InfoCampPDX Recap

AJLouie's sketch of Jason Sack's keynote.

InfoCamp was a success. And its success was completely due to our participants.

It has been said before that unconferences are perfect examples of the "if you build it, they will come" phenomena. Last weekend proved this for me. I am not going to lie - I was a bit nervous going into it. Building an unconference involves a giant leap of faith. You get your ducks in a row: order coffee, slice up bagels, rent a space, market the heck out of your event. But the day is only successful if folks show up and fill you break out sessions with interesting topics that create conversation and collaboration. And that is exactly what happened at InfoCampPDX.

Here is a list of the presentations that were offered throughout the day:

• Modeling - Tips & War Stories: A Discussion  
• Passionate Research: How do you find info when you’re on an obsession?
•  Information visualization, what is it good for? Much more than absolutely nothing.”
  
• Instrument Resonance: Finding the Bach in city noise” or “Creating meaning out of chaos with semantic model resonance filtering"
• You should talk to your doctor. And so should your phone. Information in a healthcare context.
• The confluence of: Information literacy, Information Retrieval & Information Architecture
• You don’t pay attention to what you’re NOT looking for. User expectations & the world of information
• Taxonomy Madness 
• Wiki at 16: Wikimedia Strategic Planning 
• A work session for library people interested in supporting a student and new professionals round table in OLA 
• Get Sketching: DIY Information Visualization Design 
• Designing Awe: The science of surprise and delight 
• Information Analytics: What is the role of measurement technology for encouraging accuracy of returned results? 
• How to Throw an InfoCamp

If anyone is interested in helping plan next year's InfoCamp - and we already have some momentum built up after Saturday's success - send the organizing committee an email: infocampPDX@gmail.com.


Again, thank you to the fellow organizers, the sponsors, the volunteers, and especially the participants for making Portland's first InfoCamp an excellent day!

#nerdingout

First. Why you should come to InfoCampPDX:

Last: I obviously have way too much time on my hands:

That is all. Good day.

InfoCamp is coming to town!

I'm pretty excited to announce that InfoCampPDX is going to be a reality!

The unconference is going to be hosted at the Q Center on February 4th, 2012 from 9am to 5pm.

Registration is going to be $30, with $20 discounted registration for students.

For those of you who are not familiar with InfoCamp, it's a one day unconference for people excited about connecting people with information. This includes visual and user experience designers, librarians, web folk and other InfoNerds. It started in Seattle (which I've attended the past two years - you can read about my experience there last year)  and the model has been recreated in California, South Carolina and even Germany. 


User experience (UX) has been the most exciting topic I've learned about since starting library school. And now that I am continuing down the path toward a real career, I hope that UX continues to be a focus of my professional life.

That's why I got involved with the planning of InfoCampPDX. I'm always wanting to learn more about UX, so I figured why not help get the unconference up and going here in Portland. So far I have stepped up to help coordinate volunteers (if you want to volunteer - email me at infocampPDX@gmal.com), build our website and manage our twitter and facebook accounts (with Kirsten Himes). 

Since I love social networking, I thought it would be fun to think of creative ways to market our event. I remember the first time I went to InfoCamp Seattle, I knew nothing about UX, so I thought it would be fun to send out some online video clips that examine UX from different perspectives. I know that this will ruin the suspense of following our social media sites, but out of my excitement I wanted to post the videos I found here. These videos all play nicely together because A) it shows the development of human computer interaction and design over the past ten years and what might be waiting in our future and B) it shows how UX is integrated into so many different industries: education, academia, media, entertainment, retail, medicine, non-profits etc. Where ever you find technology and innovation, you find user experience.

This one looks at the value of user experience:



This one is hilarious because it is so old:



These next two show cool ways users will be able to interact with visual information:





Who doesn't love a really good hack:

InfoCamp Seattle Recap

I shot off a quick post the other day from the middle of a session at this year's InfoCamp Seattle, but now that I am home I wanted to sit down and report back on my time there:

Opening session at InfoCamp Seattle 2011

Kane Hall, University of Washington 

For those of you who aren't familiar with InfoCamp: it's a user experience unconference. User experience (UX), in very broad terms, is a look at how users/customers/patrons are interacting with the systems that are created for them. These systems include, but are not limited to: web sites, databases, software, programs, catalogs, etc. Probably 60% of the participants were from more technical industries (web designers, programmers, coders, developers) while 40% were from the library community. The "unconference" model is one where breakout sessions are organized as the day progresses, so anyone who shows up who would like to present would have the opportunity. It adds a grass roots feel to the event, which is pretty awesome.

The Keynote was given by Nishant Kothary, a writer, entrepreneur and Microsoft employee. His talk centered around the importance of failure, and included insights about behavior, neuroscience, design, economics, and, of course, cute dog photos. It was excellent. 

 Taco Time!

I attended some great sessions. The highlights included discussions on how to enter into a UX career, how to use tweets as a data set in quantitative and qualitative research, and how to incorporate UX principles into academic libraries. I also volunteered, to help cover the cost of the conference, and it was awesome to interact with folks at the registration table.

View of Mount Rainer from the University of Washington Campus.

The location was beautiful. I never realized how awesome the University of Washington Campus was. Not only was it a perfect setting for InfoCamp, but it was so much fun to spend the weekend in Seattle, seeing some old friends and eating some amazing food.

