Middlemash was the third Mashed Library UK event, following on from the event in London in 2008 and Mash Oop North held last year in Huddersfield. These events bring together those who fall on the more techie side of librarianship (whether intentionally or by accident). Structured more like an unconference with a focus on practical outcomes, the days are generally fuelled by ideas and caffeine. The official(ish) definition of Mashed Library is bringing together interested people and doing interesting stuff with libraries and technology.

Middlemash, held at Birmingham City University, began with presentations from five speakers.

Tamar Sadeh, heads up the Ex Libris open platform programme and provided the vendor perspective of opening up development to the community. Recent initiatives such as El Commons CodeShare are part of this new approach at Ex Libris.

Mark van Harmelen (Hedtek ltd/University of Manchester) demonstrated rapid design processes and various methods of planning and prototyping interactive system design. His talk covered applications such as Balsamiq in addition to traditional tools such as whiteboards. User groups are a key part of developing any new systems and users need to be involved from the very beginning. Most surprisingly was the pivotal role of Post-it notes in system design.

Edith Speller (Trinity College of Music) described the development of a new approach to keeping reading lists updated. This was an idea conceived at the previous Mashed Library event in Huddersfield, so it was good to see it brought to fruition. It also demonstrated the potential of rapid design; most of the development was completed in just a few hours.

Next up was Chris Keene’s  Discovery Layer & Next Generation Catalogues presentation. After a brief overview of the Mashed Library concept (linking it back to the infamous 10 guiding principles of Library 2.0 nirvana ) we were given a look at the implementation of AquaBrowser at the University of Sussex. The switch to a ‘nextgen catalogue’ has been fruitful but not without its own set of problems. As Chris accurately described, libraries are playing catchup with the rest of the web after years of stagnation in OPAC interface design. Other plataforms such as Blacklight and VuFind are also a part of this.

The final speaker of the morning session was Paul Stainthorp, from the University of Lincoln. Like the reading list project at Trinity College of Music, Lincoln have used Yahoo Pipes to develop meaningful and useful data; in the case feeds of new books. Using the RSS provided by Refworks citation manager and Feed2JS, new subject-based feeds were created and made available both to subject librarians and academic staff.

While the morning session was a bit more conference than unconference, it provided an overview of existing projects (some of which started as ideas at previous Mashed Library events) .This was a great way to get everyone inspired for the afternoon workshop sessions covering JUICE, Yahoo Pipes and Mapping the library.

These will be covered in Part two.

Last week was the UK’s first recruitment unconference and it was certainly an interesting event. I was working the Social Media Track with @mattalder and @carveconsulting. Anyone who knows Matt and Paul will know how knowledgeable both are when it comes to social media; I cannot tell you how much I learned from them throughout the day!

Matt and Paul know all about using social media in business but me, I don’t know anything much about that really. I work in the construction industry and, as emaciated as the industry is, you don’t find that many candidates or clients from my little niche working the social networks. I use social media for me; my personal development and networking. I don’t know anything much about posting jobs, using boolean searches for finding candidates on LinkedIn, or monitoring my company’s brand because that’s not how I use it, so I didn’t feel as though I had an awful lot to contribute on that front. I’m more about personal branding and interaction, so I was a little sad that everyone was more interested in the corporate stuff. I suppose I shouldn’t have been surprised though really; these are tough times for recruiters and social media is a fairly new tool for a lot of people. Me, I’m a bit of a geek – I’ve been making friends and networking online since my mid-teens and the days of ICQ, IRC and forums.

Social media for personal use is something we all need to be aware of and work smarter at though. The benefits are endless but the two major ones are, in my opinion, personal development and networking.

Personal Development

We all have different work ethics, operate in different industries and have different training. Sharing our experiences and opinions, be it through blogs, tweets, emails or in person, is enlightening! We can learn something from everyone in our network and I think the unconference really highlighted that: There were all sorts of unique ways that companies and individuals were using social media, all sorts of tools that people were using to monitor their brand, and a variety of positive and negative experiences that people had had which we could all learn something from. I’m not going to list them all here; go to the next unconference in February and see for yourself! I didn’t get to visit any other tracks (apart from the secret track at the end!) but I still came away with a couple pages of notes, so I can only imagine what those who had a chance to move about learned!

Networking

I worked mostly in customer service and HR before moving into recruitment so, frankly, I don’t know an awful lot of people in the industry. I say “don’t” but I actually mean “didn’t” because social media (Twitter in particular) has totally changed that for me over the last nine months or so. There are some amazing people out there that you can talk to and Twitter is an amazing way to interact with people you might never meet or give a second glance to in real life. And these people can not only help you find useful tools, be your sounding board, provide services, or introduce you to relevant people; they can also become your friends.

My experiences of social media are nearly all positive. In fact, there’s very little negative I can think of in nearly 15 years of messing about with it in various formats. The kindness of strangers is an inspiring and thought provoking thing. Countless people who owe me nothing have helped me on Twitter, LinkedIn and Facebook and I am a better and wiser person for it. It may seem a daunting and unfamiliar place to those new to it, but give it the chance it deserves! Immerse yourself in it, interact with people, share your opinions, offer help and advice. To me, it’s not all about business. My favourite contacts aren’t those who constantly talk about business or forward links, but are those who share little titbits about their lives and let their personalities shine through. So even if you’re mostly using social media for business, consider the personal benefits too and do a bit of work on your personal brand. You won’t regret it!

I had a great time at the Recruiting Unconference (trulondon) last Thursday…lots of interesting and thought-provoking debate and information. Over the next few blog posts I am going to write about some things that have had me thinking.

