Clear Blue Dei

This Tuesday I attended my first Library Camp at the Allen County Public Library. No, I am not a librarian, but my husband is the head of Technology at the ACPL and I have discovered through him that libraries can be very leading edge at using and incorporating the new Web 2.0 tools and at looking for new ways to connect with their patrons and to move their libraries into the 21st century. Web 2.0, Learning 2.0, Library 2.0, these are all concepts that many libraries have embraced.

Did you know that your library very well may have a presence in Second Life, Facebook, MySpace, Twitter, IM, Flickr, YouTube, wikis, FriendFeed and more? Do a search in any of these tools on libraries and see what you find. Libraries, in my experience, are quietly paving the way for institutions to have a real 2.0 presence.

I had originally planned to do some examining of some of the ideas first, so I could provide some useful, additional information but then I realized that I would never get this post out if I waited until I had explored all of them. So what I will do now is give an overview of the library camp topics and discussions and go into depth on some of the ideas in future posts. After you see the agenda, topics, discussions and ideas, you will see why! So here is how my day went. If it seems a little scattered, it is because I was frantically scribbling on a handout and am trying to translate and organize what is essentially a completely covered paper, with writing between and around every line of print. So bear with me.

This post will be a general overview to what we did and how the day was divided up. Part 2 will contain specifics from the Pecha Kuchas and discussions and if that post gets too big, Part 3 will have the afternoon sessions and a wrapup observation.

ACPL Library Camp design was based on the Unconference model, with the addition of a guest speaker and Pecha Kucha presentations.

The event started at 8am (with continental breakfast beforehand) and lasted until 5pm when several people went down to J.K. O’Donnell’s, our local Irish Pub to continue visiting and discussing.

From 8-9am, David Lee King, the featured speaker, gave a wonderful and thought-provoking presentation Managing the Digital Branch. Here is his post re: Library Camp which includes links to his presentations and to some of the other library camp resources such as the wiki that was set up for Library Camp. Here is the ACPL Library Camp on FriendFeed.

And here is a link to the ACPL Library Camp 2008 twitter feed. This was used in a very interesting way as it was being displayed on a large screen at the front of the auditorium and updated as the event proceeded. That provided an interesting mix of information on the proceedings and “backchannel” talk amongst the participants and observers. I can see this being used more and more often as the idea proliferates.

Everyone had been asked to bring 13 (I think it was) business cards with them and after David’s talk, there was a 2 minute card exchange where everyone was to meet and pass out their business cards to each other and to get to know new people. I really liked this idea and it worked really well. People got up, mingled, met, made contacts and just generally interacted with each other. I don’t have “business cards” as I am basically retired, but I really wish I would have made up some cards with my Clear Blue Dei site and my personal information on them. I got one “personal card” from someone with their own personal blog site on it and I am definitely going to go take a look. Perhaps a sign-up sheet (or site) where people could add their blogs would be nice as I always enjoy finding and read people’s blogs. I think I would even do this twice, once at the beginning and once later in the day after people got a chance to discuss and share ideas.

Then it was time for the Pecha Kucha presentations. In a nutshell, the idea behind Pecha Kucha is to keep presentations concise, the interest level up and to have many presenters sharing their ideas within the course of one day/period. Therefore the 20×20 Pecha Kucha format was created: each presenter is allowed a slideshow of 20 images, each shown for 20 seconds. This results in a total presentation time of 6 minutes 40 seconds on a stage before the next presenter is up. There were several presentations during the Pecha Kucha session, which I will list and go into in more detail in Part 2. For now, I’ll just say that this was a highly successful and invigorating format and one I think people should consider trying at their next meeting, conference, staff day or event.

Then David Lee King presented his next talk called Climbing out of the Box: Mashing up our Community.
As part of this presentation, David had everyone divide into groups of 4 or 5 and gave us 10 minutes for each group to come up with an idea of a way to reach out to the community. Again, an extremely successful session with many new and innovative ideas in just 10 minutes. See Part 2 of my Library Camp posts for the ideas and discussions.

Following this, we continued the Unconference model (An unconference is a facilitated, participant-driven conference centered around a theme or purpose) by having the participants discuss what ideas they would like to meet and discuss and an ad-hoc agenda for the afternoon was designed by the group for afternoon. There were 3 sets of 1 hour sessions, 2 per hour (in meeting rooms A and C). A facilitator from the group was designated for each session.

Everyone went to lunch after David’s presentation at various places in town (we went to Munchie’s Emporium, aka Mad Anthony’s for microbrew and good food and conversation) and then we all met back, picked up the afternoon agenda and made our choices as to which sessions we wanted to attend.

