The Corporate Librarian

The blog I’m very, very behind in writing anything for, the SLA-IT Blogging Section blog, has notes by Nicole Engard on a career panel at the annual SLA Conference (which I sorely wish I was attending). One interesting quote from Susan Klopper, which mirrors what I’ve found out here:

If you want to work in a library in a corporation - i would strongly recommend you don’t do that because they don’t exist anymore.

Oh, there are still jobs, but they’re not library jobs for the most part. Read Nicole’s post to learn more.

Sadly, my plan to find an Asus Eee PC in Pittsburgh so I could have Internet access all the time during the AIIP conference didn’t work out. And there was only one business Internet terminal in my hotel. Note: the website is getting a remodel, so I’ll fix links as needed.

The conference proper ran from Thursday to Sunday, with pre-conference workshops on Wednesday. There were about 100 attendees, out of 600 or so members, and of the attendees about 20 were first-timers (like me!). Activities included guest speakers, round tables, general and concurrent sessions and open board meetins. There was also a very nice paddleboat cruise on the river, and one night a bunch of us had dinner with people from the local chapter of SLA. Much to my surprise, Tambellini’s deep fried lightly breaded zucchini is actually excellent.

One nice touch is that first-time attendees got a ribbon for their badge and a session to attend, where Debbie Hunt and Cindy Shamel got us talking to each other, practicing networking and developing our elevator pitches.

But you want to know what AIIP is and why you might want to go to the conference. AIIP is an association for people who want to start (or have started, or are considering starting) their own information businesses - research and consulting both. The annual conference costs $395 (not counting hotel and pre-conference workshops, and stipends are available in some cases) if you register early, and membership ranges from $50 (for students) to $500 (for a supporting membership). Full and Associate memberships cost $200. There’s a fair amount of overlap in membership between AIIP, SLA and SCIP.

Depending on your level of membership, you can get a listing for your business in the directory, access to a mentor to help you plan and start your business, access to the mailing list, participation in referral and speaker programs, various awards and stipends, and vendor discounts. You can read the full list here.

At the conference, I got lots of immediately-useful, practical advice from people who are successful independent information professionals, from design issues (business cards, website) to networking to planning service offerings to marketing your business. Not to mention some cool sessions on useful gadgets.

Besides that, I met a lot of people from the Bay Area, which is always a good thing. I’m hoping to go to Debbie Bardon’s next informal get-together in the Oakland hills.

I feel a bit guilty that starting my own business isn’t the first thing I tried after becoming unemployed (AIIP’s membership tracks unemployment), but people are there to give advice and pep talks as needed. If you’re thinking about a solo career, and want advice on the pros and cons beyond what you can read in books, you could do a lot worse than a student or associate membership. If you’ve already got your own business, AIIP can get you promotion, referrals and useful tips.

Next year’s conference is in Albuquerque in late March, hope to be there and to meet new people!

And really, how often do we get to use lines from classic David Cronenberg movies in library blogs? Not often enough, I say.

I’ll be at the Association of Independent Information Professionals Annual Conference (April 30th-May 4th), so if people want to say hi feel free. My Internet access will be limited, unless I can pick up an Asus Eee PC at a Best Buy there or something. At least my phone will let me check email.

Pittsburgh natives, I’ll be near the 6th Street Bridge, apparently.

I’m really pretty happy with my Associate membership to AIIP - I’ve attended webinars which passed on useful tips, gotten discounts from vendors and learned about valuable resources like ResearchTrail. I’m hoping to get some networking done and get some useful advice towards starting up a business

I’m trying to nail down what topics might be suited to a hands-on conference (and after that, I can figure out whether online or in a venue makes more sense). My initial thoughts:

• Installing a wiki
• Adding plugins to a wiki
• Installing either Movable Type or WordPress
• Adding plugins to the above
• Project management

I’m also reviewing Five Weeks To A Social Library to see what lessons I can learn from it. And I need to check out some of the resources on the Online Training Resources page on the Library Success Wiki. I’m a bit worried that I’m reinventing the wheel here.

