Jenny Levine, Internet Development Specialist and Strategy Guide, American Library Association, USA is this weeks speaker. Jenny is a track keynote speaker on day one of the conference. ...

Day 1: Track 3 New Channels, New Media and New Approaches for Libraries

Q Which are the most important topics, for you personally, due to be discussed at the Online Information Conference 2008 and why?
Jenny: The most important topics for me are the integration of user-generated content, interactivity, and syndication (RSS). I believe these three things are changing user expectations and behaviour with information and media, forcing the rest of us to adapt to these changes.

Q Which tracks would you recommend to delegates attending the conference?
Jenny: As someone who works in an association and is implementing a professional networking service for our members, I'm interested in the "Risk 2.0 or Opportunity 2.0 - hype or hope?" and "User generated content - challenging professionals" tracks. I'm also intrigued by the "Perspectives from Generation Y" and "Information seeking behaviours in the new world" ones, as I think these have an impact on our profession.

Q What are you looking forward to most about participating in Online Information 2008?
Jenny: The piece I'm looking forward to the most is the networking and meeting new people who can provide me with new information and inspire me think of things in different ways. This conference certainly looks like an exciting group of people to do just that.

Q If you had to choose only one - which social network would you recommend to colleagues?
Jenny: don't think I can recommend just one social network, as I don't believe any of them meets all of someone's needs. Instead, I think each person should create their own social network using Friendfeed, although I am discouraged that the site still cannot display Facebook updates.

Q And finally, just out of interest - where are you planning to spend Christmas this year?
Jenny: I'm planning to spend the holidays at home, which will be a nice break after a fall of quite a bit of travel. :)

About Jenny Levine
I work in both the Information Technology and Publishing units at the American Library Association. As part of my job, I blog, create wikis, bug my colleagues to instant message, test podcasting and vodcasting, teach RSS, post pictures on Flickr, explore Second Life, and do similar work with emerging technologies and new tools. I am currently organizing the 2007 ALA TechSource Gaming, Learning, and Libraries Symposium which will take place in July in Chicago. Last year, I had the pleasure of traveling around the United States and Europe to give more than 30 presentations. The "strategy guide" piece of my title is providing leadership and implementation of new technologies at ALA and in libraries in general.

Learn more about Jenny by checking out her Blog www.theshiftedlibrarian.com
For more information, or to view the conference programme in full, please visit:
www.online-information.co.uk/conference

Posted by dgriffin | October 1, 2008 Arts, Humanities & Social Science, General, Information Management | Permalink  | Comments (0)  

So where do you stand on the great e-book debate? Is the digitisation of books as inevitable as the digitisation of every other as aspect of life in the western world in the 21st century? Or is an e-book ruining the experience of reading a book where there is as much physical pleasure as mental? Many find it hard to divide the love of reading from the love of books with careful readers finding the physical properties of the paper and the dust jacket as pleasurable as the mental devouring of the written word. It seems impossible that such experiences will be lost. However research suggests that those who are used to online are ready to embrace the e-book in a way that seemed unlikely just a few years ago. One reason why e-books may be on the cusp of being a serious proposition is that the technology has caught up with the initial hype and promise. Carrying around a thick book may have its disadvantages but that is still a better bet than being in possession of an e-book reader which doesn't quite have the right screen size, battery lifespan, lighting or weight.
Research commissioned by Nielsen Book showed that 3% of regular internet users were "extremely likely" to buy a dedicated e-book reader in the next three months with a further 4% very likely to make a purchase. The online survey generated 6,500 respondents and illustrated a widespread awareness of the device. The intent to purchase e-books was also measured with 9% of respondents extremely or very likely to buy an e-book within the same timeframe.
Whether you may have expected a higher response among such a digitally aware audience is a matter of dispute. Of course given the economic gloom and the lack of consumer confidence maybe this is not the best time to be selling a new concept to a fragile feeling buying and reading public. But perhaps what is most interesting is that Nielsen is taking e-books seriously enough to be developing a way of measuring the sales of e-books alongside the method it has for counting physical book sales. Comparing sales of e-books with their real life counterparts should be a good measure of how many of us are truly embracing the digital world.

