Change is Good!

**CAUTION** Rated R for language. But I'm sorry, the language is what makes it in this case... so I HAVE to share it!...

I was reading through some of my training/elearning RSS feeds and stumbled onto a link to an amazing video (see end of post) from zefrank. I've been following him on and off for years because of his quirky creativity. Thanks to Ray Jimenez for relating this to what a true SME (Subject Matter Expert) is. As Ray states "the new SME is the person who contributes "how I did it" and "what it means to me" - the real stuff that we care about".

Early this year, my position was changed from Training Coordinator within the IT Department here at the Library System to the Training & Development Coordinator in charge of the Training & Development Department. It has been a huge and wonderful, yet at times quite scary change. I no longer have the buffer of a management layer to protect me. Success or failure is on me for the Department.

In that vain, I am trying to get together a Training Advisory Group (TAG) to help this Department to become the best it can be. I am definitely NOT the expert. I look around at all of the talent in our member libraries and I see a bunch of amazing SMEs!! I see so many great ideas and programs and ways of learning that it boggles my mind. I would love to see all of that knowledge pooled and developed into a robust way that every member can benefit from. Wish me luck as this is no small task, but a very exciting one. I also don't want to have to have monthly meetings to make this happen. I want to build a virtual community of sharing where we don't have to wait for a meeting to share the expertise and reap the benefits. It's tough when the members don't have an ounce of time to spare for one more project. My challenge is to make this something they cannot do without; to build something they must have in order to do their jobs to the best of their abilities. Change IS Good!

So how does this video relate? I'm not a prolific writer, so I don't know how to put it into words exactly... but when I watch this video, it just completely speaks to the change happening in me, in my position, and at my place of work. Don't know why exactly, but it does. It's like looking at a painting and feeling an emotion, and not knowing why...

Here is a transcript of what zefrank is saying. My favorite lines...

"Perfection might look good in his shiny shoes, but he's a little bit of an asshole, and no one invites him to their pool parties."

"There is no need to sharpen my pencils anymore, my pencils are sharp enough. Even the dull ones will make a mark."

"And God, let me enjoy this. Life isn't just a sequence of waiting for things to be done."

All I can say is... Amen. And now, enjoy the video:

A night with Randi Zuckerberg

I was lucky enough to attend the first annual Innovator in Residence presentation last Thursday night 3/22/12 at Millersville University's (my alma mater) Ware Center here in downtown Lancaster. Randi Zuckerberg, older sister of THE Mark Zuckerberg, co-founder of Facebook, was the Innovator. She ran marketing at Facebook for 6 years and is a Harvard grad. In August of 2011, she left Facebook to start R to Z media and launch a new type of media platform. Here's a nice write up of her visit in The Snapper (I can't believe it's still called that!), the weekly newspaper of MU.

There was a social hour before her talk where I had an opportunity to meet Randi and have a fan girl photo op with her. She was very personable and down to earth. My coworker, Rhonda Kleiman, Economic Development Manager, was kind enough to introduce me to the benefactors of the Innovator in Residence program, Dr. Jane Hannigan and Dr. Kay Vandergrift. They were both professors in Library Science - Dr Vandergrift at Rutgers University and Dr. Hannigan at Columbia University. These are two of the most amazing women I have ever met. I really felt like I was rubbing elbows with a lot of intelligence that night!

The title of Randi's presentation was “Mastering Social Media & Creating a Culture of Innovation.” Here are my notes from her talk:

-In it's early days, Facebook used a demand-lead marketing approach. By only inviting colleges to join when there was enough deman and buzz for the site, they created a sense of scarcity that guaranteed success once a school was added.

-By pooling it's own users as translators, the site was translated into many languages in just 24 hours.

-The Facebook workplace operates under a culture of fun. Each year they have a hackathon where employees stay up all night creating something outside of their job. A good idea can come from anywhere.

-Facebook's Culinary Team Page has over 27,000 fans, but only 4000 people work there. So the other 23,000 people are just checking in to see what they are serving up daily. There are some amazing menus on there... This is the right way to do marketing.

