Archive for the ‘Conference’ Category

The folks at Educause have put together another of their “7 Things” guides, this time it’s 7 Things You Should Know About Backchannel Communication. The backchannel is the informal communication that goes on during a conference or other event, most notably on Twitter and other real-time tools. As usual Educause tackles the following questions:

1. What is it?
2. How does it work?
3. Who’s doing it?
4. Why is it significant?
5. What are the downsides?
6. Where is it going?
7. What are the implications for teaching and learning?

Today I presented a talk on Next-Generation Libraries at the Online Information Conference in London, England. Here’s a slidecast of my talk if you’d like to check it out.

Pete Cashmore at Mashable suggests Google Wave: Better than Twitter for Conference Chatter? This interesting post illustrates the effective use of Google’s new enhanced email app through screenshots of an audience attending a session at the Ecomm conference.

“Rather than a stream of disconnected Tweets, the result was a wiki-like page of annotations which evolved over the course of a presentation.”

I’m very excited to tell everyone that I’ll be writing a regular column for Library Journal’s Academic Newswire, and that my first column was published today! My column is called Stacking the Tech and it will be covering technology topics as they pertain to academic libraries in particular. My first article for the column is Unconference Uncovers Latest Tech Trends which covers the recent LibCampNYC 2009 event.

Boxes and Arrows has made podcasts available from Day 1 of the IA (Information Architecture) Summit 2009 which was held in Memphis, TN from March 20-22. More podcasts are to be published over the next two weeks. Here are a few that look interesting:

• Portable Research: Observing Users on the Go – Nate Bolt
• The Semantic Web: What IAs Need to Know About Web 3.0 – Chiara Fox
• Motivating Teams: Inspiring People To Do Great Work – Dorelle Rabinowitz
• Designing Rules: The Engine of User Experience – Dan Brown
• Site Redesign: When Hell Freezes Over Use A Blowtorch – Melissa Matross

I will be moderating the Open Libraries track at CIL2009 on Tuesday (March 31st) next week along with Steven Cohen. We have a great program planned with some awesome speakers. If you’ll be at the conference, please stop by and say hello! Here’s the lineup for the day:

Track B
B201 – Open Source Software
10:30 AM – 11:15 AM
Eric Lease Morgan, Head, Digital Access and Information Architecture Department, University Libraries of Notre Dame
Open source software (OSS) that is free to reuse, study, modify, and distribute is quickly being adopted by libraries today. From office productivity suites such as OpenOffice to library-specific applications such as ILS programs, next-gen catalogs, and Firefox extensions, the open source movement has a lot to offer libraries. This session looks at the many types of OSS available and how libraries are making use of them.

B202 – Open Source Browsers
11:30 AM – 12:15 PM
Jessamyn West, Community Technology Librarian, Randolph Technical Career Center
The best part of using an open-source browser such as Firefox is having the ability to create add-ons and extensions to handle a myriad of tasks and applications. From library toolbars, OPAC searches, and right-click context menus, innovative libraries can offer patrons added functionality through these simple Firefox extensions. This session focuses on Firefox and other open source browsers and their possibilities for libraries.

B203 – Unconferences
1:30 PM – 2:15 PM
Steve Lawson, Humanities Librarian, Colorado College
Stephen Francoeur, Information Services Librarian, Baruch College
John Blyberg, Head of Technology and Digital Initiatives, Darien Library
Kathryn Greenhill, Emerging Technologies Specialist, Murdoch University Library
The latest trend in conferences is to hold an open “camp” or “un”-conference in which the tone is informal and the program is determined by the attendees. Our panelists have all had experience organizing and hosting such events and talk about the process of coordinating a library “camp,” compare them to traditional conferences, and highlight when these camps are most effective.