So, heady with the renown and job offers that came in after Library Camp NYC, I had another idea based on my experiences at Internet Librarian in 2007 (as well as various librarians’ blog posts). A librarian conference consisting solely of workshops - everything from project management to installing a wiki. If there were enough people interested in leading workshops, we might even be able to split the conference into beginner and expert tracks. Heck, maybe even regional conferences, sharing materials and workshop ideas on the Library Success wiki or some other wiki.

What do people think of the idea?

Tom Reamy’s full presentation on folksonomies and tagging from Internet Librarian is available on the KAPS Group website.

I’ve got pushback on it in a few areas, but check it out and see what you think.

Technorati Tags: il2007

Not all of them by any means, but a chunk are posted online (mostly as PowerPoint slideshows) on the Internet Librarian 2007 site.

Technorati Tags: il2007

I figure now that I’ve had some time to reflect, I’d post some thoughts on the KMWorld & Intranets conference last week.

For me personally, it was worth it on the whole. I still need to work on the whole networking thing, but at least I didn’t grab people and force my business cards on them - I listened to them, spoke up when it made sense and so on. There was a decent range of backgrounds for attendees, though I suspect there’s a heavy corporate IT contingent. Because it was at the San Jose Convention Center, I just had to hop on the Light Rail and cross the street - no hotel needed.

I liked getting a lot of the conference presentations in printed form, so I could focus on the discussion and the points brought out not in the PowerPoint. Even if my note-taking does suffer from the “Must organize things in bullet points” mode I learned in consulting.

That being said, I did find some things I’d improve in future conferences. Wi-Fi access in the conference rooms, not just in the hallway outside. A meeting board, so people could arrange to meet up, post job listings, etc.. Power strips, and lots of them. More publicizing of the wiki (beyond a brief notice at the bottom of a page in the middle of the conference guide) and announcing tags for the conference for Flickr, Technorati, etc..

While I worry about how it might affect participation in sessions, I’d like to see some experimentation with official backchannels, whether they’re in the form of IRC, web chats or what have you. I think they could get a lot of basic questions by people answered while leaving time for more complex back-and-forth.

The conference sessions I got the most out of tended to incorporate interaction with the audience while the session went on, rather than limiting things to a Q&A session at the end. They also were not just product pitches - I’m beginning to come around, reluctantly, to Dave Winer’s way of thinking on vendor pitching in conferences. The Google rep pooh-poohed ‘discovery’ and presented search as the be-all and end-all. Which is obviously only true if you know what you’re looking for. A lot of what he said resonated with previous presenters (publishing and sharing what you can, the importance of collaboration) but it was framed as “And this is why you should use Google Apps!” Swell, the average number of keywords in a Google search is down to 1.7. What does that actually mean?

One of the things which fascinated me about the BEA session was that the vendor took a class of technology based on trust and collaboration and stressed the advantage of being able to stop experimentation by users and lock down what people could see.

In some respects a lot of what I heard was similar to discussion in the 1990s - the need to get out of users’ way and act as facilitators, rather than imposing a system on them (though, as David Snowden noted, some boundaries are needed). Innovation was a frequent topic, I suspect due to companies worrying about their prospects for sustainable growth. What fascinated me was the tension between people’s discussions - Are communities of practice highly useful or no better than chance would suggest? What’s the balance between organizing and understanding what we already know and looking outside the walls of the organization?

I left with interesting questions I wouldn’t necessarily have come up with on my own, and I hope discussions continue after the conference.

Technorati Tags: kmw07

Cyrus Mistry gave this presentation on what next-gen collaboration looks like and how organizations can maximize productivity. I was honestly a bit nervous that this would be a product pitch, but Google is so important in the areas I’ve worked in and hope to work that I felt obliged to attend.