-Randi's 10 Trends in Social Media (though I ended up with 12?)

1. The Sharing Economy - examples are:
   -airbnb - rent a home when they are out of town or rent a bedroom in someone's home
   -renttherunway - rent a designer $1000 dress for a night - live a luxurious life on a budget -suitedeal - fly on a private jet when it's not in use by it's owners



2. People as Platforms and Media Brands
   -each one of us is a brand/media company
   -Con - the Internet allows cutomers to complain with a digital microphone
   -Pro: good experiences can also be shared



3. Crowd-Sourcing
   -people want to participate in the creation of their favorite products
   -also can be philanthropic - ex. Target had $5 million to allocate to charities. It put up the list of charities they would contribute to on Facebook and let their fans choose where to allocate the money. So their customers and the charities did their marketing for them.
   -kickstarter is a site anyone can donate money to towards art projects. At the last Sundance film festival, 70% of the films were funded by this site. This site bave a bigger donation than the National Endowment of the Arts!



4. Mobile First
   -some businesses skip the traditional Website alltogether. Go straight to an App for the user experience - ex. Foodspotting App - recommend the best dishes within a restaurant, not just the restaurant itself.
   -Starbucks has an iPhone App that lets you pay with your Starbucks Card right from the app
   -Banks have apps that let you take a photo of a check and deposit it into your account (I personally have used my scanner at home to deposit checks for the last few years).



5. People as Curators
   -Be an expert by gathering others content and curating it. Pinterest is a great example of this. Though she didn't talk about it, we in libraryland know that LibGuides is great for this too. She showed her sister, Donna Zuckerberg's, Pinterest boards all about food. She's quite the foodie.



6. Fitness and Health Communities
   -a way to be accountable to your fitness goals
   -can map your workout and diet data against your friends
   -a personal example for me is Cafewell. My health insurance company allowed me to get a free digital pedometer through the company that tracks all of my steps via a USB connection to my computer. The community just recently completed our walk from the earth to the moon!



7. Facebook's Interest Lists
   -this is new in the last few weeks on Facebook. You can now create a filtered news feed (much like a Twitter list) and follow the news you really want to see. Read about it at techcrunch and mashable.



8. Facebook's Timeline for Brands
   -starting on 3/30 (that's about 15 minutes from me typing this), Timeline will go live for Facebook Brand Pages. This will give fans a rich visual experience. Read about it here and here.



9. Incentive Advertising within Games
   -Usually pushed at the moment of 'leveling-up' - I can vouch for this one. Has caused me to pay the .99 or 1.99 for certain games my 5 year old loves to play on my iPod (you know, Angry Birds, Fruit Ninja, etc.) to avoid all of the adds.



10. Subscription Shopping
    -think of the old wine of the month clubs or CD of the month clubs. This is a huge boom right now. People are looking for a voice in the noise. Example is Birchbox - have a beauty box delivered to your door. Someone else picks out samples you can try out for $10/month to cut through all of the possibilities. Let someone else do your filtering. Thinking about this, I would LOVE to have someone listen to all of the information noise online related to what I do and present me with an executive summary once/week that I could just read to stay up on everything without having to do all of the filtering myself. I'm sure people are making careers out of doing just that. Hey, that would be a pretty cool job. If that's all I had to do all day, I would love it. My problem is I have to do that AND do my job!



11. Video and Livestreaming
    -This will be the main focus of her new company. Example are the press conferences she did in Facebook during her time there. She launched the live streaming industry with her media partnerships around the US Presidential Inauguration and was nominated for an Emmy Award in 2011 for her innovative TV/online coverage of the 2010 mid-term elections.



12. Gamification of Everything
    -Gympact - declare how many times/wk you are going to go to the gym and check in while you are there. Do it enough and you will get paid to go to the gym.
    -Withings - for the VERY brave, a digital scale that tweets out your weight!

What a whirlwind tour of our digital reality these days. I thoroughly enjoyed Randi's talk and look forward to seeing great things from R to Z Media!