Posted by P. Williams | September 26, 2008 Arts, Humanities & Social Science, Electronic Document & Records Management, General | Permalink  | Comments (0)  

On the 25 June 2008, the Cabinet Office decreed that all government departments would have to encrypt important information held on discs, USB sticks or laptops in its wide ranging review of security practices. This conclusion could be either seen as a sensible approach to managing the vast data government holds or, less charitably, a statement of the obvious.
If it were a statement of the obvious, it wasn't quite obvious enough. Data handing procedures in government: final report doesn't seem to have been read, or understood, or acted upon by the Cabinet Office's colleagues at the Home Office or by suppliers to the Home Office. Less than two months after the tome hit the streets, the UK government is once again mopping up after at another hugely embarrassing loss of data.
Back in February I wrote on this blog. Data loss has become a running story over the last few months. Not so much is the question "Has there been a data breach?" more a case of "Who now?"
And that "Who now?" question keeps being repeated. It is hard to think of a government department which hasn't mislaid data. There is something of a routine to all this: government department confesses to the latest cock up. This is followed by emerging of embarrassing details. Opposition politicians express their outrage, experts express their opinions and inquires are set in train. And then another data loss comes to light (repeat above).
In this latest example, my thought processes go like this: so at one stage the data on 84,000 criminals was encrypted, that's good. And then it was decoded, well OK maybe that was necessary so the data could be used. Then the decoded data was put on a memory stick. At this point I want to shout: "What did you do that for?"
The Times reported this morning that Home Secretary Jacqui Smith was furious. Who can blame her? The BBC reported that PA Consulting has searched its premises and looked at CCTV recordings in an attempt to recover the missing memory stick. If the security guys and gals at PA start by questioning everyone who has a pocket, wallet, handbag or briefcase that should narrow it down. Unbelievable (again).

Posted by P. Williams | August 22, 2008 Electronic Document & Records Management, General, Information Management | Permalink  | Comments (0)  

Here's a timely reminder for all those high flying company executives who are off on holidays and can't quite tear themselves away from the thrill of work. As you pack the laptop or the BlackBerry ("Honestly darling I probably won't even switch it on and certainly not when the kids want to play") say to yourself: "Nearly 4,000 laptops go lost or missing in Europe's major airports every week." No, not a figure made up by a desperate hack in the midst of a silly season but the headline finding from Ponemon Institute for Dell. This statistic summons up images of piles of laptops strewn around arrivals and departures halls like so much modern art. How do we manage to lose so many?
And while the amount of kit that is getting mislaid is mind boggling, equally astonishing is that fact that the research claims that nearly half of the professionals surveyed take no steps to protect the data in the event of a loss or theft. Maybe that would be OK if the only information on there was the holiday packing list but nearly half reckon they keep confidential information on their laptops. It is hard to assume those two halves don't overlap so a fair amount of important info is sculling around the world's airports unprotected. The other astonishing statistic unearthed by this research is that 57% of the 3,300 laptops in the eight largest airports that end up in lost and found departments are never reclaimed. Is that because people want an excuse for a nice upgrade or maybe we're all too cynical to believe that something that is once lost can ever be found?
Whatever the lesson from all this is plain. While business travellers clearly need to carry the kit, if you are off on holiday think twice before you haul that laptop into the hand luggage. They'd be much safer locked away in the office and you would definitely have a better holiday. Enjoy.

Posted by P. Williams | August 1, 2008 Electronic Document & Records Management, General, Information Management | Permalink  | Comments (0)  

Evidence is mounting that professionals are seriously embracing online professional networking. Let me point you to two signs - involving the legal and the accountancy profession on both sides of the Atlantic - that may indicate a trend. The IT Faculty of the Institute of Chartered Accountants in England & Wales (ICAEW) has launched a new professional development portal called IT Counts to help institute members to keep up to date with IT issues that impact their working lives. The ICAEW hopes to roll out more interest-based communities to its 132,000 members. You may have heard of IT Counts because it won Incisive Media's inaugural Web 2.0 innovation awards a few weeks back.
More recently a US-focused survey found that almost 50% of attorneys are members of online social networks and over 40% believe professional networking has the potential to change the business and practice of law over the next five years. The Networks for Counsel Survey conducted by Leader Networks and commissioned by LexisNexis Martindale-Hubbell claims to be the first survey to examine social networking practices among the legal profession.
Leader Networks noted that the legal profession is traditionally slow to adopt new technologies so attorneys' readiness to use online networking tools represents a significant shift in behaviour. LexisNexis Martindale-Hubbell certainly thinks that the legal profession is ready to embrace social networking as a serious work tool. It is looking to take advantage by launching a global network for the legal community later this year. This research was part of an exercise to assess what exactly lawyers wanted. Up to now social networking usage falls among older professionals but these guys aren't daft. If they see the benefit they'll learn.
Many professionals say they are finding it increasingly difficult to do the meeting and greeting necessary to find and keep work. Online professional networking tools offer the promise of an efficient and effective way of making and keeping contacts, especially in a global context. The professions are beginning to see that these online tools are now fit for a serious business purpose. It looks likely that online professional networks are coming of age.

