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!

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!

My Day with the OLA

Yesterday was the first day of the annual OLA conference, and like a good library student, I not only went but also presented a poster. My classmate, Nyssa Walsh, was organizing the poster presentations - and who can say no to a *library* science fair??

I presented the work I have been doing on some project support at my job. For the past year I have been collecting matadata for a 2,000+ historic article collection we have, as we prepare to digital the collection for additional preservation and improved access.

I was pretty nervous preparing for the conference. I was worried that no one would want to hear about a metadata collection progress report. And my poster was looking like something a 6th grader came up with. But it was such a great experience. I learned the importance of developing a pitch, having to explain the project in a few short sentences. And it was amazing all of the feedback conference goers were offering. The most common question asked was about the platform for the digital collection. Since we haven't gotten that far in the project, I had no idea. But everyone who asked had great recommendations and ideas. It was like a mini-workshop, getting fresh perspectives of the work we are doing. The experience left me pretty exhilerated and full on new enthusiasm for the project.

After the poster presentation, I attended a session given by the Oregon State Library's Library Development Staff on LSTA (Library Services and Technology Act) funded projects. I learned about all of the programming that LSTA grants fund, and was able to participate in a discussion with members of the LSTA Board about their upcoming efforts of creating their five-year plan. This was their first discussion with librarians from across the state about some of the different programming, initiatives, resources and services that we would want to implement, allowing the board to form their guiding principles and purposes for their plan. I felt lucky and honored to be there.

After lunch - which included an inspirational speech from retiring state librarian Jim Scheppke - I attended Nikki Williams and Eliane Gass Hirsch's session, which focused on their library's impressive marketing skills. The Watzek Library (at Lewis & Clark College) has an impressive marketing team that incorporates good design with strategic planning to create impressive marketing campaigns. From their facebook page to impressive events, this session offered a lot of great ideas. I particularly enjoyed the ways Watzek library outreaches to the college's staff, and I think that this is something my own library could improve upon.

Other than presenting and attending the sessions, it was great to connect with so many of my classmates, and meet with so many Emporia SLIM alumni. We seemed to have taken over yesterday's #ola11 twitter feed, it was fun to see what my classmate's posters, and it was motivating to see the various jobs the alumni found after graduation.

My favorite part about attending the conference yesterday was that I was seeing iterations of library school lessons in every session and every conversation. Digital initiatives, collaborative efforts, user-centerdness, strategic planning, community analysis, assessment: it was all there and it reinforced the fact that I am on still on the right path.

lol librarians

The Virtual Reference Summit was awesome.

The location was gorgeous and it was a stunningly beautiful day. It was great to see all the flowers in bloom, but my sinus' were not as excited as I was. Since I'm a trusting person, I dry swallowed the first little white pill one of the conference organizers handed me. Thankfully it wasn't one of those conferences, otherwise this would be a completely different blog post.....

The keynote speaker blew my mind. Vanessa Fox seems to know anything and everything there is to know about search engines. Her presentation completely illuminated how people search for information today, how it differs from information searches conducted yesterday, and how searching will be completely different tomorrow. My fellow students and I always joke about how our program director asked us in our interview if we are comfortable with ambiguity and change. Ms. Fox confirmed that we certainly have rocky waters ahead of us....

The highlight, by far, was meeting so many *relatively* local librarians and support staff and having a chance to interact with a few. PLA was great in it's magnitude, but a lot of the librarians I met were from all over (including a few from New Zealand). This time around, it was really nice to speak with people who were familiar with the program I'm enrolled in, familiar with people I work with in the medical library and even familiar with a few of my fellow students.

As you might have picked up from previous posts, I'm pretty excited about virtual reference. I think it's an excellent way to help patrons - especially younger patrons. Beyond helping them, it's a way for libraries to remain relevant, proving our usefulness and necessity (and the fact that it's not all about books....).

It was really interesting to sit in on sessions where librarians who have been working in the industry for almost as long as I have been alive engage in serious conversations about emoticons:

:-0

;-)

and my new favorite

>.<

Not to overgeneralize - but it seemed that there was a serious generation gap present at the conference, with librarians who had gotten there degree twenty years ago overwhelmed by the informality of chat reference. Although, to be fair, there were some folks who have just started experimenting with online forms of communication who are entirely comfortable with the medium. I think the secret is the ability to meet there patron on their level. Once the see a lol, brb or even a :-), then they know to leave their Hackers on the shelf and drop a ttyl or two.

Over all, I think as younger generations of librarians enter the profession, we will see a huge increase in the utilization of chat reference. Srsly.


