Twitter About Friendfeed So Facebook Can Flickr YouTube aka CIL2009 presentation

Now that I’ve had a chance to decompress, find my notes and get some email dealt with I thought I’d post about my presentation at CIL2009.  I had the sincere pleasure of working with not only two talented professionals but two people I now consider good friends – Michael Sauers and Bobbi Newman.   Our presentation dealt with training both staff and customers in regards to the wild, wonderful world of Web 2.0.  More portion of the trilogy dealt with training the customer.

Here are a few links I promised I’d share with people – hope these help you to educate your customers about Web 2.0.

Presentations:

My portion of the presentation

Entire presentation (including Michael and Bobbi’s slides)

My presentation for the public (customers) on Web 2.0 overview

Handouts:

Overview of Web 2.0 class

Photo/video sharing class

Music sharing class

Social Networking class

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25 Things About Lil Ol Me

There has been a Facebook/Friendfeed and probably elsewhere Meme going around (although folks aren’t really tagging people they [like me] are just jumping on the bandwagon).  Well to not be left out (actual I thought it might be interesting to see what I could come up with) here are 25 Things you may or may not know about me:

1. I’ve had a total of 3 years of voice training from 2 very talented voice teachers (one of them recently found me on Facebook).
2. I sang for many years in a church choir as a first soprano.
3. My favorite choral piece to sing is Daniel Pinkham’s Christmas Cantata (with brass quintet).
4. Music has always been a big part of my life (flute, organ and voice lessons).  I’m always with music (XM radio in car, Grooveshark-Finetune-Pandora-LastFm on computer, iPod when mowing the lawn, etc.)
5. I’ve worked basically for the same place of employment since I was 16 years old.  Started on Feb. 1, 1980 and only left for 1 year before coming back.
6. Other library positions I’ve held outside of my current POW – periodicals and acquisitions depts. at Catsonville Community College.
7. I’ve done my fair share in the retail arena as well – Roy Rogers (fast food), Musicland (record store), Gantos (clothes store) and Target.
8. I had never been on a plane until 1998 and then I flew to Hawaii for my first airplane ride.
9. I’ve been to Paris, Spain (Andulacia region), England and Australia (New Zealand too if you count layover in the airport).
10. I’m an only child and the mother of an only child but my Mother is 1 of 12.
11. I’m very particular about color.  One of my favorite books from childhood is “The Color Kittens” by Margaret Wise Brown.  Colors if not right really bother me (be it paint, web sites, etc.)
12. Humor is very important to me.  Guess that explains why I use it as a defense mechanism.  Favorite comedians include Eddie Izzard, Eddie Murphy, Billy Crystal, Robert Klein, and all time fav George Carlin.
13. I have had an Oscar night party for 8 out of the last 10 years.  Complete with evening dress, champagne, voting (sometimes prizes), and decorations.  It is being requested that I do it again this year so I will host once more for the 81st Academy Awards.
14. I can often be a Johnny-come-lately when something becomes TOO popular.  E.G. Harry Potter and LOST – both I finally gave into after most everyone were on board.  Now HUGE fan of both.
15. If I had to pick a sport that is my favorite it would be baseball.  I think my love of it comes from my Dad who used to play softball (he played shortstop) and took me to many a Baltimore Orioles game (even got my picture taken with Mark Balengar who played shortstop for the O’s).
16. I’m highly allergic to cats, somewhat to horses and guinea pigs but not dogs.  Thankfully since I have had 4 dogs in my lifetime so far – currently own a Lab Mix [Dani] and an English Springer Spaniel [Maddie].
17. I’ve had the honor of seeing Raul Julia & Kevin Kline (Arms and the Man), Yul Brynner (The King and I), Ben Vereen (Pippin), and Carol Channing (Hello Dolly) perform live.
18. I was half of the lead couple that did the Virginia Reel as part of Ellicott City’s bicentennial celebration at my elementary school which has now been turned into condos.
19. I’m married to a Englishman who came here in 2001 (right after 9/11).
20. If I hadn’t wound up working at the library I could have been a caterer who designs interiors while being a secretary for lawyers.
21. My first computer was an Atari – I’ve used Windows, Mac and now Linux – I’ll take the Linux thank you very much (it’s on my desktop and laptop at home and main work machine).
22. One game I’ve not played that everyone else seems to is World of Warcraft.  Now if they only made a Linux version.
23. I like mowing the grass.  We have 2 acres and it’s my time to zone out, crank my tunes and have some alone time.  Besides I take pride in doing a nice job getting around the trees my husband hates to deal with.
24. I wrote poetry for a brief time (probably influenced by the poet I was dating at the time).  Once we broke up I have not written poetry since but it helped at the time.
25. I believe everyone enters your life for a reason.  Some are there for a short time while others stay longer – everyone is there to teach you a lesson.