A key track for me was the one on Social Media…I have certainly tried to embrace LinkedIn, Twitter, Blogging over the last year or so and talk passionately to candidates about the need for them to get connected and get in the conversation. I was keen to learn more…

Track host Matt Alder started by asking each group member what social media they used and why…and four things immediately stood out for me:

Hardly any recruiters seemed to use any Social Media other than LinkedIn

Those that use LinkedIn seem to regard it as a database, a source of names to headhunt, and a medium to advertise jobs

Most recruitment companies seem to regard a consultant’s LinkedIn connections as owned by the company not the consultant

The only interest in Twitter seemed to be as a medium to advertise jobs

Clearly there are a lot of recruiters in the UK who haven’t yet got Social Media. There was little talk of developing networks or communities, of engaging candidates and clients in groups. It seemed depressingly familiar, just another medium for finding names to headhunt and for advertising roles. I’m not saying that there aren’t recruiters who provide a service doing just that, but why do we have this amazing new medium which opens up all sorts of possibilities, can really transform the way we work and interact, enables us to deliver some real value for candidates and clients…and then just try and find ways of using it to do the same old, same old…

I’m going to share some of my thoughts about LinkedIn here…Twitter will get its own post, hopefully soon!

On the question of ownership, I firmly believe that my contacts are mine…and I say that having been employee and employer within the industry. I appreciate that I have made contact with people whilst in employment, but it is how I have worked and interacted with that network that has provided fees and therefore revenue for the business. I know that there was a court case involving Hays last year which they won, but I believe in that case that the employee in question was sending invitations to clients that he hadn’t met or worked with, whilst at the same time setting up in competition. Sorry, but that’s unethical. Also when it was heard, use of Social Media as a business tool was still fairly embryonic.

I have met virtually all my contacts; those that I haven’t met I do have a working relationship with, and would have spoken to them at length on the phone (or social media). I have never invited (nor accepted an invitation from) anyone that I have not had interaction with. I can share information with them through status updates, and will call or send messages on a regular basis especially acknowledging when they have a relevant change to their status. Used properly it provides a great platform from which to start building a network/community (Twitter can help further develop this)

My LI network has delivered fees, not just for me but also for colleagues…and I am transparent with the network, giving them visibility of my Twitter feed, and this blog, on my LinkedIn profile.

Someone on the track, who owned a small IT recruitment business, legitimately raised the fear that a consultant leaving and taking his LI connections was taking business away…and Paul Harrison (Carve Consulting) who co-hosted the track made a great point when he said that the company may lose someone’s contacts, but then they would hire in someone who would bring with them a whole new set of contacts.

My personal view is that the attempt to protect is old, sales led recruitment thinking and does not take into account the possibilities opened up by social media.  Recruiters, in future, will be hired because of their network…not just who they know, but how they engage with the network, what information and knowledge they build, what business opportunities the network offers. There’s an onus on the recruiter to behave ethically and professionally if they want flexibility and trust from their employers…certainly not adding connections that are not technically part of their network, and with whom they have had no personal interaction, particularly if their intentions are to leave soon.

I did make the point on Thursday that in my opinion recruiters probably would not join a business that made them leave their contacts when they left…I certainly wouldn’t sign a contract that effectively said ‘we want you for your contacts, and when it’s time for you to leave, we’ll keep the contacts, thanks’

Social Media policy will soon be an extremely important criteria for candidates to consider when assessing a company (actually, why isn’t it now?)… and a legitimate question for the interviewee to ask. In fact as recruiters I think we should be finding out what the policy is when we take a brief.

I can certainly see a time soon when businesses will be rejected if their policies are not forward thinking, encouraging, empowering and trusting.

minnebar (#minnebar) — minnesota + tech + design + drinks   was held at Best Buy headquarters in Richfield,  MN on Saturday, November 21. 

minnebar is an “(un)conference” where attendees set the agenda.  It is unique because it brings together the Twin Cities’ design and programming community for a day of learning, networking and fun.

Shareology had a ball  amidst geeks and gurus in the Best Buy headquarters.  The great thing about minnebar is it is created by the participants!  Don’t like a 45 minute session?  Quietly leave and go sit in on another!! 

Among sessions Shareology attended:

Marketing via Social  Media                        Alex Hawkinson

Android 101                                                           Justin Grammens

 Networking Online                                          Paul DeBettignies

Let’s take a look at some of the fun:

Minnebar arrivals begin the day with muffins, fruit and Caribou in Sandy's Place at Best Buy headquarters

Attendees gather for Android 101 in the Best Buy Theater

Android 101

Alex Hawkinson, session leader, and Luke Francl, (un)conference organizer

Donnie Berkholz prepares to present on Bad Apples or ... .....

Zack Steven at the social media end of the (un)conference

Gopher Game or Minnebar? Tough call.... Minnebar wins! Paul DeBettignies, @MNHeadHunter, helps navigate online networking

Networking online session attendees doing their homework

What a great day at minnebar!

What a way to spend a Saturday:  a pure learning adventure!  Many thanks to Luke, Ben, Jeff and Matt  for organizing Minnebar, and a special thanks to all the sponsors: 

Platinum Sponsors

• Best Buy – http://www.bestbuy.com
• Split Rock Partners – http://www.splitrock.com
• ipHouse – http://www.iphouse.com

Gold Sponsors

• Nerdery Interactive Labs – http://www.nerdery.com
• Robins, Kaplan, Miller & Ciresi LLP – http://rkmc.com
• WebproLeads – http://webproleads.com
• Slantwise – http://www.slantwisedesign.com
• Rasmussen College – http://www.rasmussen.edu

Informed sources tell me the after party went on to 8 pm and beyond!!!

So how did you spend your Saturday?  If you’d like to relive minnebar, check out #minnebar on twitter.

Kay Roseland    @KayLoire

UPDATED: Thanks to everyone so far who has expressed an interest – I’ve set up a Ning network so that we can continue the discussions online – visit OpenSpaceDevon and sign up to participate.

Following on from my previous post, i’m intrigued to see what interest there would be in “OpenSpaceDevon – the unconference”. I thought the name better reflected the county of Devon as well as the format of the event.

