When I was in California for the Internet Librarian conference in October, I was fortunate to also head to San Francisco and meet with some of the folks from legal documents sharing service JD Supra. They hinted that some new developments were just around the corner, and I'm pleased to announce that they have now released a Facebook application. So cool!
I haven't had a chance to try it out myself yet, but Steve Matthews has done a write-up with screen shots over at his Law Firm Web Strategy blog. I can't wait to try it out--it gives me the opportunity to post a feed of the documents I have loaded in JD Supra (screen shot of Steve's feed):
as well as have my JD Supra profile reposted (again I have snagged Steve's):
I can't wait to try it out over the weekend! If you are in a law firm, are a lawyer, or work with a law-related organization, I encourage you to have a look at JD Supra. It is a way to share your expertise with others and raise your profile at the same time in a very Web 2.0 way.
This Thursday I will be facilitating a roundtable discussion at the next Toronto Girl Geek Dinners. I have been attending meetings of this group for about a year, and have found them to be very collegial. It is a fantastic group of interesting women from a range of industries. The group also encourages younger members by having a number of students sponsored for the evening.
Usually we have a speaker, but the group has gotten so comfortable with one another that we thought an opportunity for us to talk with one another would be a nice change of pace. Inspiration for the discussion:
The ability to do sustained innovation is the one competitive edge left. Innovation is the driver of performance, growth and stock market valuation." - Bruce Nussbaum, 10 Worst Innovation Mistakes in A Recession (Business Week)
The details:
Toronto Girl Geek Dinner #9 November 20, 2008 Hot House Cafe at 7:00 p.m. Sign up on the wiki
The 9th Toronto Girl Geek Dinner, sponsored by PriceWaterhouseCoopers, will feature a discussion about how we, as leaders in our respective areas of technology, can continue to innovate during tough economic times.
Some of the topics we will cover include taking smart risks, using a downturn as a catalyst for innovation, finding a solid strategy, and the opportunities for people inside organizations and for entrepreneurs.
To wrap up our Toronto Girl Geek Dinners for 2008, PricewaterhouseCoopers has graciously agreed to pick up the tab for everyone's dinner. We all thank them for their generosity are thrilled to have them on-board and participating in our event!
This week I learned about three new business books that have just been released that you should know about. I have one in my hot little hands, and the others two I have ordered from my favourite business bookstore, Books for Business.
Monday night I attended the book launch party for Don Tapscott's latest offering, Grown Up Digital. Long-time readers of this blog will know I "crashed" his last book launch for Wikinomics almost two years ago. This time around I didn't have to resort to such drastic measures since invitations were going around Facebook. (As an aside, when I search for "Tapscott" on my blog, I discover how deep this fandom really goes).
This book is a follow-up to his previous book Growing Up Digital. The premise is that those currently between the ages of 11 and 30 (the "Net Generation") have new ways of thinking and interacting. This is going to have an impact on society, so it is in the interest of all of us to understand this change. After all, this age group was the differentiating factor in getting Obama elected U.S. president last night. Tapscott and his team interviewed almost 10,000 people in putting this book together. I was fortunate to be able to purchase a copy and have him sign it, so have started working my way through it already. For more information, see the website grownupdigital.com.
Tuesday night I attended a special Toronto Third Tuesday dinner for corporate communications celeb Shel Holtz. He was in town to speak at a conference, and a group of us were privileged to have him tell us about the work he did on his new book Tactical Transparency that he wrote with John C. Havens. He explained that companies are reluctant to embrace transparency because they believe this means giving away their business secrets. On the contrary, he explained there are areas that do need to stay confidential such as client information, business intelligence, personal information and health information, and that keeping these confidential is very different than acting in a transparent way.
You can find more information on the tacticaltransparency.com website. I am particularly impressed they have shared the audio of the interviews they conducted with 50 business executives for the book at http://www.blogtalkradio.com/transparency. I'm looking forward to reading and listening through all that and sharing my thoughts over on Connections, my Crosby Group blog.
Finally, during his talk Shel also mentioned another book coming out from his publisher Jossey-Bass that sounds of interest, The Credible Company: Communicating with a Skeptical Workforce by Roger D'Aprix. Essentially it looks to be about internal communication during difficult times of change. On the one hand I wonder if there are ever any times of change that are not difficult, but on the other hand acknowledge that we are coming into particularly difficult times. A book like this that can help show management the way to working with staff to ease the stress at a time when morale may be low is particularly well-timed.