Posted by P. Williams | July 18, 2008 Company & Financial Information, Electronic Document & Records Management, General | Permalink  | Comments (0)  

By now my picture may have disappeared from the sidebar of this blog. It's because, for the past eight months, I've been burning too many candles at too many ends. Something had to give and, while my relationship with the IWR folk is still good, I just can't keep up with the weekly blog. I'm so sorry (although I'll understand perfectly if you're not!) You'll still be getting a column from me once a month.

What's taken over a large chunk of my life is working with Freeform Dynamics, a boutique research and analysis firm which publishes a lot of its stuff freely. My particular responsibilities centre around environmental and social computing; although a lot of business people shrink from the 'social' word, so I tend to use 'collaboration' with them.

My first IWR blog post was just over two years ago (we started the blog in May 2006, despite what it says in the sidebar.) I used the Wayback Machine to find it. Just provide a website URL and it will list all the web pages back to the start - a great way to check up on how people change their tune over the years. Or simply to do a bit of research, like I did.

Then, as now, I'd recently been in California. And my first post related to the first law of VC investment: find something that appeals to one of the seven deadly sins. Of course, unless you're a churchgoer, these don't come readily to mind. So they are: greed, envy, sloth, pride, wrath, gluttony and lust. The virtues by contrast are: faith, hope, charity, fortitude, justice, temperance and prudence. The last being much beloved of our current (is he still?) Prime Minister.

It's interesting to see how social computing and environmental concerns have tempered many people's outright pursuit of sins with more than a pinch of virtue. Yet, underneath you can't help suspecting that not much has changed. Although, perhaps because of the new circles I move in, I do see a lot more charity these days. People seem more ready to give in the online social world with little expectation of a return. The weird thing about this is that the returns come rapidly as word spreads. I had lunch with four people the other day and every one of us has benefitted financially and spiritually from our online activities, even when that's not what we set out to do. In fact, all five of us only knew each other as a result of social computing related activities.

If you're curious about who we are, one of our number, Euan Semple, posted a picture of the occasion to Flickr. Except it wasn't an occasion. We just all felt like turning online to offline for a change.

When it comes to the green side of my life, it seems that we are, once again, driven by sin on the one hand and virtue on the other. All businesses want to make money (sin or survival - take your pick). And we all want to make sure that our children and grandchildren inherit a world worth living in, which I think lies in virtues, although it could be partially driven by pride. Bosses of organisations might make environmental choices for pragmatic reasons - money, PR or regulation - but they may secure staff commitment for additional, more spiritual, reasons. If the end result works, are we bothered?

So back to the first column. My conclusion was that "information professionals may be helping users address their baser urges". Now I'm not so sure. I actually think you're better than that. I owe you an apology.

See you on the column. Or Google me if you feel so moved.

It's been fun. Thanks for reading the blog posts.

Posted by David Tebbutt | May 30, 2008 General | Permalink  | Comments (0)  

In the dim and distant past, when Adobe first announced Acrobat and I was a snidy journalist, it gave me huge pleasure to rib the company about the inflationary nature of its software. It would take simple text and inflate it to six or more times the size and say "now it can be read on multiple devices." My view then was that plain text could be viewed on multiple devices anyway.

But, of course, I was a words man and an ex-programmer whose first computers had the equivalent of just 2.4k of memory. We ran things like accounts, payroll and stock control on those things. I was a) not interested in presentation and b) paranoid about wasting computer resources. The idea that the Gettysburg address would require 6.4 times the storage in .pdf compared with .txt appalled me.

Of course, life moves on. Computer equipment has become cheaper and storage more plentiful and Adobe has spent its life delivering what real people want, rather than pandering to minorities like me. And, for what it's worth, I've been a consumer and creator of Acrobat and Flash materials for some years. I know my screencasts and invoices (for example) can be understood by anyone who has a Flash player or Acrobat reader, respectively.

This week, the company previewed some upcoming products and services, in particular Connect Pro 7  and Presenter 7 which are imminent. Adobe also mentioned a consumer-level conferencing system due in June and extended IM interoperability for Connect Pro later in the year. Connect Pro is a suite of web conferencing and eLearning facilities while Presenter is an authoring tool which adds things like quiz compilation, audio and video editing to PowerPoint 2007 and can publish the results to Connect Pro.

The end result is a powerful eLearning environment which runs from authoring, through conferencing, break-out group management, collaboration, quizzing and assessments. Live sessions can be recorded and edited and published for self-paced learning later. There's much more - security, APIs, integration with existing directories and so on. But best to visit the Adobe site for more details if you're interested.

Because Flash and Acrobat are available on multiple operating systems and run in different browsers, it means that just about anyone can participate in these conferences and learning experiences.

It turns out that the concepts that I scoffed at all those years ago, were actually smart in the extreme.

