CIL2009: Pecha Kucha: 2.0 Top Tips

Prior to the session, the bloggers in the front row were a bit too lively! The poor speakers may have feared that they had competition from the audience.

Panel -- each person has 6 min. 20 sec. total, with 20 seconds per slide. This turned out to be news to some of the presenters! Aaron Schmidt will be advancing the slides for the speakers. In addition, the audience will get to vote on the best presentation.

Jessica Sanchez -- This is her first CIL. Blogs are an important tool for libraries to reach their users. You can even use them to keep in touch with coworkers. Even tech-newbies can understand and create blogs. Who is blogging? President Obama and he is microblogging (although we recognize that he may have a ghost blogger). Tagging on blog posts can help organize blog posts. Blogs can cut down on email.

Only post on topic and make it relevant. If it is an institutional blog, you don't want to make it too personal. Be sure to tag your posts. Be sure to respond quickly to comments. Use questions, etc., to spark blog posts.

Nathan Flinchum -- We were All N00bs: Learning the Social Web by using the Social Web. Our patrons may feel a bit like they are jumping "into the deep in" when they begin using web 2.0. They may have concerns. We need to step back and think about how we got started, and use those memories. We learned by using the Internet/web 2.0. Not just going to training, but actually using the tools.

Why did we use it? Answer - something that we were interest in used to the Web as a tool (for communication). This was our on-ramp to the Internet. A single site of group of sites on a specific topic. On ramp qualities - a place where people with variety of skills levels can participate. The on-ramp allows the person to learn skills without them knowing it.

Mentioned:

• Ning
• Laconica
• and others

Make what you put up for patrons to use a safe place for them to practice.

Learn from your friends. "Steal" what they are doing.

BTW Nathan is an SU iSchool graduate.

Jenny Novalis -- What is TechChat? They cover a variety of topics in their hands-on demonstrations and in their wiki. What is TechChat? A program/process. The TechChat wiki is a 24/7 reminder of what they learned. Besides the patron wiki, there is also a staff wiki. Staff can talk amongst themselves on the wiki and do brainstorming using the wiki.

What has staff reaction been? Yes, it is one more thing that they will have to learn. But they should see it as a benefit.

Joe Murphy -- Strategies for the Mobile Future of Libraries. These are the dominant device in our lives. Not sure cell phones, but smart phones. He trades about 400 text messages a day! OMG! He gets lots of info through text messages.

Text messaging is a way of information exchange, especially with doing reference.

Will be partnering with outside organizations to provide features.

He believes we should be able to engage our libraries and our library accounts with SMS (text messages).

Mobile apps are truly important and people are looking for them. They are downloaded, customizable. He wants these apps to be full functioning, just like the apps we're using on our computers.

BTW he used is cell phone for his notes during the presentation.

We do need to understand how to build and manage these services. They will not be "IT things". We need to understand how to market these apps, so they are findable by people who need them.

He believes that associations (and he mentioned SLA by name) should have mobile applications.

"It's not just about Twitter." (Nice closing statement.)

Madeline Kreischer -- Going to talk about the failed Facebook experiment. She is a federal court librarian. They were trying to use social networking to interact with the law clerks. They knew they wouldn't be able to interact with the judges. They decided to use Facebook. She felt that if people stay the Facebook page for the law library in action, then they would endorse it.

She created a Facebook page for the law library with lots of information on it. How could someone say "no" to that?

Benefits:

• Reach a wider audience
• Meet expectations
• Change attitudes

Drawbacks: (similar to the benefits)

• Reach a wider audience
• Real and perceived security risks
• and others

The Hurdles:

• The IT Dept.
• The judges
• the fear-mongers
• Other librarians

So even though she though she could go through the backdoor on this, she really did need to go through the proposal process and get everyone on board.

Bottom line "Hang in there!"

Who did the best presentation? Three-way tie, but the winner was Joe!

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