What new business titles are you excited about? Please share with us!
Anyone who saw my presentation about audio & video tools for Internet Librarian 2008, or who has been interested in the discussion via seesmic going on in this blog, will also be interested in the discussion Eden Spodek and I had recently with Adele McAlear of McAlear Marketing. Adele fleshes out a number of things, including the business model of some of these tools, the fantastic new functionality that Phreadz will afford us once out of private beta (couldn't resist that alliteration!), and how these tools might be used for community building by groups such as the YMCA and public libraries. Don't miss Episode 6 of Community Divas!
I didn't blog Liz Lawley's talk, but she moved through a number of "tangibles" that librarians should be aware of, many of them in the form of new technologies, gadgets, and hands-on tech and craft projects. I grabbed an excerpt of her talk in video for you:
Internet Librarian 2008: Liz Lawley closing keynoteTalking about the tangible of today's society.
I am in one of the last sessions for this year's Internet Librarian conference. I took the opportunity to introduce you to the people I am sitting with waiting for the session by Steven Cohen. I also captured a little video from Steven's talk.
This is Steven Cohen on Google Reader. I haven't listened to it yet for sound quality, but his best line was at the very end. This is from his presentation What's Hot With RSS.
How do you measure? Is 2 comments a week good, bad?
Why be social?
marketing yourself without doing traditional marketing
Google page rank improves the more social you are; critical for libraries
most of the people using social media, vast majority are anxious to interact with you and your organization online. There is a delicate balancing act, you need to take care to not interject yourself into someone's personal social space. People appreciate brands being in available online and authentic e.g. Zappos.
Facebook is the social glue for those coming to university for the first time - see: http://www.physorg.com/news143200776.html - there is a lot of potential here for us to do interesting stuff
Developing a social media plan:
listen - is there a conversation online about your library? What is the nature of it? If there isn't a converation, that is okay
engage - start blogging, leaving comments on blogs, responding, uploading photos to Flickr, etc.
measure - this is the hard part! Traditional measurement (ROI) doesn't work very well.
Why measure?
Need to measure success to sell our ideas. What are your goals? What are we getting out of this activity?
What you are not measuring:
friendship
happiness
karma
enlightenment
girl power!
Need to measure a combination of both the quantitative and qualitative.
Behavior - quantitative:
number of blog posts - Boyd's Conversation Index - measures relative success of blog posts and comments + trackbacks - should be greater than 1 - otherwise you may be investing more than you are getting back for your library
will depend on your goals e.g. if you add photos to Flickr to increase traffic to your native digital photo collection, don't just look at stats on Flickr but also look to see what kind of traffic was referred from Flickr to your site.
Experience - listening to what people are experience. - "the experience metric" - stars, scars or neutral?
Activities
monitoring search engine results - focus on Google - Google is search engine used by everyone BUT ALSO they take into account social media results - the only one where they show up with great regularity.
technorati - which blogs are linking to your blogs; are they in your target audience? - for blogs and feeds - authority score & qualitative
delicious - is your content bookmark-worthy? How many people have bookmarked it? Comments posted?
check conversations on twitter - Seattle Public Library has great results on Twitter
create Google alerts - e.g. "university of pittsburgh" library and Pitt library - choose "comprehensive" - get results from news, blogs, web, video and groups
I am teaching my Social Networking Tools survey course in Ottawa again. The school tells me that the November 17th class is now full, but there are spots remaining in the Tuesday, November 18th class. Please don't wait to sign up!
In this seesmic video I give a wrap-up of Day 2, talking about my new inspiration to get out and use easy web-based video to tell people's stories.
Internet Librarian - Connie's Day 2 Wrap-upConnie talks about being newly inspired at Internet Librarian. Check out http://www.shanachietour.com for more info.
I no sooner posted this, then I had a response from Kathryn Greenhill based in Australia who saw my video discussion just as she was about to head off to a meeting. She created a response video:
Re: Internet Librarian - Connie's Day 2 Wrap-upYes - we should be using video more - I'm with you
and here is my response to that which I think furthers the discussion on improving our new literacies:
Re: Internet Librarian - Connie's Day 2 Wrap-upResponding to Kathryn Greenhill's video about the challenge of interviewing people spontaneously with video.