Using Web 2.0 to Team Build

What started as a “you don’t know who The Who is?!” has now turned into a fun way for our IT department to get to know each other just a little better.  Let me explain.  On Friday our web programmer and I were in our boss’s office.  I forget just how she brought up The Who (incidentally Roger and Pete were recently honored at the Kennedy Center).  Now keep in mind that our web programmer wasn’t born until the mid-80’s so a group even as famous as The Who just wasn’t part of his musical vernacular.  My boss and I started ticking off titles of great Who songs but alas only two were familiar to our programmer.  Who Are You thanks to CSI using at it as their theme song and Behind Blue Eyes because Limp Bizkit had covered it.

After our meeting when I got to my desk I had a brain storm – create a playlist to expose/educate someone about a particular artist or group.  So I immediately went to one of my current favorite music sharing-social networking web sites – Grooveshark.   I created a list of songs I felt might span their career.  When stumped I even enlisted the other Web 2.0/social networking sites (Friendfeed, Twitter and Facebook).  I shared it with my boss and our programmer.  We decided wouldn’t this be a fun and educational way to not only be exposed to all types of music but to learn a  bit more about our co-workers.

So as a team building project once a week one person from our department will have 1 week to create a playlist and then share it with the group.  This could highlight a particular artist or group (e.g. The Who), glorify a particular decade (e.g. 80’s) or even try to represent a genre (P Funk).  It is up to the creator of the playlist.  To make it easier on our group I created a common shared username/password so each of us doesn’t have to signup to use Grooveshark (unless they want to).  I’ll be interested in seeing what playlists come out of this project over the next several months.

No Woman is an Island

Forgive me John Donne (1572-1631) for taking poetic license.

I’ve been training staff members over the last 3-4 years (maybe more my memory ain’t what it used to be). It was something I stumbled into and found that I not only enjoyed but actually good at (or at least according to comments and evaluations). With each class that I taught, I’ve gained some insight. I love the give and take of training, the flow of not only energy but information. I believe that training should be a two-way street. It isn’t all about ME passing on information. I can learn a lot as well. I can learn what does or doesn’t work for a particular curriculum or for a particular learning style. I can sometimes learn a new way or shortcut of doing something even thought I thought I knew them all. To me it’s important to keep on learning as I help others to learn.

Recently I gave my first training for the public. What a great unknown that was for me. How computer savvy would they be? How do you create a training not knowing the skill level of your auidence? It was a good thing because I had gotten comfortable with training the staff and sometimes comfort can equate to being stale. The last thing I want to be is stale.

Most importantly this series of Web 2.0 classes wasn’t all about me. I wasn’t alone. No woman is an island or at least this woman wasn’t. So far the series has been pretty much a big success. I’ve been encouraged to offer this to staff and again to the public since we had such good turn out. But I could not have done this alone. So taking a nod from the Oscars….