Why can’t you have cool fun technology at work? Why is it limited to the consumer space? Business technology user satisfaction is declining over time (so he says), 75-80% of tech spending is maintenance. Most of the top startups (80%) are in the consumer space.

Google does not have laborious deployment of IT - experimentation and iteration.

Technology must be simple to implement (appliances, Software-as-a-Service, minimize customization)

Platforms have to be able to deal with constant change.

OK, he’s getting into product pitching. Grr.

• Manual categorization and hierarchies are dead (Um, no, they’re not - mix of structure and tagging, guy). He shows an array of email folders versus Gmail (you can search your inbox), files on desktop versus Google search. Internal Google startup page is search bar plus mashups bringing in content. Search is a way of navigation.

• He dismissed discovery - said you generally want an aggregate - you don’t want all the pages on weather, you want to know the weather in your location, in a simple display (but how is that context derived?)

• The goal is to answer the user’s question with search = average number of keywords in Google search is down from 3-4 something to 1.7

• Applications (pitch for Google Apps) - simple interface, collaborative, going for the 80% common tasks (so yes, Google Docs doesn’t have mail merge, as an example he gave)

• How to deploy to enterprise - start small, with official intranet. Add a directory search, then high-value (can’t make out my writing here - battery had died and I was hand-writing notes on my program).

Questions:

• Why is there this gap in usability between consumer tech and the enterprise? (Designing for features rather than users)
• What will the impact of natural language searching be? (Increasing impact)
• Timeline for blogs/wikis available as part of Google Apps? (Doesn’t know)

Technorati Tags: kmw07

Chris Rivinus, Director of Knowledge Systems for Parsons Brinckerhoff talked about visualization (surprise!) and the advantages Parsons Brinckerhoff had found in using it.

Selling the vision (marketing) - Pictures to moving pictures –> conceptual phase of project –> concepts handed over to design team –> models becoming more exact –> parametric object modeling.

(showed video of a visualization of Dubai’s Palm Island project, would be used in pre-sales to public and officials)

Exact model captures and transmits project details across discipline, experience, language barriers.

(showed video of a visualization of the Fulton Street Transit Center project)

Digital models using CAVE technology, hand-me-down gaming environments to experience the project before it’s built and to work through design issues with clients. Merging of engineering/graphics design.

(showed video of a walkthrough of the integration of the various World Trade Center designs, 1/4″ accuracy, can pull off skins)

2d to 3d design, can work out design conflicts, communications tool between engineers and construction managers. More common in Europe, where much more of a vertical market due to legal issues around handoff.

(showed video of visualization of the World Trade Center, showing conflict between 2 designs)

Normally, conflict between designs would be discovered on-site, weeks of delay. Process of resolving the conflict only took about 3 hours.

4d modeling - 4th dimension is time, works out phasing conflicts and problems, full integration of project schedule with phased renderings.

(showed video of visualization of the WTC, showing scheduling conflict)

HIgh-density knowledge exchange - Israeli Ministry of Finance, risk management tool, exchange of highly-specific high-density technical information, shared experience. Visualization requires shared inherent value of symbols.

Social network analysis - why hasn’t it caught on? Managers can’t understand it without explanation.

(showed video of visualization of Alaskan Way Viaduct project, several other videos)

Questions/Comments:

• What applications do you use? How do you make it work? (Evangelism, good clients, people with reputation. GSA, Intel, Disney other examples of organizations using this.)
• How do you handle duration of phasing? (Target areas where you’re going to achieve savings/ROI. Contractors and subcontractors don’t pad bills as much when bidding, because they have better information to work with.)
• Have you been able to overlay SNA with actual work-in-progress and achieve benefits? (No, they’re separate. SNA is around back-office stuff. Can push visualization to project managers more in tight-budget situations.)
• How do you deal with the shift in skill sets? (It’s just not that hard, you need a champion/mentor but it’s not hard to pick up the basics. Schedule integration is a trickier bit, because you need to get people to put stuff down, traditionally scheduling and design are separate.)

Technorati Tags: kmw07