I hope that someone else will find us on seesmic and continue the conversation!
Connie's note: These are notes from Stephen's talk. Any errors or omissions are mine.
You need to be ahead of the curve.
The opportunity finally exists to use social software inside the organization. We can finally use some of this social software to lift ourselves up.
We can't wait for everyone to change at once. You've got to keep up. Anyone who doesn't use the Internet is looking to be unemployed; if you don't have a Facebook account you are looking to be irrelevant. However, it takes a while for things to filter through and people to adapt.
If information isn't in text, how are you accessing it?
Stephen Abram on Enterprise TrendsAt the Internet Librarian 2008 conference in Monterey, CA. Stephen Abram speaking on world trends in learning. il2008
We see a fundamental shift in how questions are asked and answered. People will ask questions on Facebook and MySpace. Open Social, G3 phone coming out today - if everybody's stuff is on their phone e.g. geotagging - customize a search and customize search engine rankings. You can change the search engine rankings of your organizations based on geographic location e.g. Obama campaign money spent on localized search engine rankings - political searches show up different results in different neighbourhoods. Does democracy start to become at risk?
What is not advertising-based search engine ranking? Us!
Some of us are coming to the realization that we are not creating information just for us - we are doing the work for others who work differently than us.
Enterprises exist because people need to work together. Need to work to coming to the same conclusions when you are working together.
Circles of trust inside organizations - we see this exactly replicated in social software such as Facebook - you have your inner circle of friends who you trust.
He is having to re-discover people from his past; his children will never lose their friends because of the new tools.
What does social networking look like inside the organization? Librarians retiring after 40 years of work, doing excellent local research. The first thing we do when they retire is wipe their computers clean, as if all their bookmarks and tools they have developed are not still useful.
Why do we exist in enterprise? To have conversations. That is what social networking tools are now all about. What is happening with these tools that is similar to inside the organization?
The power of formal versus informal language
The sharing economy - sharing the insights is most valuable - how do we add people's notes - context is what helps you understand where the friction is - inside a company you can codify the context, which you might not want to do outside the organization e.g. are there different strategies you use to appeal to a female-dominated market compared to a male-dominated market?
Using wikis is no longer an innovation; however, depends on organization - may look like an innovation if you haven't done it yet. You have to leave the laggards behind. When we go into our organizations, you don't have to have everyone on instant messaging for example.
The new Web 2.0 era distribution models remain largely untapped. How can we change the corporate culture to collaborate more. Take something like mapping the human genome - they sat it in social space and communicated with each other - was supposed to take 50 years, was done in just a few.
We are seeing a fundamental shift in having to adapt to how our clients learn - lawyers learn differently than surgeons do. You don't want your surgeon arriving for surgery saying "it's okay, I read the article last night." Surgeons learn as auto mechanics do.
Most librarians not good with visual interfaces. Show us a satellite system and we are not as comfortable as with text.
Does your intranet move up to the space so that you can share objects/documents, collaborate, put into groups. How does it relate to others? What actions can you take?
How can you be where your users are, and then move to the next space.
If you are a news librarian and not in LinkedIn, you are looking to be irrelevant. He gets a lot of interviews from being on LinkedIn.
Get good at the cloud - cloud applications - core applications online - Zoho, zotero, Google Docs - they give it to you for free and be willing to take your ads. They already know what you think and they will will serve up ads and search results based on your behaviour. As a Word-based profession, we need to get better at Internet and intranet behaviours.
The kindle is not about being an ebook reader, it is about being a device. The iPhone is not about being a phone. The U.S. is 5-7 years behind the rest of the world. The U.S. is going to hit it very hard and very fast.
Changing to a mainly mobile focus - how are we going to adapt? Thinking at Yale - what is library going to look like in a mobile environment - Joe Murphy, Yale Science Libraries.
Second Life is not going to survive - it will be something else - but we go in to figure out how we are going to relate to each other - their real life behaviours are moving into Second Life.
Private Enterprise social networking - search for "White label social networking" on his blog.
How do you make yourself discoverable? How do you make others in your organization discoverable? How do you tell people what you are good at?