B204 – Open Source Library Implementations
2:30 PM – 3:15 PM
Karen Kohn, Collection Development Manager, Arcadia University
Eric McCloy, Executive Director, Library and Information Technology, Arcadia University
The speakers discuss getting ready for a Koha implementation and share their learnings from the evaluation and planning stages. From both the librarian and IT perspective, they discuss why they were comfortable moving to open source software for their catalog, the steps mapped out on the road to migration, and how money was freed up for migration by staggering the process and provide good resources for more information.

B205 – Open Access: Green and Gold
4:00 PM – 5:00 PM
Shane Beers, Digital Repository Services Librarian, George Mason University
Amy Buckland, Liaison Librarian, Howard Ross Library of Management, McGill University Library Library Student Journal
The two main strategies of the Open Access (OA) movement, which strives to make scholarly literature and other resources freely available online to all readers, consist of green OA, involving the self-archiving of materials in digital repositories, and gold OA, which includes open access journal publishing. Salo discusses OA from the green side, including both institutional and disciplinary repositories. Buckland tackles OA from the gold side and looks at Public Knowledge Project’s Open Journal Systems and how academic libraries can support OA scholarly publishing at their universities.

Anyone who is presenting or attending an event this conference season will want to stop by Chris Brogan’s blog and peruse his checklist of 27 Things To Do Before a Conference. The post suggests a list of goal-oriented activities in the areas of research, content preparation, and promotion to get you ready for your event.

Speaking expert Olivia Mitchell guest posts at Pistachio about How to Present While People are Twittering. This timely article discusses how the conference back channel can work for you, and is a must-read for those speakers preparing for conference season. the post is divided into the following sections:

• Benefits of the back channel to the audience
• What about the speaker?
• Managing the back channel

Also, for those still getting up and running on Twitter, Derek Halpern at Prevential has created an Ultimate Twitter resource guide organized into chapters of useful links and articles pertaining to the popular microblogging application.

• Chapter 1: Twitter for Newbies
• Chapter 2: How to Use Twitter Effectively
• Chapter 3: How to Increase Your Twitter Followers
• Chapter 4: Why Twitter Helps Bloggers (and How they Can Use It)
• Chapter 5: The Ultimate Guide to Twitter for Business
• Chapter 6: Here are the Best Twitter Marketing Resources… Period
• Chapter 7: Does Twitter Provide Any SEO Benefits?
• Chapter 8: Where Else Does Twitter Apply?
• Chapter 9: Twitter Case Studies: What are People and Companies Doing?
• Bonus Chapter: More Twitter Tips

Cameron Moll at Authentic Boredom presents a guide to better conference speaking, providing detailed suggestions based on his own experiences over the last four years as a public speaker. The article’s guidelines are broken down into the following sections:

• Preparation
• Equipment
• On Stage: The Presentation
• On Stage: Q&A

Author of Here Comes Everybody, Clay Shirky gave a much discussed keynote at yesterday’s Web 2.0 Expo in NYC titled It’s Not Information Overload. It’s Filter Failure. In his talk he posits that the problem is not the enormous amount of information which is now available, but that we don’t have proper filters for it. Here’s a link to his PowerPoint presentation and a video of his presentation. And here is more coverage of his keynote:

• Are you suffering from information filter failure? - ZDNet Between the Lines blog
• It’s Not Information Overload; It’s Filter Failure - Internet Evolution

If you missed the Web 2.0 Expo, you can find highlights, videos, and speaker presentation files here.

If you are interested in learning more about Open Source software, you’ll want to check out the collection of over 100 presentation files from the recent O’Reilly OSCON Open Source Convention. These are just a few examples of the types of presentations you’ll find:

• Open Source and the Education Community: A Report, and Some Suggestions
• Open Source in the Enterprise
• The Google Open Source Update
• Even Faster Web Sites
• Going Open Source: The 20 Most Important Things To Do
• Introduction to Django

via Webmonkey

Web conferencing applications which enable a presenter to host a Webinar or meeting with live video and audio, text chat, whiteboards, shared files, and even desktop sharing offer countless opportunities for collaboration, online training, and remote assistance. While many of these sophisticated programs are costly, a new crop of free Web conferencing applications has emerged which offer amazing alternatives to traditional online meeting programs such as WebEx and GoToMeeting.