Librarian Extraordinaire, Kirsten Himes, trying to decide on which bowl of pho is for her. Don't let the sign dissuade you, it was an amazing meal. 

The highlight of the weekend, other than InfoCamp, was spending my birthday weekend with some close friends. Below, you can see Pfeif (our gracious host) preparing an amazing birthday dinner: tamari-maple-almond salmon with green beans and salad from her and her boyfriend's garden. It was great to spend a weekend out of town, with friends, learning about better ways to meet and exceed the expectations of our patrons.



InfoCamp was both invigorating and inspiring. I feel a renewed momentum to help get an InfoCampPDX started! We have a space booked in February 2012. So now it's time to roll up our sleeves and make it happen. if you live in the area, and are interested in helping out check out this wiki and feel free to drop me a line (turner.masland@gmail.com).

Special thanks to the organizing team of InfoCamp Seattle for an amazing weekend, and to Serenity Isben for letting me share her wonderful photos on here!

live blogging #InfoCampSeattle

Having a great time here in Seattle. Learning about some really cool projects.

One that just caught my interest: Wikipedia Loves Libraries. In short: a project to try and create a wikipedia page for every library.

A session on academic libraries is about to start, titled "Head in the Sand." Should be good. So I have to go. But to learn more about InfoCamp, a UX unconference, search for the hash tag #infocampseattle in twitter!

A Call for Creativity

This is the second post in a series celebrating National Library Week.

This term I am enrolled in the class "Information Services for Academic Libraries," which has provided some of the best readings to date in my MLIS program. One of the latest articles we read was Lingo and Tepper's "The Creative Campus" from the Chronicle of Higher Education.

While this article called for the need of more creativity in the academic institution as a whole, I feel that this argument is especially true for academic libraries. In a day and age where shouting out your relevancy to your users, communities and power holders may not even be enough, incorporating and promoting creativity within your organizational culture can certainly go a long way. Here are some recent examples of creative efforts by academic librarians:

Using free social networking tools to embed yourself in classes. Again in the Chronicle, there was an article highlighting a librarian who is embedded in a classroom, where she and the students are logged into twitter together. Throughout the class discussion, she will tweet relevant information sources and material. What is amazing about this is how in happens in real time, and the sources she recommends are in response to the topics and ideas brought up in discussion, not based off of a course reading list or research topic list - creating organic librarianship rather than static librarianship.

Re-imagining physical library space. I found this one by browsing Library Journal's list of 2011 movers and shakers. Joesph Sanchez, Library Director at Red Rocks Community College, converted an old storage room into a recording studio. Not only is that an amazing service to offer to students, but this would also be a great resource to include in marketing campaigns.

Providing amazing User Experience and Web Design. Everyone laments the ineffectual design found on academic websites (xkcd captured the sentiment perfectly). Creativity is an essential element of good design, and a lack of creativity equals bad design. Library websites are not immune from this phenomenon. I find that the typical causes for poor design on library websites are the stiffing policies set in stone by bureaucratic institutions. However, there are some libraries out there who are getting it right: While not perfect, I think PNCA's Fine Art Library is one of the better academic library websites I have seen. Simple? check... Navigable? check... Visually appealing? ...check and check!

Not only is this week National Library Week, but today is National Library Workers Day. Library workers (especially student workers) can be some of your biggest sources of creative potential, often bringing specialized skills and resources to the table. And keeping with the theme of Big Tent Librarianship, while this post focused on Academic Libraries any and all forms of libraries could always incorporate creativity. In fact, one of my favorite library websites comes from a public library! When it comes to creativity, I am a firm believer that we all have a thing or two to teach each other!

photo credit: New York Public Library, 1923, via The Commons

Librarians finally learn web design

I know that it has been forever and a day since I last posted. This semester I made a decision to really focus on school, and it's paid off in spades. I feel like I've done the best academic work that I've ever done. I know, you must be thinking, shouldn't every semester be like that? Yes, it should, and it usually is. But I think this term I realized that my MLIS program is about to come to an end, and I really want to make the most of the time I have left.

But of course, focusing more on school has had it's downsides, too. Mostly, I neglected my blog, and probably lost most of the amazing readership I had built up over the summer.

But now that the semester is winding down, and my big projects are behind me, I'm ready to start back up again. So, for you dear readers, a short post, as I dust off my blogging skills:

San Jose Public Library just launched their new sight, and it is glorious:


It's simple. It's clean. It's colorful. It gives me hope.

It's sad to say, but there are more bad websites out there than good ones. Especially for libraries. More often than not, it's because a library is part of a larger organization or institution (such as a university or city/county government) and has to abide by their bureaucratic rules for web design.

But San Jose has really hit the mark here. A good website should be simple, and easy to navigate. It should have clearly marked paths and landmarks. it should not overwhelm the user, but inspire them to explore and return.

You can read a bit about the web site's redesign, and some of the new features, on The Librarian in Black's blog. Some of the new highlights that I really like are the fact that the words database or OPAC or other library jargon aren't on the site, and that users can comment on almost any aspect of the site (which aren't moderated) and that all staff members can blog (and again, their posts aren't moderated either).

Why does all of this give me hope? Because smart, well designed websites are our future. More and more information searches are going to be conducted not in the library, but on the library's website. In this new model of librarianship, we need to provide excellent user experience, and web design is the way to start.

Bravo and Congratulations to the staff at San Jose public Library!!