Following the “curated unconference” format, it is difficult to suggest a formal agenda, but i was thinking that the event could discuss these kinds of topics and issues:

• Redefining public services
• Using web 2.0 to safeguard children (continuing the discussion started on Futuregov)
• Using social software to reinvent the customer/citizen relationship
• Digital Inclusion in a rural county
• The role of the citizen in council 2.0
• Social Care and Health in a networked society
• Digital Privacy and Information Security
• Schools and the Next Gen Citizen

It would be great to get public sector professionals, voluntary organisations and business people involved in these areas all together and working through some of these issues and topics – Basically, i’d imagine the event to involve anyone who has an interest and passion to improve public services in general.

I can’t promise that this event will take place, but if there is enough interest in it, i will invest some of my own time to help make this happen. If such an event could happen, then i would recommend that we look to around March/April 2010 and depending on who gets involved in may take place at a weekend – unless of course some local public sector organisations want to get involved and help? (hint hint)

Contact me via this blog post or email me to register your interest in either helping put this event together or participating.

I was fortunate enough to be one of the 120 or so delegates at the UK’s first ever Recruitment Unconference yesterday hosted by Bill Boorman at Barclays Tower, London.

WOW, was it a conference unlike any!  With an eclectic mix of Social Media Experts, HR gurus, Recruitment Consultants and IT Whizzes in the amazing Green-Pod room, the unstructured format of the “conference-that-isn’t” led to many hearty debates on the various threaded topics which included:

• Sourceology with Geoff Webb (@radicalrecruit) and Katharine Robinson (@TheSourceress)
• Social Media Circus with Matt Alder (@mattalder) and Paul Harrison (@CarveConsulting)
• Blogging for Business with Andy Headworth (@andyheadworth)

There were many more and you can find out more about the event here and hear the broadcast here but I thought I’d share with you my top three takeaways (and you can rest assured there were many more!) that I took away from the day:

1. Social Media & Recruitment = Value for Money

Thank you Jacqui Hill for sharing that one of your clients in the Public sector has reduced their cost per applicant from £400 to £15 by the use of Social Media in resourcing and also to another Global Business for the stat that they’ve saved £150K by social media strategies alone.  Statistics like these really can’t be ignored and it’s no surprise therefore that Recruitment Consultants, Ad Agencies and Job Boards are wondering what their role will be as Social Media and Web 2.0 evolves.

2. Social Media & Recruitment = A tool for LISTENING as well as communicating

Thank you too to William Fischer of TwitterJobs (and this month’s Esquire Magazine) for outlining how the business  breaks down and measures their Social Media Strategy into 9 scales including things such as PR, SEP, research and product development.  How often do you use Social Media that way?  If it’s a communication tool, then surely you should also be listening and engaging?  And for the uninitiated (like me) it was a revelation to hear about “Active Listening Tools” that can do that stuff for you!  Amazing!

3. Social Media & Recruitment – Engagement

Just by writing on your blog, Facebook profile or Tweeting doesn’t actually make you someone people automatically want to listen to – you need to truly engage to get the most out of the experience and show you’re human with real points of view and real ideas and perceptions.  Permanently retweeting what others say, blogging sporadically and confusing your messages will all result in one thing – NOTHING.   You need to engage with others.

For more information about the Recruitment Unconference then check out the various tweets and blog posts which can be found at #trulondon. I can’t wait for the follow up!!!

Michelle Fischer
Creative Leadership

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Flickr Image via Troy Holden

Dass die Studienbedingungen zwischen schlecht und katastrophal schwanken, darauf brauche ich nicht hinzuweisen. Das tun lautstärker und umfangreicher meine KollegInnen in ganz Österreich. Auch darüber, dass es hier nicht um Geldmangel und -forderungen geht, sondern dass es vorrangig strukturelle Probleme sind, brauche ich wohl nicht weiter behandeln. Mir geht es darum Lösungsvorschläge zu bringen. Lösungsvorschläge, das heißt eigentlich Lösungsvorschlag: Catalyst (vage bereits hier formuliert), eine Art virtueller Think Tank. Grob gesagt, soll das eine integrative Plattform sein, über die Studierende wissenschaftlichen Diskurs mimen, lernern und schließlich in diesen eingebunden werden. Genauer gesagt, klingt das dann ungefähr so:

»Studierende treffen zu freien Diskussionen zusammen, aus denen sich, wie bei Diskussionen so üblich (Themen-)Gruppen bilden, die untereinander einen Gegenstand oder eine Methode oder einen neuen Blickwinkel oder … (the possibilities are virtually endless) diskutieren. Dass sich diese Szene im Netz und über ein ganzes Semester abspielt, dürfte heute nicht weiter überraschen. Auch dass Studierende an ihrer Bildung aktiv teilnehmen (können), sollte nicht ungewöhnlich sein.

“Man fühlt sich wie ein vollwertiger Wissenschaftler [oder -In, Anm. Redaktion]“, meint Jonas., teilnehmender Student, “nicht wie jemand, der einfach nur wiederholt, was in anderer Leute Bücher steht.” Catalyst, ein Bildungsexperiment österreichischer und finnländischer Universitäten, fördert das eigene Denken, spart Kosten und führt ganz nebenbei zu einer stärkeren Vernetzung der Studenten verschiedener Unis und Fächer. “It is brilliant to see how students of different origin, language and expertise come together, working on scientific projects. Some of these projects will even be published to the academic world, which I find especially exiting”, verrät uns Ilida, finnische Tutorin.
“Natürlich müssen nicht alle Student- und -Innen ein fertiges Projekt abliefern, das wäre auch für uns zu viel. Vielmehr ist die Tätigkeit im Netzwerk selbst ausschlaggebend. Wir haben uns dieses Semester darauf geeinigt, dass jeder Teilnehmer und jede Teilnehmerin ein Arbeitstagebuch führen muss, dass er/sie zusammen mit einer Reflexion am Ende des Semesters abgibt.”, erklärt Prof. Eva Gadker.