Browser plug-ins - have you built a plug-in so you can show people how? Change the browser at the top so that it can become the standard. Why won't we have our search engines search those services that we actually subscribe to, rather than everything? Right now we have "meat hacker" search engines. You can build search toolbars to search the best stuff.
It is all about play - you play with the stuff to learn about it; you can't put a committee to learn the 2.0 stuff.
SLA has a commitment to helping people to learn via 23 things. Build a petting zoo. Make your intranet a sandbox.
Added note: Carol over at Teching Around with Web 2.0 managed to record the list of ten social networking sites that have influenced the U.S. election.
I have posted my presentation from this afternoon, Instant Audio & Video: Tools Igniting the Digital World to my Crosby Group Consulting Connection blog. I've also posted some bonus demo videos. Enjoy!
If you are looking for presentations by other speakers, many are being collectively posted to the IL2008 event on Slideshare.net.
I missed most of today's sessions, but I did make sure to attend the keynote this morning by Howard Rheingold, Berkeley & Stanford professor and the world's leading thinker/professor/teacher regarding online communities. I took notes and attempted a few photos--will try to get those up here shortly. I did take down one quote from him during the keynote which I included in one of my slides in my presentation.
Here is where you can catch me the next few weeks:
Internet Librarian - Monterey, California Monday, October 20, 2008 4:15 PM – 5:00 PM
Instant Audio & Video: Tools Igniting the Digital World
Connie Crosby, Principal, Crosby Consulting Group
No time to learn how to podcast or make videos? Seesmic, Utterli, ooVoo, BlogTV, Qik, and Talkshoe are just a few of the new audio and video tools letting people create their own instant web content with a small learning curve. Some are meant for short, quick thoughts by individuals on the go, others for longer conversations among a group connected to the web. Compare these exciting new tools and discuss their roles in community building and collaboration.
Internet Librarian - Monterey, California Tuesday, October 21, 2008 3:15 PM – 4:00 PM
Law Library 2.0
Camille Reynolds MLS, Director, Research & Information Services, Nossaman LLP
Liana Juliano, Technical & Electronic Services Librarian, Nossaman LLP Vice President/President Elect American Indian Library Association
How do you introduce 2.0 technologies into the law firm library? Law firms are notoriously slow in adopting new technologies and are often steeped in the traditional. In the first presentation, learn how creative law librarians spearheaded a project to create a firm intranet in a culture that doesn’t embrace technology or sharing easily. Working with several other departments the speakers bridged the gap between many different user groups with competing ideas and helped lead the change through collaboration as they introduced the law firm to new technologies. They share how they used focus groups, marketing, and involved key users to “sell” the intranet, first to management, then to staff; what tools were used to create buy-in; and the strategies that were involved, as well as experiences with an internal wiki as a project management tool for the intranet and a way to introduce library staff to 2.0 technologies in a user-friendly format that spawned other uses, including collaboration, policy development, resource sharing, training, and more. Drawing from her experience as a law firm library director, Crosby provides additional examples and describes where law libraries are headed next.
Sustainability Camp - Toronto, Ontario Sunday, November 16, 2008 Using social networking tools to promote community [tentative title] "Community Divas" Eden Spodek & Connie Crosby
Ottawa, Ontario November 17 or 18, 2008 - 2 full-day classes available Social Networking Tools - Hands on Learning Professional Learning Centre, Faculty of Information, University of Toronto Connie Crosby, Instructor -->the Monday, November 17th class is either full or almost full. We have added a second date
This year's Internet Librarian International looks, as usual, excellent. I found this perhaps a little late--a widget with rolling photos and tweets (via Twitter) from conference participants to make me feel a little more like I am there:
Thanks also to Åke Nygren for sharing his presentation on the build-it-yourself social network site Ning, itself built on a Ning site: http://2008ningthings.ning.com/forum. (Use the menu at the top of the page to explore the rest of the site.).
This summer my friend Eden Spodek, a communications specialist known for her blog Bargainista.ca and one of my fellow Podcamp Toronto organizers, and I dared each other to start podcasting. What better way to fulfill that dare than to create that podcast together?!
Thus Community Divas was born! Our goal is to interview leaders in a wide range of communities, and talk about issues in building online communities. While our focus to start is online communities since that is where our personal interests lie, we will broaden our content out over time to talk about "face to face" communities as well.
