amy posted this February 24th, 2009 | filed under: inspire me!, library skül, moi | 1 comment »
the awesome Greg Schwartz has decided to put his show, Uncontrolled Vocabulary, on hiatus.
this saddens me because the show was one of the first LIS-related but non-library school things i discovered out there on the intertubes. talking about real life LIS issues! getting the dirt on new tech and how it might actually apply to librarians! listening to LIVE LIBRARIANS! amazing!
so to Greg, i have this message: i owe you much. listening to that first episode of UnVocab was one of those “OMG i made the right decision in becoming a librarian” moments.
you rock.
amy posted this February 13th, 2009 | filed under: 2.0 fun, Second Life, discovery, general, inspire me!, library skül, moi, presenting, silliness | 1 comment »
such as present at a workshop where you’re on the slate with seasoned veterans like Stephen Abram and Michael Stephens.
i would say that i am fairly comfortable presenting in front of a group. we do a lot of teaching at my branch, so i have had a lot of practice explaining somewhat complicated things to folks.
i also read up on presenting (slide:ology and presentation zen are two recent faves) and while i don’t consider myself as proficient with powerpoint as Larry Lessig, i certainly don’t force my audience to suffer “death by powerpoint”. or as Dorothea puts it, “i don’t think i’ve ever wasted the audience’s time”.
so though i’m okay speaking to people, and know that my presentations are, for the most part, not-so-bad, being asked to speak at this workshop was still scary.
scary because…
- both Stephen and Michael know how to engage an audience.
- i wasn’t presenting at some far-off conference to peeps that i will only ever see again at another conference. i was presenting to local librarians and library school students – my colleagues and friends!
- i didn’t get to rehearse nearly as much as i had hoped (note to self: your procrastinatory skills are epic. you must fix this).
but scary is good. scary makes you try harder. scary makes you prepare better (plz to disregard my 3rd point above). scary makes you try things. scary pushes you to do something!
and then the next time you do it, it’s less scary. and then the next time, even less scary. and so on, and so on…
so how have you scared yourself lately? (alright alright, use “challenged” if that sounds better in your head.) i am well aware that it is easier to say you are going to do something new than to actually do it.
what if a double-dawg dare you?
amy posted this February 12th, 2009 | filed under: 2.0 fun, meme, moi, silliness | 3 comments »
… listen to this podcast.
(thanks to my associate producer jason for advice)
UPDATE: thanks to the always-awesome jason, i fixed this. should work now.
amy posted this February 11th, 2009 | filed under: general, innovation | no comments »
this story came through my RSS reader courtesy of the lovely Sarah Hougthon-Jan (the Librarian in Black).
last summer the folks at NASA’s Johnson Space Centre created a team to address innovation within the organization. the results of the analysis were presented in the form of a video, which was shown to managers last month. one of those managers has since uploaded the video to YouTube.
two things struck me after watching this video.
the first – kudos to NASA for investigating this within their organization and actively evaluating how innovation is being blocked.
the second – much of the behaviour in this video directly affects the information-sharing and knowledge management of the organization. No wonder they lost the original moonwalk tapes!
[youtube=http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_424YskAfew]
what is your organization, or you as an information professional, doing to increase innovation and remove barriers?
