i’m in town for the SLA Centennial Conference. i love the SLA conferences – it’s always wild to meet librarians who work in “non-traditional” gigs. this year i’m on the boards of two divisions – IT and Academic – so i’ll be getting my first glimpse at the inner machinations of things.
more soon!
so facebook has begun offering vanity URLs to folks (’bout time, i know). though i hadn’t planned on staying up ’til 12:01am EST, it turns out that i like air conditioning, beer, and television, and the triumvirate were available tonight in DC.
so once i had decided to get a URL with facebook, i had to decide on the name. amy.buckland? amybuckland? amyb?
in the end i picked “jambina” which has been my online identity for a number of years (except on youtube – dunno who that is).
now it’s never been hard to find out who jambina is, but it’s still a bit jarring that i have now associated that name with my facebook identity.
but i see this as a good thing.
i’m proud of my online identity. i participate in much of the conversation out there, and think that on most occasions, i have something of value to say. [this is the point in the post when i realize that someone out there will find something horrible i have said/done online and post it in the comments. such is life.] so i have no reason to be wary of this jambina/amy link.
i think.
do i?
i am addicted to modifying photos using picnik – especially since every social network requires you to have some kind of avatar for you profile.
picnik is free and doesn’t require you to register (though there are some perks if you do). you can crop and rotate and fix colours (you can even use curves), as usual, but picnik also allows you to add filters to your photos, text, funny pix, and frame things in a bunch of different ways.
so you can make a boring picture like this:
look like this:
(there’s lots more you can do – i just wanted to give you a rough idea. this was cropped, rotated, had the Orton-ish effect applied, speech bubble and text added, and i gave myself a loverly ’stache.)
i’m off to the SLA Centennial Conference in a few days and want to be sure to meet up with folks, so thought i’d post my sked
Saturday, June 13
Sunday, June 14
Monday, June 15
Tuesday, June 16
Wednesday, June 17
Thursday, June 18
there are still spots available for the ETIG library camp this coming May 29, 2009 in Montreal (hosted at my loverly place of work – McGill Unversity).
so come hang out with Jessamyn West, John Fink, Jason Hammond, and a bunch of other really awesome folks for one day.
it’s cheap (40$).
we’re going to talk about fun things.
and there’s a surprise gift for those who attend. (seriously, there is. i’m not just saying that.)
hope to see you there!
i’m not sure how i feel about dell’s foray into lady laptops – Della.
i mean, i really like pretty things, and i am always attached to an internet-enabled device, so i am not averse to lappys that come in something other than ibm-black or apple-silver. (and yes, the Vivienne Tam HP Mini would make me giddy.)
i think what really got to me were the photos on the site.
exhibit a
who doesn’t bring their lappy to the beach? with their BFFs?
and make sure their lappy matches their sarong.
also, vacation FAIL.
exhibit b
oh puhleese, there’s no way you’re getting a wifi connection out there.
so women with laptops are all havin’ fun with their sistahs or communing with nature.
got it, i think.
wait, huh?
so despite being a librarian, i read very few books. i get most of my information from blogs, magazines, journals, podcasts, and talking to people (some of whom are writing books). some days i think this is a huge failure on my part, and i remember hearing something about multitaskers actually being unable to focus on anything for longer than 5 minutes…
i own Clay Shirky’s Here Comes Everybody – but i read maybe a few pages at a time, because they are just so dense. (i’m not the only one that feels that way. one of the Media Hacks guys – Mitch Joel maybe – faces the same issue.) and i have a copy of Seth Godin’s Tribes (bit of a fangirl since seeing him speak at SLA last year) but again… yet to break the spine on the book.
but TED just posted Seth Godin’s most recent chat about tribes, and it rocks as much as i hoped it would. at the end he posts three questions about leading a tribe.
i need to think about a few things…
i’m playing with new wordpress templates so you might see a few changes over the next little while (unless you are just getting the feed from this site, in which case, welcome to same-old, same-old).
lemme know if you love/hate any of the changes.
it’s getting to that time of year when MLIS students are spending more time working on their CVs and cover letters than on their coursework (note: get’er done guys). one aspect of the interview will certainly be a presentation (which can vary in length – i’ve heard of 5 minute quickies to 60 minute instructional sessions). and while some of you may wonder why a librarian would have to be good at presentations, i certainly hope that those of you coming out of LIS schools realize just how often you will have to speak, with persuasion and conviction, in your day-to-day in a library. if you’re not presenting an idea to your committee colleagues, then you are doing an introduction to library resources for new students, or helping PhD students navigate the depths of various databases.
there have recently been a number of good posts on presentation preparation and techniques, so i thought i’d share’em here.
the awesome Ryan Deschamps has a killer post on “doing a 15 presentation in 10 easy steps“. these 10 steps are broken down into 3 categories:
the equally awesome Iris Jastram thinks about how active learning principles have a place in some presentation, while others will need another angle to keep the audience engaged.
Rochelle Mazar (yay Canadialand) pointed me to the video “How to create a great powerpoint – Take 2.0“. i totally agree with Rochelle that the 60 second intro is awesome and i will definitely use it for my next presentation.
and finally, if you really want to work on your presenting skills, why not attend Pres4Lib: A presentation camp for speakers/trainers? they are going to have BATTLE DECKS!!!
the Emerging Tech Interest Group of CLA (which i co-convene with the truly awesome Amanda Etches-Johnson) is hosting a library-camp-style pre-conference at CLA in May (in the best city on earth – Montréal).
Jessamyn West (yes THE Jessamyn West of librarian.net) will kick-off our day with a keynote on emerging technologies, followed by two sessions on using these technologies in your library. The afternoon will be an “unconference”, where participants will share and learn on a variety of topics pre-determined by the group. (Note: this is not a “sage on the stage” afternoon – come armed with a curious nature and a will to participate.)
Speaker: Jessamyn West, librarian.net
Date & Location: Friday, 29 May 2009 @ Palais des congrès
Registration Fee: $100.00
Registration Includes: Two refreshments breaks and lunch
this will be at least nine kinds of fun!
register here and add your session ideas to the camp wiki.
amy buckland. 