Kay Gregg (ACPL videographer and Sean’s cohort in crime for all the creative YouTube videos, etc), Sean Robinson (Head of ACPL and my husband) and David Lee King split off to videotape a Conversation with David Lee King, one of the ongoing series of “Conversation” youtube series that they are creating. This should be coming out in about a month, stay tuned.

I attended some of the sessions but had to leave so I missed the wrap-up session 4:30-5pm, but I heard that Sean did a great job wrapping up and that he put people on the spot, asking them “what one idea from this camp do YOU plan to do?” I’m sure that was interesting… From some of the buzz I’ve heard afterward, people really enjoyed the Library Camp and found it invigorating and inspiring. I know I did!

Stay tuned for Part 2 and Enjoy!

~Susan Mellott

My husband Sean Robinson and Kay Gregg from the Allen County Public Library presented at IOLUG 2007 (Indiana Online Users Group) down at Indianapolis last Friday. Kay did a poster session on YouTube and Sean did a really fun talk on Learning 2.0 – Transforming Your Organization Through Learning. He is a really exciting and fun speaker (if I do say so myself) and everyone really enjoyed his presentation. He has a great way of challenging and exciting people and doing it in a fun way.

The first thing he did was to pass out a License to Play card to everyone (he and Kay created it and were inspired by the 2007 License to Play poster from Lee County Public Library) that they signed and put in their wallet. He said if anyone questioned why they were having fun or if they felt guilty about having fun, they could say “We have a License to Play!”

The theme of his talk was about the three legs of Learning 2.0 – Work, Play and Risk. He said that Learning 2.0 was about exploration and discovery. And it was not just learning, but transforming your organization.

He demonstrated these by some really fun activities. First he asked who was a real risk-taker. No one held up their hand. So he asked again and one person held up their hand. Then he gave that person a Library Genius 2.0 t-shirt (that he and Kay designed). Everyone oohed and wanted one too. The lesson? “With risk comes reward”.

They also played Romance Roulette. He asked for an audience member who would take a risk. He got a volunteer and then they had to open a romance novel and read a passage out loud, not knowing what it would say. But before the volunteer read, Sean said he would read first. The lesson here was “Don’t ask people to do things you are not prepared to do”.

Also, before the talk, Kay taped a starbucks coffee card under one of the seats. Sean said everyone should look under their seats to see if they had it. So everyone got up and looked under their chairs to see if they had the card. The lesson here? “The right incentive will get a whole group off their butts ”.

Of course, he had many great things to say, but I loved these activities and I think they illustrated his points and made his talk fun. He talked about Learning 2.0 and how it is not just learning, but transforming your organization. He ended with “we are nothing special and if we can do it, so can you”.

Here is a picture of Sean from his presentation – “it’s not a surge, but an avalanche”

And here is Kay at her IOLUG 2007 poster session:

Here are more pictures that Kay took.

Take a risk! Work! Play! Explore and discover and get excited.

~Susan Mellott

All you librarians out there, look at the cool Web 2.0 learning program the Allen County Public Library is doing for its staff!

The ACPL in Fort Wayne, Indiana has been running an amazing Web 2.0 program called “Geek Out, Don’t Freak Out” since March 29, 2006 for the staff.

Here is the information and the very first classes that were run at the ACPL last year:

Geek Out, Don’t Freak Out!
Last Wednesday of each month
8:00-9:00 am

What’s this all about? The Digital Collaborative has been talking about ways to help interested staff feel more comfortable with new technology, and we’d like to try a new idea. It’s part training session, part question and answer period, and part test drive: we plan to give a short presentation on the topic of the month and then allow time for questions, discussion, and experimentation. The goal is for you to see if technology will help make your job easier, and let you off the hook if it doesn’t. No registration is necessary; just show up if you can make it and join the (geeky) fun!

Episode 1: The Joy of Firefox
Wednesday, March 29, 2006
8:00-9:00 am
Genealogy Reading Room
Main Library, 3rd Floor

You have this new browser icon on your desktop — so what? Why use it instead of what you already know? We’ll talk about some of the features in Firefox that you might find beneficial, and give you a chance to see what the big deal is.

Episode 2: What’s So Simple About RSS (really simple syndication)?
Wednesday, April 26, 2006
8:00-9:00 am
location TBA

RSS is a way to keep track of updates to a website without having to go and check the site. This isn’t such a big problem with just a couple of favorites, but if you’re regularly reading a dozen blogs, and you want to keep track of headlines, and you want to see when new stuff is added to the Librarian’s Internet Index, RSS can make your life easier.

Episode 3: Blog Boot Camp
Wednesday, May 31, 2006
8:00-9:00 am
location TBA

ACPL has a blog. ACPL has bloggers.
Get practical information on how and why to blog for the library.