Eden and I are just finding our sea legs with the podcast, figuring out both the technical side and finding our voice in the recordings, but what truly stands out is the discussion from our interview guests. My hope is that our discussions will be of interest to a wide audience--including both those interested in libraries and in social media/social networking.
You can catch us (among other places) directly from our blog communitydivas.com or, if you have an iPod or other MP3 player, on iTunes. If you are into it, we have a Facebook page, a Twitter feed, and a FriendFeed Room. To send us feedback, please post a comment on the blog or email us at communitydivas@gmail.com . At some point we will get a comment line in place if you want to leave an audio/phone comment.
If you haven't tried listening to a podcast before, why not give it a try?
Wherever I turn today, I am running into news about recalls:
news that the horrific tainted milk scandal in China, where almost 53,000 children are sick and 13,000 are currently in hospital, has now led to a second recall in Canada. On Sunday there was a recall of Nissin Cha Cha Dessert and yesterday Ottawa recalled certain types of Mr. Brown 3-in-1 instant coffee. See the Globe & Mail story (Sept. 24/08).
Apple has recalled USB adapters for recharging iPhones. As someone who recently opted for an iPhone to stay in touch with clients instead of a Blackberry, I was quite surprised today to receive a text message from Rogers about the recall. Apparently there is a small chance that the prongs in the adapter can break off in an electrical outlet, creating a shock hazard.
The main reason for recalls is public health and safety, so it is important to get word out on them. I was surprised at this method by Rogers (text message) to get the message out, but it is a quick, inexpensive way to reach the iPhone consumer quickly. In contrast, I heard on the news (but can't find a good source) there have been complaints about children getting sick from the milk products in China going back to 2006, and it is only as it reaches crisis proportions is there any real acknowledgment in the media.
Companies can no longer sweep problems under the carpet and hope they will go away. Word of mouth spreads too quickly with our Internet-based social networks such as blogs and Facebook; one small problem and soon a firestorm can erupt that can cause bad feelings about a company and a drop in sales.
In Canada we recently saw another recall, that of Maple Leaf Foods as potentially carrying Listeria bacteria. I was impressed with how quickly Maple Leaf responded, took ownership of the problem, recalled products as necessary, and inspected and cleaned their premises. In today's society it is no longer acceptable to sit on a problem of this magnitude while a plan is put together over a few weeks. Immediate response is necessary, and Maple Leaf handled themselves very well.
I also released a copy of the workbook I created for the course under Creative Commons. I wanted those who attended the workshop to be able to share with their colleagues back at the office, and also to share with others who might be thinking of using social networking tools in these ways. This sort of thing does not stay static, so I am hoping others can build and improve on what I have done.
Over on Slaw I made note of the group Knowledge Management for Legal Professionals being pulled together online by Patrick DeDomenico of Debevoise Plimpton LLP in NYC. I hope you will join us in one or all of those conversations!
Life on the entrepreneurial side has been hectic but quite enjoyable. I have to say, I don't miss having to prepare a budget as I did the last 10 years as a law firm library manager. I am thinking about my colleagues in the firms compiling and churning through the numbers, finding where the savings might be, and how they might accommodate the rising prices and cost of new products. That is definitely something I sympathize with them on, and don't miss. Still, I get to think about bookkeeping and cash flow instead. A whole new wonderful adventure!
WARNING: this song will get stuck in your head. You are warned!!
This video is by Michael Porter and David Lee King, created for Michael's upcoming presentation to the Library and Information Technology Association (or LITA, a branch of the American Library Association). The full story of how this came to be is on Michael's blog Libraryman, and David Lee King talks about how it was recorded on his blog. The full lyrics and credits for the video are here.
My favourite part of the lyrics:
To prepare our libraries we must be informed, explore lots and have fun learning how to evolve. Learn about things like gaming, social software and being just where our users are: that brings us HUGE Wows. Look at open-source software and the creative commons, look at netfilx and itunes and learn how We can take competition, turn it into fruition: THE LIBRARY FOR TOMORROW AND NOW!
It is also great to see lots of faces familiar to me from the library community around the world included in the video. Great job!
Every once in a while a meme goes around the blogging world, and sometimes I play along while other times I don't. Just depends on the mood I'm in.