A Day in the Life of the Internet

Check out this infographic from Mashable to get a feel for how much 'stuff' happens in just one day on the Internet!

The Joy of Books

I love ebooks and audiobooks these days. It's just so much easier to not have to carry around a bunch of heavy books. However, as this video shows... there really is nothing like a REAL book. Enjoy!

Museums-A-Minute - A Stellar LibGuide

Check out this great LibGuide: Museums-A-Minute. Okay, now here's the back story:

The Office of Commonwealth Libraries, within the Pennsylvania Department of Education has made it possible for many libraries thoughout the state to have access to LibGuides. Penny Talbert, Executive Director of the Ephrata Public Library, received training from the state to teach us here in our Library System how to use LibGuides. I assisted her with her training back in December and LOVE the product. I've viewed many of them over the last few years (Buffy Hamilton is a champion of them), but had never had the opportunity to build my own.

I'm playing with one of my own right now, but it's not ready for public consumption. However, Keith Greenawalt, Public Services Manager at Ephrata Public Library has created a BEAUTIFUL LibGuide called Museums-A-Minute for a program he will be doing in March. It is a collection of museums and historic sites that are within 2 hours of Ephrata. He includes a brief description and contact information for each museum. Plus, they are broken into categories only a librarian could design so beautifully. He also includes information on each of the museum pass partners in our Library System.

Thank you Keith for putting together this wonderful resource that will benefit many in our county and beyond! Plus, Keith has the BEST profile pic ever... as I said in my comment on the site:

"I have to say your profile pic is priceless. At first I was like, why is Abe his face and then there you are at the bottom with the best angle and expression... just made me laugh and feel joy about history at the same time. That's pretty phenomenal since I don't click well with history! Well done!"

Now that should make you want to take a look if nothing else...

A Nice Boost from the Elizabethtown Public Library Staff

Moments ago we had a nice surprise here in my office. It has been a rough time lately as our office undergoes a huge change of moving our office from two suites to one to cut costs. You can read about it here. You can see pictures of the fun on facebook. My office walls were torn down and I'm temporarily using the future training room/small conference room to work. It's really not so bad, but I'll be happy when I'm in permanent digs again and the noise and smells subside. Heck, I have a job and a nice place to work, so I'm not going to complain.

The 14 member libraries we serve have been very understanding and supportive during this upheaval. Today, staff from the Elizabethtown Public Library showed up and sang Christmas Carols in our hallways. This random act of kindness and support meant a lot to me today. THANK YOU!!

Now, here's a bit of that Christmas cheer shared with us for all of you in case you too are in times of upheaval.

Download Kindle Format in OverDrive

Here's a great video from the Orange County Library System in Florida on how to download Kindle format eBooks in OverDrive...

There's an Online Learning Party Happening This Week!

There is an amazing online conference happening this week. Check out the Library 2.011 Worldwide Virtual Conference from November 2 - 4, 2011. It's going to be held around the clock online, in multiple time zones and it's FREE! There are 160+ sessions. Be sure to check it out on the main site and see if any of the presentations are for you.

Circulating Nooks at Sacramento Public Library

Are you a library thinking about circulating Nooks? Then you have to check out the final report from the Sacrament Public Library's e-Reader Project. They did a wonderful assessment that surveyed patrons and staff before, during and after the project.

Board Game Representation of using eBooks on OverDrive

Thanks to Craig Haggit, Adult Services Librarian at the Lancaster Public Library for sharing this Prezi presentation with me.

Lisa Bunker, a librarian at Pima County Public Library in Tucson AZ, posted this creative Prezi Presentation, Dowloading Library eBooks Using OverDrive, using a board game representation of the process. The drawing shows there are many steps involved, but instead of feeling overwhelmed by it all, the child within feels challenged to have fun and win the game! Great stuff.

One note: in our OverDrive interface, we do not offer a 21-day loan period; just 14-day or 7-day. Other than that, everything in this presentation is true for us. Also, for those of you with access to our Intranet, LILLY, I posted this to the OverDrive page under the OverDrive Training heading.

Baker's Dozen #8: Digital Books on Prezi