And the sessions have been ongoing since then! Here is a link to the latest set of classes (taken from the ACPL IT Blog – Innovation Through Technology). And here is the schedule. Doesn’t the ACPL sound like a fun and innovative place to work?!

Episode 13: More Tasty Del.icio.us
Wednesday, August 29, 2007
8:00-9:00 am
Main Library, Meeting Room B

Access your bookmarks from any computer, tag them, and share them with the world. Good for home (bookmark that page you want to get back to when you have more time), and good for work (share your favorite sites with other staff).

Upcoming sessions will be on the last Wednesday of each month. Here’s what’s on the schedule:

Rerun! Episode 5: My Friend Flickr
Wednesday, September 26, 2007
8:00-9:00 am

Digital photography makes it so easy to document your life, and Flickr makes it just as easy to organize and share your images with the world. We show you what Flickr is, how it works, and how you can use it at home and at the library.

Episode 14: YouTubeTorial
Wednesday, October 31, 2007
8:00-9:00 am

Find cool stuff on YouTube. Put cool stuff on YouTube. It’s even easier than you think!

Episode 15: Let’s Play
Wednesday, November 28, 2007
8:00-9:00 am

Why should our patrons (or your kids) have all the fun? Come check out the world of gaming at the library, and try your hand at Dance Dance Revolution, Guitar Hero, and Wii Bowling, among others.

~Susan Mellott

In my post of August 8, I wrote about the very cool Library Genius 2.0 t-shirts that Kay Gregg and Sean Robinson of the Allen County Public Library created for the Learning 2.0 program for the library staff that the ACPL is going to kick off on Sept 19 when Stephen Abrams, VP of Innovation at SirsiDynix comes to speak on Library 2.0 at the ACPL. By the way, this talk will be open to the public. Here is a picture of Kay modeling the t-shirt.

Well, everyone really liked the t-shirts and the icons and had been asking them where they could get one for themselves or for their own library’s learning programs. So Sean and Kay set up a store under Printfection/library2_0 where you can buy these shirts and some other styles like long-sleeve t-shirts and baseball shirts and others and also tote bags and aprons and mouse pads. They come in a ton of colors and there is a good discount for bulk purchases. They are cheapest in white, a little more in light colors and a little more than that in dark colors. You can see all the wholesale pricing options by picking style and color and then clicking on the pricing tab.

Helene Blowers, Public Services Technology Director for the Public Library of Charlotte & Mecklenburg County (PLCMC) and creator of the Learning 2.0 concept, wrote about these shirts on her blog, librarybytes.com. ACPL sent her a shirt in appreciation of her work on Learning 2.0. Here is a picture she took of the shirt and buttons.

Sean and Kay are working on creating buttons for this also and they will put them in their store on cafepress (along with some other things like messenger bags and coffee mugs) since Printfection does not have buttons as an option. They already have the bags and coffee mugs there, but need to upload the individual icons to create the buttons. If you are interested in the buttons, check back on the cafepress store because they are working on getting them created right now.

Cafepress has a lot of options of different types of items, but Printfection is less expensive and offers wholesale prices also. I’d go to Printfection unless there was a particular thing you wanted, like the messenger bag (which I really want!). Or the buttons, since that is the only place to get them. It does appear they have a way to offer the buttons in batches, like of 10, or 100.

Also, other libraries, such as the Harris County Public Library are using the icons that Kay created for their own Learning 2.0 programs which is what Sean had hoped people would do. He wanted to be able to contribute to the Learning 2.0 program. You can read about this and their other ideas, initiatives and Learning 2.0 projects in the ACPL Innovation Through Technology blog. Many people in many libraries have worked on Learning 2.0 and Library 2.0 and have shared with each other to create great things.

Cooperation, collaboration and sharing. That’s what its all about!

~Susan Mellott

Check out these Library Genius 2.0 T-shirts for the Allen County Public Library Learning 2.0 program, found on this post from the ACPL’s Innovation Through Technology Blog. Kay Gregg designed these shirts and all the icons associated with each Learning 2.0 course completed! They will be used to kick-off the ACPL Digital Collaborative’s Learning 2.0 presentation. Here is Kay modeling one of the new t-shirts:

Look at this post from ACPL’s IT blog on Library 2.0 Bling for a closeup of each icon. and here is a picture of the Learning Video 2.0 button.

For more information on the ACPL’s Learning 2.0, check out these posts from the ACPL Innovation Through Technology blog. And for what ACPL’s Digital Collaborative is creating for Learning 2.0, check out the ACPL DC Wiki’s “21 Things“. Click on the links to see what each person has created. This wiki is a working wiki for the Digital Collaborative and is constantly being updated.

I want to be a Library Genius 2.0!

~Susan Mellott