This weekend I was at a Niagara Podcasting & Social Media Meetup, and saw my podcasting friend Daniele Rossi. It was great to see Daniele, and now he tells me he has tagged me in the "six random things" meme. I am in a generous mood (could it be all that wine-tasting?) so without further ado, here we go:
1. I was once a late-night DJ on CFRU. 2. I am a pescetarian. 3. I got my very first iPod only this May. It a little Shuffle handed out as shwag by one of the vendors at a conference. 4. I only have podcasts on my Shuffle. I have not downloaded any music to it. 5. I am naturally blonde. The recent brunette thing is a dye job. 6. I belong to a book club that has been running for over 13 years.
1. Link to the person who tagged you. 2. Post the rules on the blog. 3. Write six random things about yourself. 4. Tag six people at the end of your post. 5. Let each person know they have been tagged by leaving a comment on their blog. 6. Let the tagger know when your entry is up.
Funny things happen when I go off-line for any length of time. In the case of this weekend, I signed off mid-afternoon Friday to head for a workout and then meet a family member who was arriving in town to visit for the long weekend. While out I tried to send a message to my Twitter followers via my cell phone, but it didn't work as expected so I sent the "tweet" a second time. I had no idea anything had actually gone wrong until I logged back in the next morning.
It turns out my account had been deactivated sometime after I left the house Friday afternoon. Apparently about eight legitimate accounts were accidentally deactivated in Twitter's attempt to clean out spammy accounts, and mine was one of them. Ironically, I had been actively taking part in the discussion on the Twitter blog regarding their spam-fighting efforts, and we had warned them to take care in how they went about these efforts.
The first I noticed the trouble was in reading an email from Steve Matthews saying to let him know if I needed any help getting my account reinstated. I also had a message from Eden Spodek asking what happened. Uh oh. I had a look at my account, and all messages but my very last tweet were gone. All my 1500+ followers, too. The followers especially represented hours and hours of searching and selection over 18 months.
Looking more closely, I discovered several conversations in the blogosphere and on Twitter asking what had happened to me, and people contacting Twitter on my behalf. Blog posts were written. Private messages were sent to Twitter pleading to reinstate me. Meanwhile, I had been completely oblivious.
It was all so Ferris Bueller! In the movie, while Ferris has a fun day skipping school, all the kids in his school think he is home on his death bed. The kids start rallying and raising funds on his behalf. He has a great day and is completely oblivious to their efforts.
I was so amazed at what everyone had done for me--there is so much love and support from my friends on Twitter! Friendships I have developed both on and off Twitter which have been reinforced there are very real. Never was this so apparent to me as this weekend. These people really have my back when I'm not looking!
There are also discussions floating around on Twitter, FriendFeed and Plurk. And of course you can't see all of the wonderful personal messages that have been sent to me in support. Wow!
Some things I have learned over my 20+ years online:
nothing is permanent - online communities do not last forever; people move away, drift out, tools are constantly changing or having glitches. You still need some contact with people outside the electronic forums to be connected with the world.
don't take technology glitches personally - those of us who live in the electronic world know that things go wrong when you least expect it, or when you are most inconvenienced by it. We have to take this in our stride, and make as many back up plans for the key information as we can.
if you and your friends are active in certain online discussions now, you will likely be active in online discussions in the future. Just because one tool (such as Twitter) goes away, there will be others taking its place. I have been in online discussions since long before the web as we know it today.
online tools keep evolving. I highly doubt Facebook and Twitter will be such go-to places in 5 years' time. There will be something else.
On the point of making contingency plans, Dave Delaney discusses it in his response to my video:
The good news is Crystal at Twitter has been in direct contact with me also and Jason has been trouble-shooting in the help forum. Apparently they have been working all day to get my account @conniecrosby back on its feet. It is partially there. In the meantime, I have started collecting some of my followers and tweeting from my business account @crosbygroup. Feel free to follow me at either. I am also active on FriendFeed as conniecrosby, and have had the identi.ca account conniecrosby for a while although have not explored that yet. In Facebook I am (slightly) more private, not following quite as many people.
I can't tell you how much all the out-pouring of concern has meant to me! I appreciate all those who looked out for me, and hope to be back in full force soon.