Den acht ProfessorInnen steht dabei ein Team von 15-20 TutorInnen zur Seite. Ob man als Tutor technisch versiert sein muss? Ilida: “You shouldn’t be afraid of using a computer, of course. But working with Catalyst is pretty easy actually. The first semester was hard though, because we had to establish some kind of structure…” Sie erklärt uns weiter, dass es nun so ist, dass fast alle StudentInnen zwei oder mehr Semester bei dem Projekt mitmachen, sodass am Semesteranfang genügend erfahrene DiskutantInnen dabei sind, dass ein beinahe nahtloser Übergang möglich ist. Und da einmal erstellte Inhalte auch erhalten bleiben gibt es genügend Anknüpfungspunkte.«

ursprünglich erschienen in SOME MAGAZINE, am 20. Nov. 2014 (in some possible future)

Die technische Umsetzung und -barkeit ein ander mal. Hier nur soviel wie unbedingt notwendig: Die Diskussionen und Arbeiten finden über ein System asynchroner Medien wie etwa Blogs, Wikis und vielleicht Waves und synchroner Medien wie webmeetings, Skype, twitter-esquen Medien und, wo möglich und erwünscht Real Life Meetings statt.

(vielleicht) Interessante Links:
Open Space Methode
Was ist ein BarCamp?
Unconference
edublogs.org/features (v.a. der letzte Absatz)

November is rainy season in Chennai, despite it we at Amazon Web Services Enthusiasts and Users Group Chennai decided to host a AWS Cloud Workshop on Nov 10. While the Chennai infrastructure got clogged due to rains, (web)Infrastructure as a Service(IaaS) was discussed in-depth at the Workshop and Unconf.
The event had a record, runaway registration(170+), we had to change the venue just couple of weeks before the event to accommodate the overwhelming interest. Despite heavy downpour and traffic-congession, 100+ AWS Users attended the session. Here is audience in rapt attention absorbing the tech-gork rain:

The workshop was led by Jinesh Varia based out of Seattle from the Amazon Web Services Developer Relationship Team.

Here is an excellent summary of Jinesh’s session by Veerabahu ( @veechand)

We had a vibrant unconference session was led by Kiruba. Here is @Kiruba doing the slap-thy-neighbor unconf ritual.

The AWS user community came alive during the unconference to tell their story in lightning talk format:

The first session was by Bhasker V Kode of Hover.in. Here are the slides from Bhasker’s session:

The Anantara team made a short talk on their elastic monitoring and management console.
Murthy and Sam from CSS Labs presented on Enterprise Cloud = Private Cloud + Public Cloud. Tools and Techniques. Eucalyptus and AWS EC2 are mixed and matched to make use of the internal as well as public infrastructure. Earlier in the forenoon session, Ezhil head CSS Labs made a presentation on taming the API with GUI featuring CloudBuddy platform.

Senthil Nayagam(@senthilnayagam) of RailsFactory’s talk was a welcome break from the AWS Kool-Aid.
There were impromptu talks by Harish Ganesan, CTO 8KMiles outlining their biz model and Balamurugan, Excelsoft explaining their use-case.

Lakshmanan (Lux) Narayan, President, Vembu.com gave a crisp overview of their online backup consumer offering. The unconference ended with Lux playing the video of their viral video CloudCloud Maybe and a short talk on ‘Making of Cloud Cloud Maybe’ LOLZ.

Here is me doing impromptu compeering ( Kiruba was not able to attend the morning session – so the mantle fell on my shoulders!)

Overall the event is a huge success in many count, except for the WiFi glitch due to equipment failure there were no major shortcomings. Yet there is enormous scope for improvement.

I’d like to thank the CSS team the excellent co-operation and Anantara for TIDEL venue coordination.

Hat tip to Gayathri for coming all the way from Bangalore and helping in coordinating the event.

Bonus Links:
CSS Labs Blog post on the event.
Twitter Hastag.

Inside #1pound40

Two very different experiences this week have had me musing on whether there’s a north-south divide in how social media is used.

Looking first at the #1pound40 event in London. It was an intriguing concept – for just £1.40, the opportunity to share knowledge and ideas with some of the leading lights of the social media UK whirl.

There were Tuttlers, journalists and broadcasters; there were geeks, students and marketing types; the venue was impressive (Reuters in the Daily Planet like environs of Canary Wharf) and the whole event had an air of expectation.

Something was going to happen. SOMETHING IMPORTANT.

So, a couple of days later, why do I still have this niggling feeling that, if something did happen, I must have missed it?

Perhaps this feeling was in part provoked by my experience the night before at Leeds Social Media Surgery.

Leeds surgeons

The surgery was an opportunity for charities and not-for-profits to come and find out about social media and see if it could help them in their work. I spent the evening talking about blogging with a woman who wants to provide the opportunity for interaction via a blog for workers in the mental health sector, as well as hearing about an impassioned campaign to help Palestinians where I was able to offer some basic advice about libel. In this setting, the social media tools were just that – tools to be utilised as part of a wider aim.

Back to London and what was described as ‘a curated unconference’, the purpose of our gathering was to explore issues raised by social media – questions such as if Twitter was a force for good, whether journalism was being democratised by the tools of web 2.0 and my old favourite – who can be called, or call themselves, a journalist?

Unlike other ‘unconference’ events I’ve been to, there were no sessions or pitches and instead small groups at tables discussed the issues between themselves before sharing their individual pithy conclusions via Twitter.

(As an aside, oddly for an event which ended up being monopolised by talk about Twitter, the backchannel wasn’t always in evidence – in fact when it was projected behind the panel at the end of the event it proved to be such a novel intervention that it completely distracted both panelists and audience!)