Posted by David Tebbutt | May 16, 2008 General | Permalink  | Comments (0)  

Since global warming has (temporarily?) stopped, we now have the term 'climate change' to keep us alarmed.

It strikes me it's all a bit like religion, you can be a Muslim or a Christian and the primary thing that sustains you is your belief, reinforced by holy books such as the Bible or the Koran. Generally speaking, those of one faith generally spend most of their devotional time among their own. Conversion to, or even understanding of, alternative faiths is uncommon.

Such has been the mass of hype around climate change (some of it well-founded, by the way) that it has created a new faith. It's not totally unlike the much-abused 'political correctness' before it, in that to challenge is to be branded a 'denier'. But who can deny that planting crops to harvest as biofuels is fundamentally stupid?

Covering large areas of Britain's land and sea with wind farms is another classic. It would make more sense to capture energy from naturally renewable and continuous energy sources - tide, geothermal, sun and even nuclear is being seen as increasingly realistic by some the pros and many antis. But they'd better get a move on and first make sure the energy generated exceeds that consumed by the lifecycle cost of raw materials, building, operation and eventual shut down.

Nigel Lawson has written a book called Global Warming: An Appeal to Reason. James Lovelock has written The Revenge of Gaia. I read them both together last week. Each makes interesting observations - sometimes agreeing, sometimes not, even when based on the same premises. If you've not read them, they cast different lights on the same science. I feel disinclined to follow either argument with any degree of passion, but they certainly provided plenty of food for thought.

We can choose a pro or anti stance or we can go for a more neutral 'trying to leave the planet in a fit condition for our successors'. With Green IT 08 coming up next week, there's going to be a lot of hype around. If you're going (and the conference looks interesting), I suggest you make sure of where you stand on environmental issues before you leave, and weigh everything that's hurled at you accordingly. In particular, if someone's trying to sell you something, ask them about the nett planetary impact.

Posted by David Tebbutt | May 2, 2008 General | Permalink  | Comments (0)  

What does 'sustainability' mean to you? The more time I spend with IT vendors, the more I wonder if they see it as something for other people.

To quote from the frequently-cited Brundtland Report: "development that meets the needs of the present without compromising the ability of future generations to meet their own needs."

Lots of companies pay lip service to that but, somehow, it always results in them making more things for us to buy. It's as if they've had trouble getting to grips with the 'needs' part of 'meet the needs of the present'. Do we ever ask what we really 'need' in order to stay afloat in the today's complicated world?

Of course, IT does have the potential to address the 98% of carbon emissions (say) that are not attributable to IT operations. Many manufacturers tell a good tale. They speak of reuse of components in future products, of their adherence to this and that regulation and, especially, of how the application of more IT will help cut someone else's environmental footprint.

In the end, though, there's no hiding the fact that they're still hooked on growth. Understandable, by the way. And while they could possibly achieve this through services, the global vendors see hundreds of millions of souls in developing countries as fine prospects for more 'things', even if they are made of fewer and more easily recycled materials.

Perhaps, by getting in early enough with IT equipment as a travel or printing substitute, for example, these vendors can help the developing countries avoid some of the excesses of the West. Frankly, I'm not optimistic, but I'd love to be proved wrong.

Posted by David Tebbutt | April 25, 2008 General | Permalink  | Comments (0)  

Two recent encounters brought Second Life and real life into sharp contrast. And, it has to be said, on this particular occasion I preferred Second Life.

The idea behind my Second Life visit was to see if things had livened up at all in the last year or so. I headed for the library archipelago and was soon redirected to Info Island International where I met a bunch of interesting people who shared my interests.

Before long, I was off exploring their web presences and picking up interesting snippets. One link worth sharing is this one to a free profiling tool associated with the Groundswell book written by analysts Charlene Li and Josh Bernoff. Gareth Otsuka (real life name Gareth Osler of Liverpool Libraries) tipped me off about the link, mentioning that it is in his library technology RSS feed. Cheers Gareth - nice feed.

Looking at my notes, I was amazed to find that I'd spent 35 minutes with Gareth and some of his colleagues and passers-by. Time passed quickly because of our common interests.

Contrast this with a physical gathering today. In theory, we all had an interest in 'social media'. But the engagement rules were very different. In Second Life, you can click on an avatar to find out about a person and choose not to engage, or move on without embarrassment. In real life you have to do it through conversation. But by the time you realise you want to be elsewhere, you're trapped.

Both environments rely on serendipity to work its magic but, in the case of Second Life, it's definitely aided and abetted by effective focusing and filtration mechanisms. And, assuming you have the graphics power and broadband width, Second Life scores because it also avoids the inconvenience of physical travel.

Posted by David Tebbutt | March 28, 2008 Arts, Humanities & Social Science, General | Permalink  | Comments (5)