated. It would have a leader board with other commuters so that they could regularly “race” other people and get rewards (free transport, coffee vouchers) each time they generated a certain amount of power. The power would also be used to generate hot water for extra showers installed at extra bike parking spaces at stations.
The idea we ended up going with was the Pop Up Hub . It is a reconfigurable community space that makes the railway platform a destination in itself, and gives a much more enjoyable experience to people who had to use the train anyhow. It starts with a basic structure that provides free wifi, work tables, a meeting space, coffee and recharge stations for electronic devices. Depending on the station location, demographic and time of year, other “hubs” can be connected to the core hub – for example a retail hub or a school holiday activity hub or a business hub. The sattelite hubs do not need electricity, plumbing etc independently because that is already supplied in the basic core hub. We recognised that actually local government support would be key to making the project successful so pitched it toward them as a place where flexible, one-off projects could be trialled without huge amounts of procedure and red-tape, and where local government could connect with their community.
We used personas to look at some of the activities that could take place there. We decided to set our hub at the Stirling train station. Jane,70, had set up her iPad cover store in the retail hub. She usually sold on Etsy only but for one month would have a place where people could see what she offered. When not selling she could maintain her site using the free wifi. She taught a craft class in the nearby school-holiday hub as an in-kind contribution. Julie, a mum was there to have coffee with a friend who had taken the train from Kelmscott while one of the kids attended a school holiday activity run by Ahmet, a library officer, and the other played Minecraft using the free wifi. Julie also signed her son up to the local soccer club that was having a registration day at the hub. Ahmet later helped Wayne, a digital consultant, to do some business research on his laptop while he waited for Joe, a mobile app developer from Joondalup , to come for a business meeting at the hub so they could avoid having to meet in the city.
Other projects from other groups are outlined on the Perth GovJam13 project page. We all worked like crazy to prototype and make movies for upload to the site by the 3pm deadline (It helped having an architect to draw the concept up). We didn’t have time to check the audio at all on our movie, just uploaded it JUST after the deadline. We then had 2 minutes to pitch to the group and two industry experts. The experts had 3 minutes to ask us leading questions. The other projects were:
Bang! an app to track and manage one’s household resource consumption and eco-footprint
Cardboard iPads an app to federate local government information into a single spot
My Life a plan for a single ID number for each person across all level of government with all information connected to this in one spot
In Cahoots an exchange and incubator for community projects
Our project was voted the project that participants would most like to see happen, while the Cardboard iPads project was voted as the project that would be most do-able.
You can see more about the Pop Up Hub at the project page. Or, you can watch the (umm…sometimes a little hard to hear but you get the idea) 3 minute movie:
I am spending today and tomorrow at Perth GovJam . This is a part of the Global GovJam taking place across the in over 20 countries around the world. We have “48 hours to rock the public sector” … About 60 of us are rapid prototyping solutions for the government sector, doing not talking, accepting uncertainty and failure as part of the process.
I am also on Tweeting duty from the official account for the Perth event, @perthgovjam . I only used the hashtag #pggovjam last night, but if you want to see what is happening globally, look to #ggovjam .
Last night we worked on sharing what “gov” means to us, thought about the theme, suggested some ideas and worked out what we would like our solutions to feel like. This involved a lot of postit notes, Sharpies, movement, laughter, yelling, drawing, thinking, categorising and moving.
We are formed into groups who are roughly working on ideas … all subject to change during the rest of the two days.
The Theme was revealed as “HC SVNT DRACONES” … I’ll leave it to you to work out what it involves.
I have brought in some of my kids’ toy cars and a large set of Wedgits so I can move them around as I think about the group that I have chosen, working on the idea: ” Make Perth’s transport and housing accessible to everyone. Make Movement Easier”. Many solutions involved crowd-sourcing and better organising government information … I stayed WAAAAY away from those projects as I want to work on something outside my expertise and interests .. and I didn’t want to be the voice saying “well, actually this project tried that and this is what happened, and have you considered x, y, z “… because I am not sure how useful it would be 🙂
(I *may* even go back and rotate the images in this post if I get time)
Finally, after The-Crash-We-Shall-Speak-About-No-More, Molly and I have sewn together the questions from New Librarians’ Symposium with the answers from Information Online.
Thanks to everyone who joined in. We would have liked to include everyone’s efforts, but we wanted to get something around 10 minutes.
We have released this under a Creative Commons license and have already had someone ask whether it would be OK to share this on a listserv to spark conversation. Yes!. Please do share and discuss and feel free to continue the conversation in the comments, on Twitter or whereever else you would like to.
When your PLN is buzzing about a conference not being there sucks. You know you’ll be able to follow much of it through Twitter, but it’s not the same as being there in person and getting to meet people and be inspired.
We know it’s not a good time for budgets. Your library might like to send you but won’t pony up and your personal funds won’t stretch that far.
Lucky for you, we want to give you a chance to be a part of our workshops spanning the two conferences. To be seen and heard by other participants. We are making a video and you can be a part without needing to be physically present in Brisbane.
If you are a new librarian, have a think about some questions you might want answered by people who have been in the profession longer than you. It could be anything from “If you were my manager, how could I impress you?” to “What extra skills do you look for when hiring?”. We’re sure you have some burning questions to ask.
You can tweet these questions to us using the hashtag #seenandheard or for bonus points, have a go at filming yourself asking the question (a smartphone will do fine) and tweet us a YouTube link. Keep an eye on the tweets from the account @seenandheardlib. At the end of this post is a widget with all the tweets from the account as they happen.
If you’ve been in the profession a while and would prefer to answer the questions, hang out until Feb 11 and keep an eye on @seenandheardlib for a link to the question video. When we release the video, pick a question and answer it. Once again, you can tweet us an answer using the hashtag #seenandheard or video yourself and send it through.
Don’t forget to keep an eye out for the #seenandheard hashtag during our sessions on the 10th and 12th of February to get some ideas of what others are asking and for the final video that we’ll be releasing on YouTube later in the week. We’ll also be capturing tweets via storify and posting them to this blog after the sessions.
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
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.
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).