As the sessions concluded I took stock – had I learned anything? No. Had I contributed to anyone else learning anything? No.

It felt like we were all saying the same thing, speaking the social media speak. The digerati in full flow – agreeing with one another.

Some of the topics touched upon digital inclusion and the potential for political engagement through social media, but while we were talking, tweeting and pontificating, who was actually listening? What do the views of a bunch of always-on wired meeja professionals in London have to do with delivering news and information services to people working in tough but essential spheres such as the mental health sector, or living in areas where broadband access is still an aspiration not a reality?

That’s not to say it wasn’t an enjoyable event – I caught up with some people I haven’t seen in a while, put some faces to Twitter avatars and met some completely new people I’m sure I’ll enjoy following. As a meet-up, it was most conducive.

But all in all, for me at least, it was an afternoon inside the echo chamber, the reverberations of which will probably not even reach Islington, let alone Leeds.

There’s some other coverage of these two events that I’ve seen, as follows;

* The Guardian’s Mercedes Bunz gamely attempted a live blog of #1pound40 here and here.
* Leeds Social Media Surgery organiser John Popham summed up the evening here.
* The echo chamber is one of the topics which Christian Payne (AKA @documentally) also discusses in this audioboo which considered the psychology of Twitter.
* The Business Two Zero blog discusses the £1.40 event and also provides plenty of links to other views from the day.

WORDPRESS, bay-bee!

I keep telling myself it’s “WordPress,” but I’m just lazy enough that I keep typing “WordPress” instead with a small P, much though I know it pierces Matt to the very heart and makes the Babby Jeebus cry. But now this post has been posted I see they’ve got an autocorrect so that you can’t possibly write “WordPress” with a small P, so the Babby Jeebus and Matt can stop crying now.Still, I managed to call it “WordCamp” without any autocorrect or nothin’ and that’s surely victory, of a sort. No?

In any hoodle, I’m teaching at WordCamp Victoria this Saturday (at 9am, God help me!) on the differences between WordPress.com and WordPress.org, and more particularly how to decide which one is for you and, if you’ve already picked one, how to figure out if you’ve made the right decision or you’ve irrevocably ruined your future as a result of picking the wrong one.

KIDDING!!!! You can always go back to Livejournal, after all. The quilters miss you.

You can find out all the deets on WordCamp Victoria (and I think you can even still register) on the WCV site, and if you’d like to buy me a drink, you can let me know in the comments section. Form an orderly line, please! No shoving! Except you, in the back, the one who looks like Hugh Jackman; get right to the front THIS INSTANT!

Here’s my fancy bio from the Speakers Page, and if that doesn’t make it easy for @VanityFairer to find me, I don’t know what will:

Lorraine Murphy
Raincoaster Media
Lorraine “raincoaster” Murphy is a professional blogger and social media consultant at raincoaster media in Vancouver. Blogging daily to five sites on a wide variety of platforms and active on eleven social media platforms, she brings a uniquely informed perspective and attitude to online communication.

And here’s the official blurbology on my workshop:

WordPress.com or WordPress.org: The Right Choice for You

Two kinds of WordPress? No need to be confused: learn the major advantages and disadvantages of each system, the relevant terms of service, and gain perspective that will enable you to make the best choice for your website.

And you can register and prepay here.

And I’m desperately looking for a ride from Penticton to Vancouver for Friday. I’ve had two nightmares about taking Greyhound, don’t make me a headline on CBC, please!

And if you’re wondering: a Hendrick’s or Bombay Martini, with a twist of lime.

Selah.

Peter is at BarCamp Africa UK which is being hosted at Vodafone’s Paddington offices in London today.

Information on the event is at various sources, including http://barcampafrica-uk.wikispaces.com and http://africamp.com/uk (which latter is using a Livestream video feed on the site)

I will be blogging intermittently today, as well as tweeting (search hashtag #bcafricauk09 on Twitter).

Based in the premise that technology will be the way to develop Africa; aims to be action-oriented, user-driven, interactive event. The opening “keynote” is from Dr Ekwow Spio-Garbrah, the Chief Executive Officer of the Commonwealth Telecommunications Organisation (CTO), who gave introductory remarks.

One of sponsors is http://www.betavine.net (part of Vodafone) which aims to develop social and sustainable applications of mobile technology to bring about change.

I am attending one of the parallel sessions, which is on ‘Blogging from Africa’ – Miquel Hudin from maneno.org (incorporated in USA as an NGO) is leading it. They aim to try and deal with low bandwidth, multi-lingual issues etc that impact bloggers in Africa. Estimates are that less than 1% of world’s bloggers are from Africa. Finding internet access an be a problem; often have to use slow satellite connections. About 40 bloggers (out of a population of 23 million) in Ghana, for example, says Miquel. The maneno.org platform is available in nine languages (inc. Swahili and Zulu) – people can customise their own blogs on the site, which can be a help to newcomers to blogging and the internet. The site also runs a hib for African barcamp events. Miquel notes that a barcamp is also running today in Cameroon – http://www.maneno.org/eng/articles/country/cameroon/ Q – how many Africans want to blog in the language they speak? – won’t they reach more people by blogging in English?

Stephen Wolak, from Vodafone, is doing one of the first parallel sessions in the afternoon, on ‘Betavine Social Exchange – pilot in South Africa’ – which is about bringing together people dealing with social issues and technology people, including applications developers. betavine.mobi is an area for downloading applications. http://www.vodafonebetavine.net/bvportal/community/linux is for getting software to make 3G mobiles work on Linux. Mobile technologies are being used increasingly for social change. http://crowdtalk.wordpress.com/ is a blog related to this initiative.

