Libraryman

I’m very honored and happy to share with everyone news of…drum roll….. my new job! While still at WebJunction, I now have a spiffy new title and more focused duties. I’m not saying that as the new Community Product Manager I’ll be able to do ALL this stuff:

Specific Responsibilities
· Grow our Online Community for Library Staff
· Build library field readiness for collaborative content publishing, social networking, and blended learning for staff development
· Grow customer awareness, use, participation, ownership, and satisfaction with all our programs, features, and services
· Wow the library community with practical, user-centered, user-friendly, fun-to-try, socially-oriented, and interactive features and tools
· Develop & Deploy a Robust Social Networking Environment
· Identify and segment relevant library staff audiences; evaluate and document tools and features of interest to each audience
· Develop and implement an overall social networking strategy, including collaborative content management, that addresses customer needs
· Solicit individual and organization input and feedback on social networking features, tools, and best practices
· Scan and engage the broader library, social networking, and online community environments for relevant tools, features, best practices, and mash-up opportunities
· Make Customers Happy & Ensure their Success
· Advocate for customer-centered, interactive tools and features across WebJunction; represent customers to WebJunction staff and organization partners
· Lead and manage customer focus groups, advisory committees, user groups, and related feedback sessions
· Identify social networking outcomes; ensure high quality customer experiences and satisfaction; adjust, refresh and create new features as appropriate
· Engage customers in effectively using social networking tools, making site contributions, and sharing their technology resources
· Contribute to WebJunction’s Overall Success
· Build team capacity to identify and meet customer needs
· Share knowledge and expertise on social networking tools, features, formats, and management processes relevant to successful online communities
· Lead and manage the development of functional tools and services you and our customers will use to build community across WebJunction
· Deploy social networking expertise across WebJunction; lead the team in creating effective, sustainable online community based on web-based, collaborative, interactive, and participatory software

…but I am REALLY going to try. If you ask me, I’d say it’s a very good fit. I am energized and excited to get on with the work (friends know I’ve been working on a lot of this already, but the new job definition and scope help in a lot of ways). Reading the above description you can tell that there are exciting things in store for WebJunciton and I can’t think of another job I’d rather have right now. Watch WebJunction in the upcoming 12-18 months for some pretty exciting new developments!

PS-The new Netflix ad says the have circulated, ooops, I mean, DELIVERED, over 1 billion titles.
PPS- Chumby is almost for sale to the general public.
PPPS-Completely unrelated and off topic musical plug: Can I go back in time to see this show please?

Ok, so the post is on WebJunction’s blog, BlogJunction, but I say the same stuff about the conference there that I would have said here. If you wanna read all about it, click these words to be magically transported to the post and the pics.

Beep, beep, beep, beep, beep…..This just in…. Jenny Levine, Aaron Schmidt and I will be hosting an Open Gaming Event after the Sunday preconference on, well, gaming, that Jenny and Aaron are doing. We’re happy to say that this is being brought to you, in a fairly informal way, by ALA and WebJunction, courtesy of Information Today. Cooperation is Goooood.

Here are the details:
This Sunday, Oct 28, starting around 4:30 p.m. in the Colton I room, we’ll have Guitar Hero (PS2), Dance Dance Revolution (PS2), and Wii Sports going for open play. This is your chance to beat your favorite blogger at any one of these games. I have been honing my Guitar Hero chops and will be happy to take on all comers, though Jenny, Aaron and I are mostly there to watch help and watch you all have fun.

We’ve got the room until 7:00 p.m., and as Jenny says: “I can pretty much guarantee a lot of laughter, finger wagging, trash talking, and general merriment.” Oh, and Flickring, too, since we’re also counting this as a Flickr and Twitter meetup. Heck, why not throw video in there too? You know it goes without saying that we will be hitting the town after the session, right?

I’m bringing a prize for the greatest Guitar Hero of the evening. Rock!

Every few hours last week I found myself sighing and saying things like “goodness gracious” and “this is IT”. Being tired, inspired and mentally stimulated to the nth degree made these very happy expressions. See, a big ole’ chunk of the WebJunction crew had gathered in Ohio at OCLC HQ to do work on yet another round of implementation decisions for the new version of WebJunction that is currently being built. And it is an exciting thing. No joke. Seriously. It’s REALLY exciting. And substantial. And it is going to happen. And you know what? I think you’ll use it. And really enjoy it and be surprised at just how useful it is. Building is just now beginning and it will take a very long time so please be patient. But even though we’re still a very far way off from “going live time”, hopes are high all around based on the solid input and results we have already seen. I’d say more but Chrystie did a great job summarizing some of the more specific things we were working on so I’ll passing this off to her here. Good stuff is coming!