Oh....and the Lightening Talk? Totally rocked it!


Here are a few shots from the Edgefield campus, for those who have never been there:

Quick not on the pictures - I know they are just some pretty shots of Edgefield. You might be asking why they're aren't any of the actual conference. I arrived with the intention of snapping some of the actual conference. But, believe or not, I can be a bit shy. I felt awkward taking people's pictures and then posting them online. I'm sure it would have been cool if I asked them first, but have you honestly walked up to a complete stranger and asked "Can I take your picture and put it on the internet?" No matter what you intentions are, it's weird.....

Video killed the reference desk (a preview....)

Tomorrow I'm not only attending my second professional conference, I'm actually going to be presenting! Well, kind of....

Tomorrow is the 2010 Oregon Virtual Reference Summit hosted by L-Net (Oregon's premier online reference service). I think it's going to be pretty awesome. I'm looking forward to a smaller, more intimate conference. And virtual reference, I think, is going to make up a huge portion of the future of libraries. Whenever someone needs information, where do they go? The internet. To ensure that quality information in being accessed, librarians need to meet patrons where they hang out most: online.

Anyways, on to the goods...

Nyssa, a fellow library student (who I would love to have pen a guest post for Dewey's Not Dead) and I have put together a sweet little lightening talk to present before the library participants.

What's that, you ask? What's a lightening talk? The conference organizers have put together a two different "lightening talk" sessions, where 9-10 presenters have five minutes to talk about anything they want. That way, in one hour, you are presented with 9-10 different topics, ideas, rants and raves. By doing a lightening talk, it's a great way for a library student (like us) to gain some experience presenting, building our resumes, and getting our names out there. It's like killing three birds with one stone.

If you were in the room with me, now would be the perfect time for a high five.

Nyssa and I have decided to talk about online video tutorials. We argue that online video content is fast becoming a corner stone of western culture - especially for the generation coming to age now, in the 21st century.

Want proof of this? Click here. and here. and then click here. What do these clips all have in common? They are silly homemade videos that have had over 50 million views. 50 MILLION VIEWS!!! That's like America's Funniest Home Videos on 50 million steroid injections.

Not that librarians need to be making viral videos that reach 50 million viewers (although imagine a world where they did). But, if libraries are are able to successfully create original and creative online tutorials (which in the age of you tube and cell phone cameras isn't that hard) than they are going to remain relevant to future generations. As I said earlier in the post, they are going to be meeting their patrons where they hang out the most - online. They will give their patron's a glimpse of what real librarians look like, and show them some of what they can do. And in this day and age of limited resources, online video tutorials help librarians reach a much larger population of users.

And we'll argue this all in five minutes.

For those of you who can't make it to the conference to witness our phenomenal performance, don't despair. The lightening talks will be digitally recorded. As soon as they are put online, they'll posted on this blog for your viewing delight.

What a busy boy I've been...

Well, it's officially spring time in Portland. The cherry, plum and magnolia trees have all bloomed, tulips are poking their heads up, the weather has been BEAUTIFUL, and where have I been? Inside, in the library, ferociously researching, writing and studying...

I know it's been a while since I've last posted, but I have been getting a lot of work done. For example, I just got an article published in the Oregon Library Association Quarterly. It's based on a conversation I had with fellow students on our impressions, as digital natives, of the migration from print to digital content. If you have a second to check it out, there are embedded links where you can listen to what we had to say.

This past weekend I gave a presentation on reference services in community colleges, and how libraries with limited resources can best meet the needs of large student populations. My group came up with the conclusion that librarians need to meet the students at the source of the research: on the internet.

In other news from the realm of library school, it's officially spring break. Where am I off to, you ask? Cancun? Miami? Prague? Nope - the Portland convention center! This week is the Public Library Association's annual conference, and it's right here in Portland. Thousands upon thousands of Public Librarians are invading the city, and I hope to find myself right in the middle of it all. Along with attending the conference, I'll also be volunteering at the info desk and I'll be guest blogging of the PLA blog. Check it out, I already have my first post up!

That's not all - last month I worked with other library students on a project for the PLA - a little video highlighting fun things to do around Portland. We took the project very *ahem* seriously, really wanting to show the "Portland" side of Portland. It came out great - check it out: The Visiting Librarians Guide To Portland. I'm amazed at how many people have seen it - at the time of this writing, almost 2,000 (I was expecting 500)! It's been popping up on all sorts of web sites and blogs. It just goes to show you, careful what you post on the internet - you never know where it will end up or who might see it!

Alright, I'm off to the convention center for my first shift at the info desk, I'll let y'all know how it goes!!