Conrad Taylor doing a session on “Publishing technology and fonts for Africa” (>>>). I couldn’t go to Cornelia’s session on OLPC project, but you can find plenty of tweets about it; see also http://codex2project.blogs.lincoln.ac.uk/

All-time 8 best tweets from the California Library Association #CLA09

The CLA conference was an interesting weekend of technology deficiency and lackluster participation from both the venders and presenters. Unfortunately there was a sadly insignificant amount of tweeting going on and this is probably due mostly to the fact that there was no Wireless Internet available anywhere in the workshops. However, a HUGE thank you must go out to @strategicimp for providing the one wireless area at the conference and for providing (in my opinion) the best part of the conference, which was actually the Unconference.

I won’t go into too many details, but truly, I’m not sure what I would have done had that area not been set up. There were a couple of good discussions and quite a few great librarians (and librarians to be) hanging around the unconference “stealing” the internet and networking with each other. I hope they continue this event next year and get even more participants.

Although the tweets were few and far between I did manage to find a couple that I thought had some significance. The following are (in my opinion) the top eight tweets from #CLA09 and most came from the movers and shakers presentation that I had to miss.

@derekwolfgram “sometime you just gotta do stuff, and it pisses people off” -Lisa R

@joycenlee Think about how to leverage your past experiences. Just b/c they’re not directly related doesn’t mean they’re not relevant.

@jdscott50 “Gain a broad perspective of the organization, own your job, your role, be accountable, create mentor relationships.”

@tiffanylora “Leaders motivate others to create their own vision and together we can affect change.” ~Cindy Mediavilla

@sudofonik Think and be positive; don’t assume you won’t get an interview. There might only be a handful of applicants

@kgould “policy is the history of bad behavior” (the Unshelved guys)

@strategicimp focus on the experience u want to create – them design services and environment to make them real. ABA !

@bibliotechnical: Step 1 for digital collection make friends with political figures in community

There were some other good ones, but there were some even better tweeples present at CLA. While I couldn’t list great tweets from every single one of them I did want to mention that the following listing of librarians on Twitter are awesome people for twittering about the conference and being cool! I was just going to make a list on Twitter, but that feature needs some work and you should probably just follow these kickass folks anyway so….

@Ddegrandchamp
@Frances_J
@leshaner
@amapolaroja
@SofiaDistracted
@tiffanylora
@derekwolfgram
@sudofonik
@msmith003
@SusieOhQuinn
@kgould
@GraceMellmanLib
@saclawlibrarian
@shanndev
@patoney
@CaliMel
@unpoete
@RubySlppers
@lifeinoleg
@maromatic
@gdhansen
@friedicecream
@julianyoko
@kbuxton
@KiyomiD
@joycenlee
@judybatt
@alli_librarian
@hbdanielle
@Zorrah
@HeyDiggy

And if I left you out of my CLA tweeples list, it was a mistake. Let me know that you were there and tweeting and I’ll add you in! Good times team

Some of our members have agreed to present on a variety of subjects. Here are a selection so far:

- How to introduce Scala into your project/business/enterprise
- OSGi
- Real Time Java and related tooling
- Running a Successful Open Source Project
- A “Better Code”
- A “How to be a true Rock Star Developer”
- Financial Data Warehouse project

Click here to sign up: http://www.meetup.com/Londonjavacommunity/calendar/11677002/

Since I attended WIREDcamp roughly a month ago, I’ve been thinking a bit about using the un-conference model in government. WIREDcamp was hosted by the Ontario Government but open to Federal and municipal public servants, as well as not-for-profit-ers. I haven’t been able to come up with any negatives. They really do seem to be a match made in heaven. As long as you have participants open to sharing. Here are 4 reasons I think they’re a good match.

• Governments are full of subject matter experts
• They’re actively seeking ways to share and manage knowledge
• The aging silos of the public service are crumbling under the weight of renewal
• Budgets for large-scale conferences and learning events aren’t there

PodCamp, the little un-conference cofounded by Christopher S. Penn and Chris Brogan in Boston a few years ago has spread like a weed throughout North America and even across the ocean. I’ve attended them in four different cities myself – Toronto, New York City, Boston and Montreal. The same rise in popularity has happend with other un-conference ‘brands’ like BarCamp, DemoCamp and others.

If you’re new to un-conferences, here are a few basic steps to organizing one. (Not necessarily in this order)

1. Find your audience for the un-conference
2. Invite them to your event
3. Get a venue, book a date
4. Establish the rules of engagement
5. Work with your audience to develop your agenda
6. Provide enough guidance to make sure that your un-conference is going to be valuable to participants

That’s basically it. You might have to consider sponsors (maybe getting your venue for cheap or free). How you work with your audience to develop the agenda might vary. PodCamp Toronto organizers use a wiki to organize speakers, volunteers, etc. If your audience isn’t comfortable using wikis, you’ll need another way.

At WIREDcamp, they simply divided the room into many discussion tables. A grid marked on the wall with green masking tape represented tables and a time slots. The agenda was developed on the spot by having participants write topics on paper and tape them to the grid.

It’s too bad I had to skip the afternoon of WIREDcamp because of another work-related commitment; I thoroughly enjoyed the small, intimate and on-the-fly un-conference format.

I suggested the topic “How do you help non-tech people learn to use tech tools”. You can find the notes here. I didn’t know if anyone else would be interested, but as it turned out, a few people dropped in to take part and we had a good talk!

Also that morning, I joined the discussion on “How to manage ownership of content with multiple contributers (for the purpose of ATIP/FOI).” ATIP is short for Access to Information & Privacy in the Federal Gov, while FOI stands for Freedom of Information for the Ontario public service. These are the official systems in place for allowing the public and politicians access to government information.

This was a fascinating discussion initiated by Karl Ghiara, one of the guys behind the Federal wiki, GCpedia. This is a serious issue when it comes to furthering collaboration in the government because existing policies are not geared towards collaboration on channels that aren’t fed through top executives. I have to say, I was amazed by Douglas Bastien’s knowledge of policy, he contributed a lot to the discussion.