PS-George hinted at this last month here.

I’ll be there (along with my colleagues Chrystie Hill and Rachel Van Noord). You can come too, as they still apparently have a few open slots. Some big/interesting names will be there AND it is at the Computer History Museum (!!!) so if online community is your bag, you love them ‘puters and can swing the $$$, you might seriously consider it!

“The Online Community Unconference is a gathering of online community practitioners - managers, developers, business people, tool providers, investors - to discuss experience and strategies in the development and growth of online communities.

Those involved in online community development (and social software in general) share many common challenges: community management, tools, marketing, business models, legal issues. As we have found with our past events, the best source of information on all of these challenges is other knowledgeable practitioners.

The Online Community Unconference is inspired by the emerging “open space” conference format. (For an excellent description, see this News.com article on a past MashUp Camp.) There will also be plenty of time for networking.

The Computer History Museum in Mountain View is a unique venue with plenty of parking and WiFi. Lunch and snacks will be provided, and the Museum exhibits will be open to the group during the breaks.

Price: $195 ($175 before May 12). Space is limited. Fee is fully refundable prior to May 24, not refundable after (but admission is transferable).”

Seriously, this blog post includes six or seven individual things (some fairly unusual) that I really wanted to post over the last two weeks. Strap yourselves in! (or hit your back button I suppose). Here goes:

One big cheer for reliable web hosting. Yeee Haaa!

Thanks very much to the folks at the Santiago Library System and MCLS for hosting the impressive “Generation Tech” day at the Nixon Memorial Library. Just because I know my mom is going to read this, here’s a very generous quote from the conference blog:
“The heart of the Generation Tech conference was the animated presentation by Michael Porter… . Vital decisions are being made today, he stressed, ones that will impact the patrons of the future. Porter acknowledged that “technology is not always the right answer” to every problem but that libraries are misguided if they simply let private organizations provide the kind of information services they are used to offering.”.
Rest assured, my mother will scold me for a lack of humility for including the above. There are a bunch of pictures here, though this is one of my favorites:

Thanks also to my flickr/Libraryland friend Sarah Mae, who was kind enough to drive to Yorba Linda and have a meal with me before the “Generation Tech” gig. It was great to meet you in person SMRML!

There are also a bunch of shots up from my trip last week to NYC for the Brooklyn Public Library’s Emerging technology Conference. I want to thank all the folks who worked so hard to put this together and also to Nick and his library pals for hanging out over bbq afterwards. Thanks also to my portrait averse though very pleasant and fun flickr friend Norma for spending Sunday afternoon with me. Don’t we both have good taste, Normah? I heart NYC, Giant Robot and Pressed Toast.

Shifting gears, if you are going to be looking for an amazing job any time soon, check out Chrystie’s recent post to BlogJunction, where she drops some interesting hints. *ahem*

Now in the home stretch of this ultra-mega blog post, for those who care and didn’t notice it, I took part in the 24 hours of flickr project last week. Quite simply, the goal was to document an entire 24 hour period in pictures. During my 24hrs of flickr I went to bed too late, got up too early, flew from Seattle to NYC via Cincinnati and ended my day in Times Square. It’s a project I’ve wanted to tackle for years and while it was a lot of work on a day when I was pretty wiped, it’s nice to have the document, all of which you can view by going here. It’s pretty PG stuff, but there is a picture of me in the shower. Run away! Run away!

And another thing! On a completely unlibrary related subject, I can’t stop listening to this song. I know, I know, it isn’t high art, but doesn’t it make you want to dance?

Let’s see… what else… Oh! I have a bad cold. *ahoo!*

Finally, I am very happy to drop a big ole’ hint here that it looks like I may have a very happy professional announcement to make here on the libraryman web site within the week. It may be time to break out the champagne and the pencils!

PS-I have listened to the song linked above 1,2,3,4…six times while writing this post. “Perfection!”

More blogging. Here and on the other one too. What other one? Why
BlogJunction of course, the blog I now help author with a few of my new coworkers at WebJunction. In fact there are a couple of posts up there now that I just added. Want to know about the move or what it’s like to work with Dale, Betha, Chrystie, George, Liz, Mike and the rest of the WJ gang? What about how it’s been not having an Internet connection at home for three weeks? Three weeks?! That’s just crazy! What an exciting article THAT must be!! You know you must read all about it immediately:

Thanks for Letting Me Join You WebJunction! (Part I)

What I?ve Learned From Not Having the Internet at Home for Three Weeks. (aka Part II)