I’d like to thank the academy:

• Luis Salazar for diligently working to get me a viewsonic that gave a clear picture and worked with our Ubuntu laptop (at one point we had tried Ubuntu, Windows and Mac before we realized it was the viewsonic not the laptop)
• Donna Metcalf for her support (attending a class) and helping Luis w/viewsonic issue.
• Dennis Wood for being my AV man. He not only got me setup correctly on the sound portion but also tried to get the viewsonic working for another instructor in the Web 2.0 series.
• Amy de Groff for allowing and encouraging me to do this. Also for her flexibility with my schedule (being boss and all).
• Ruth Vargas and Danny Bouman for also being flexible and allowing me to switch my morning duties so I could present these classes at night.
• Kim Ha for willing taking on a class on wikis (her passion) by herself.
• Katie George for an outstanding job during our social networking class. I honestly couldn’t have done a better job and she was a hard act to follow.
• Brian Auger for being willing to share our mutual passion of music and help me with tonight’s class on music social networking.
• Fritzi Newton, photographer extraordinaire, for sharing her passion of photography and allowing me to sneak in a few moments about YouTube and Veho during Tuesday’s class.
• my hubby for dealing with the dogs and dinner without me there – yes, dear we are a team
• and most importantly the public for embracing this series so far

If I left anyone out it is not intentional.  I thank you all for helping me with this endeavor and I’ve learned a lot from each one of you.

Get Your Groove On – Sorta

Well fuss and bother.  I had this post all set – my widget was displaying but now it’s not.  Some other widget is showing up here.  Don’t know if it’s on Grooveshark’s side or WordPress (although Grooveshark has a link right to WordPress and it’s suppose to dump the code right into your blog).  Either way here is the post…

Thanks to Steve Spalding on Friendfeed for posting a link to Grooveshark.  Anyone who knows me knows I love playing with colors so to combine that with music is a marriage made in heaven.  The site lets you post to blogs or social networking sites or bookmark (on social bookmark sites) or gives you the embed code to use.

Steve’s post couldn’t have come at a better time.  In a few weeks I’ll be presenting another class in my Web 2.0 series – audio social networking or sharing.  Brian Auger, Deputy Executive Director, and I had plans to split the 2 hour class and demo our favorite sites.  Now I have one more that I’ll have to show people along with Finetune (the mix tape all grown up), Flokoon from Last.fm (visual search engine for music as well as videos and photos), Musicovery (interactive web radio based on your mood), Songza (internet jukebox).

A Little Help From My Friends

Okay, I’m stumped.  I thought this would be easy but I’ve hit a audio mental block.  I started another playlist on FineTune which has to have song titles, song lyrics, or names of groups/artists that have a geographic location in the name.  Doesn’t mean the song has to be about that place just include it (e.g. China by Tori Amos isn’t about the country of China).

Here is what I have so far but I need 19 more tracks before it’s playable.  HELP!

America
A Horse With No Name
Ventura Highway
Tin Man

Asia
Only Time will Tell
Sole Survivor

The Beatles
Back in the U.S.S.R.

Boz Scaggs
Georgia

David Bowie
China Girl
Young Americans

David Bowie & Mick Jagger
Dancing in the Streets

The Eagles
Hotel California

Europe
The Final Countdown
Rock the Night

Frank Sinatra
New York New York

Georgia Satellites
Keep Your Hands to Yourself

Prince
America

R.E.M.
Radio Free Europe

Ray Charles
Georgia On My Mind

Red Hot Chili Peppers
Around the World
Dani California

The Presidnets of the United States of America
Lump
Peaches
Video Killed the Radio Star

The Psychedelic Furs
Sister Europe

The Sugarhill Gang/Grand Master Flash & The Furious Five
New York New York

Thomas Dolby
Europa and the Pirate Twins

Tori Amos
China

Was (Not Was)
I Blew Up the United States

Wish I was in Heaven Tonight

Heaven’s band just got some really great uniforms. On top of that they got one hell of a guitar player. Unfortunately we mere mortals on earth lost 2 fabulously talented men.

Fashion lost an icon – Yves Saint Laurent died on Sunday at the age of 71. I’m sure whatever he designs for the heavenly band and choir it will be classic and high fashion at it’s best. His influence, fortunately, will still be felt here on earth even long after he is gone.

Music has lost another icon – Bo Diddley died today at the age of 79. He brought rhythm and blues to rock ‘n’ roll. Artists from The Rolling Stones to Bruce Springsteen, from The Beatles to George Thorogood and the Delaware Destroyers site Bo has an influence.

So I expect there is some serious partying going on tonight in heaven with everyone looking as fabulous, fierce and fine as they sound.