Have you tried the un-conference model? I really enjoy it and think there are a ton of opportunities to employ it within government.

When I wrote last week about looking at a different way of rewarding recruiters so that they focused energies not just on the deal but on developing deeper, collaborative relationships with clients, and on building and engaging with their candidate community – almost certainly 2 key objectives of the future recruiter (hey, did I miss a rhyming alternative blog name there??!) – I didn’t expect everyone to agree.

I got some encouraging comments on the blog, and by tweet and e-mail, and I did get the ‘so does that mean if candidates like you but you don’t bill any fees then you still get a bonus’ objection.

My reply to this was that if a consultant was delivering to their clients and candidates what they really wanted, then they would be billing…it was all a question of trusting your consultants.

Move forward to the weekend and I was involved in 2 particular conversations on twitter that bought home to me the question of trust.

Firstly a quite detailed debate (due to run and run) about Social Media strategy…who, if anyone, owns it, who controls it, and what policies/guidelines should companies create for its employees.

Now this topic has already been written about on many blogs, and debated at many conferences and unconferences, and will continue to be debated, and there is a great summary of the conversation on the unblog for the London Recruitment Unconference…there you will see me say “management need clear vision on SM for their business & then have to trust employees to be professional”

Some of you may follow Gareth Jones (@garelaos) on Twitter…he’s the director I report to and he has given me complete freedom over how I build my professional social media profile. He’s encouraged me to blog, and is happy that my blog and twitter feed are visible to all candidates and clients through my LinkedIn profile. I’ve offered him the chance to read my posts in advance…to approve or censor them if he wants…but he said no…just post it and get in the conversation. Clearly he trusts me…

The second conversation was about Power Naps, and how Power Naps Rule! Karla Porter sums it all up here in a great post, and it got me thinking…how many companies have a quiet room, or put aside space where employees could take a short Power Nap to keep them fresh for the rest of the day? How many businesses would TRUST their employees enough? It’s helped Presidents and Prime Ministers rule our countries, but would management allow it for their workforce?

It’s all a question of TRUST…if you want to get the best out of your people, trust them. Whether you’re looking for sales, trying to build a social media profile, or looking to get maximum performance…loosen the rules, guidelines, structures and KPIs…and trust your best people.

The Think Tank in Lincoln - host to LocalGovCamp

The LocalGovCamp in Lincoln last friday was an awesome day made even more awesome by the top people that we had attending. There was a palpable level of entusiasm and excitement in the Think Tank that really came out in the quality of the sessions and the level of discussion. There was emotion (@davebriggs and @ShoeButt are now required to have a make up hug) and above all everyone was open to sharing their views and opinions (because, let’s be honest, we’d all be boring if we thought the same way) on a number of subjects ranging from mapping and e-petitioning to social media usage and hyperlocal communication.

Personally I was massively pleased with the turnout (although there were some notable exceptions who I hope to see at future events), the location at the Think Tank, the quality of the catering and the fact that everyone went away with new ideas and contacts.

The stylish unagenda chart, filled with pretty post-it's for the sessions

 @Liz_Azyan asked me (as did a number of other people) what I thought the purpose of LocalGovCamp is. I think that, at its most basic level, it is an opportunity for likeminded people working in or with an interest in the public sector, whether they are web professionals, comms guys, councillors, contractors – to get together, share ideas and keep up to speed with the ideas and developments of their peers. It is so important that we endeavour to work together and share our findings; we’re not in a competetive industry and we should all be ensuring that we’re on a level playing field. This kind of thing also breeds creativity, allowing us to look at the technology available, take what others are doing with it and put our own slant on things. And the current technology gives us the power to do this.

But then, if you’re reading this, you most likely don’t need me to tell you that!

A big thanks, once again, to all attendees; friends and long distance colleagues all. There wasn’t a pledge wall at the camp but let’s all take away ideas and try and make a difference. See you at the next camp!

P.S. I’ve got some notes from the sessions I attended that I plan on writing up over the next few days so keep them peepers peeled. I’ll also be aggregating all the information to flow from the event on the LGCLincoln blog so go sign up for the RSS there if you haven’t already…

(photo credits to @iamadonut)

Yesterday I spent the day at Donkey Wheel House attending Trampoline 2.

If you’re not familiar with Trampoline, it’s a kind of unconference held in Melbourne to discuss interesting interesting things and ideas in a self-organizing cross-discipline environment, put together by Melina Chan, Steve Hopkins and Pat Allan.

I almost didn’t make it – registrations were filled a couple of hours after they were announced on twitter, but the organisers were able to arrange extra capacity getting me off the waiting list and into the event.

All in all, it was a fantastic concept, and for the most part it worked really well. I met a lot of interesting people and heard a lot of really interesting and amazing things.

The grid of the day’s workshops was ten 20-30 minute slots run concurrently over 5 different rooms. Unfortunately there were 3 flights of stairs separating the two big top floor rooms and the three downstairs areas, which made it difficult to move between rooms mid talk, and in the end I missed a couple of sessions that I would have liked to have at least stuck my head into. (Click on the image if the grid for the big version with a detailed view of all of the sessions on the grid.)

Dan Donahoo and I ran a “How to Juggle” workshop that seemed to go down okay. Everyone who took part did amazingly well considering the short amount of time they had to learn (and considering the tendency of my dodgy homemade juggling balls to explode on people).

In general the level of conversation was quite varied, as were the topics. Most of the sessions were captured on video and I’ll post links as they are uploaded, but some of the highlights for me were:

• Peter Spence’s talk on intergenerational learning
• Paul Szymkowiak’s talk on co-working spaces in Melbourne
• Stef Convery’s “How to write a story in 10 minutes”

Overall a really interesting and inspiring event and I’d certainly recommend keeping your ears open for the next one.