Librarians could use these free applications for holding office hours, reference consultations, library instruction, hosting their own Webinars, conducting live interviews, or collaborating with remote team members on projects.

VRoom by Elluminate is “three for free Web conferencing”. Elluminate lets users sign up for their own virtual meeting room (vRoom) in which they can hold Web conferences with live Webcam, two-way audio, application sharing, IM chat, whiteboard, and file transfer with up to 3 simultaneous users.

Yugma is a Web conferencing application which allows a presenter to share their desktop with conference attendees in order to demonstrate, share, or collaborate on projects. The free, personal version of Yugma enables conferencing with up to 10 people along with an IM chat interface within sessions. Professional accounts can record sessions, share files, change presenters, and share mouse and keyboard controls. The Skype edition integrates with the VOIP application and includes the users’ Skype contact list.

WiZiQ is a completely Web-based education platform which lets teachers present to up to 25 students from within a virtual classroom through live video, audio, and text chat. WiZiQ allows content sharing, provides a whiteboard and records sessions. They have a module which integrates with the Moodle LMS.

Dimdim is a free, open source live meeting software which offers audio and video conferencing and lets hosts share their desktop with attendees. This application requires no download or installation for meeting participants and can be used with up to 20 people with the free version. Dimdim offers whiteboards and both public and private chat options.

PalBee enables members to conduct video conferencing sessions complete with whiteboards, text chat interface, file sharing capabilities, and free recording of sessions. Presenters can hold unlimited sessions with up to five people for up to one hour, and also can pre-record sessions and then share them

Vyew is a fully Web-based conferencing and collaboration application which features white boards, audio and video support, and an integrated chat client. Hosts can share their desktops, take screenshots, conduct conference calls with up to 150 others, and hold conference sessions with up to 20 participants with the free version.

The speaker presentation files for the recent Web 2.0 Expo which was held April 22-25, 2008 in San Francisco, CA are now available. If you weren’t able to attend the popular O’Reilly conference, you can still access the 50+ sessions including:

• Games 2.0: Why the Future of Games Looks More Like Zombies and Scrabulous and Less Like Halo 3
• How to Create Successful Unconferences, BarCamps, & Meetups for Almost No $$
• Social Data: Collecting, Mining, and Using it in Your Applications
• Taking Web 2.0 Offline and On the Desktop
• The Next Generation of Tagging: Searching and Discovering a Better User Experience

This year’s conference was jam-packed with informative and entertaining sessions. Here are a few links to presentation slides, but be sure and keep an eye on Slideshare for more:

Libraries Solve Problems (Keynote) - Lee Rainie

Online Outreach for Libraries: Successful Digital Marketing - Sarah Houghton-Jan

Transparency, Planning & Change: See-Through Libraries - Michael Stephens and Michael Casey

Pecha Kucha 2.0 Podcasting Edition - Greg Schwartz

Technology Training for Library Staff: Creativity Works! - Sarah Houghton-Jan

Podcasting & Videocasting Bootcamp - David Lee King and David Free

Innovation Starts with “I” - Helene Blowers and Tony Tallent

From Avatars to Advocacy: Innovation through Un-marketing - Helene Blowers and Michael Porter

Harnessing New Data Visualization Tools - Darlene Fichter

Mashups for Non-Techies: Yahoo! Pipes - Jody Fagan

and the InfoTubey award winners

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Today at the Computers in Libraries 2008 conference, I presented on the open source content management system Drupal and how it’s being used by libraries and librarians. For those of you who weren’t able to make the conference but are still interested, I’ve created a Slidecast of my talk which is a combination of my PowerPoint presentation and an audio track. You can also just download the presentation and check out the speaker notes if you’d rather.