The Unblog – Norton Folgate

The unblog is the official blog of The Recruiting Unconference London  (if anything can be official about such an event!). This is the place for random thinking on recruiting and social recruiting, debate and discussion. In the spirit of the unconference, anyone can post here on any topic, start their own blog or leave comments. The comments are unmoderated, it is down to you to respect common decency just as it will be on the 19th November. All you need to do is register and start blogging. Word, video, podcast, whatever method you favour, post it here.
A what & a why you might be asking. What is an unconference & why Norton Folgate? (unless you are full of madness, you probably won’t know the answer to either.
An unconference is an unconventional event that has built momentum from the technology sector in the states. From barcamps to gatherings in parks, the unconference is seen as the best way to share and communicate and come up with real solutions without the clutter of structure or set agendas. Its also an ante-dote to attending a traditional conference, knowing half the speakers already and paying £3 – 400 to see one of them.

There are no rules or fixed structures, speakers or auditoriums, and definitely NO death by powerpoint. The event is broken in to tracks with trackleaders in most cases, who have some expertise in the discussion area. Their role is to encourage conversation, input where needed and support the exchange of ideas, communication, conversation, disagreement, debate and discussion. Anyone can join in and if you get bored, you just change the conversation or move to another track. I lead a track at Recruitfest09 in Toronto and this great event convinced me that we needed to do the same thing in London.
Norton Folgate is the name I’ve given the blog for  The Recruiting Unconference London or #trulondon if you live on twitter. I mention Madness, or the nutty boys for two reasons. Firstly they are by far the best band ever, and second, their recent (and excellent) album is titled “The liberty of Norton Folgate.” The release of the album drew my attention to the history of a part of London that was was named Norton Folgate, tucked between Whitechapel and the Bishopsgate. (The quest for the venue starts on the location of the Norton Folgate then head east from Mr.Truemans beer factory via the gas lights).

 The area was declared by statute a liberty i:e: A free land with no rules or order. Being a liberty, it attracted all of Londons society and became home to the artists, poets, performers, artistes, free thinkers, buskers, anarchists and the like. You might expect anarchy without order but the story , as the song goes saw a society spring up where people accepted each other, helped and shared views without the need for law and agenda, the people in effect policed and organised themselves.
The liberty of Norton Folgate may have been forgotten in time but for Madness, reviving it in song and retelling the story. By some strange chance, and in an event eerily unconnected with the band, property developers planned to pull down the alleys and buildings that form Norton Folgate and replace them with functional but faceless glass skyscrapers to match most of the surrounding areas. Norton Folgate seemed doomed forever when local protest met a brick wall of bureaucracy. By chance, a local historian opposed to the destruction of this piece of history found the Liberty and discovered that by error, the beaureaucrats had never actually revoked it. By evoking the Liberty, and declaring that the land did in fact belong to the people and not the planners, the demolition has been prevented at least for the time being. At the same time, Madness had read about Norton Folgate and had written a series of songs on London, culminating in a 10 minute classic celebrating the Liberty. The protesters, on hearing this, adopted the song as their anthem and the two movements combined. Madness, being a bit rebellious (but nice), in their day were honoured that their musical mischief making had coincided with such a rebellious event!
On my part, the spirit of Norton Folgate is exactly what the Recruiting Unconference London is all about. No set rules or structure, self policing, the tracks and controlling the content. We are expecting enjoyment, engagement, laughter, a little anger and plenty of learning. I view it that as The Bill Boorman Consultancy is the name above the door, it’s our job to facilitate the event, it’s the job of every attendee to organise it and make sure that the content is just right for them. You choose what you want to know, what you want to talk about, where you want to contribute and where you want to listen. Then just like in Norton Folgate, the evening will end in revelry.
The Recruiting Tweetup is a quarterly event organised by Jamie Leonard of The Ladders and Matt Alder of Penna Barkers, the social media ringmaster himself. The London RTU brings your networking offline and enables you to put faces to the tweets whilst enjoying the odd ale, liquor or similar exotic tipple. The London RTU is the place where the debate will no doubt continue long in to the night fuelled by intoxication. A great end to a great day!

The Recruiting Unconference London or #trulondon takes place on the 19th November.
You can book for The Recruiting Unconference London at http://recruitingunconference.eventbrite.com

Have you got something interesting to say about Java? Want to talk to other people with similar interests?

The London Java Community are pleased to announce that their first ‘unconference’ will run on Saturday November the 28th 2009.

What is an unconference? It is defined on Wikipedia as a “facilitated, participant-driven conference centered around a theme or purpose” http://en.wikipedia.o… Our theme will be Java….

We know that Java is a fairly broad subject area – but we didn’t want to limit creativity by narrowing the scope. This leaves people free to talk on the Java language, Spring, Hibernate, Open Source and Java, OSGi, perhaps even JVM languages, anything Java that you want….

As is traditional with this type of event, the content will be provided by the audience. To help us ensure that we have enough conference rooms, we are asking you to indicate whether or not you intend to speak at the event. We are also charging a small fee to attend – this is simply to cover costs (lunch, coffees etc), the aim is to break even on the event. Any profit will be put behind the bar after the event.

Thanks to a LJC member Zoe Slattery and our own Martijn Verburg for the organising of this.

To sign up please visit our official site http://www.meetup.com/Londonjavacommunity/calendar/11677002/

Unfortunately, WordPress won’t let me embed this fan-tabulous animation, but I invite you to check out this fun and funky video for our upcoming unconference/bloggers’ care at AASL!  You can see the video and more fun ads for the unconference at http://aaslbloggerscafe.wikispaces.com/; in addition, you can sign up to share at our bloggers’ cafe at http://aaslbloggerscafe.wikispaces.com/, so please surf over today and check it out!

GoAnimate.com: The Unconference@The Blogger’s Cafe by gwyneth

Like it? Create your own at GoAnimate.com. It’s free and fun!

Also check out this cool video from Brenda Anderson!

AWSChennai.in