Check out the program for Internet Librarian, October 23-5, Monterey CA. J.A. Jance kicks off the conference as per my last blog. Clifford Lynch of the Coalition for Networked Information, speaks on Tuesday October 24th about the Challenges of Cyberinfrastructure & Choices for Libraries. And on Wednesday October 25th there are two keynotes, one to start the day and one to close the conference. Featured speakers:
* Shari Thurow, Webmaster & Marketing Director, Grantastic Designs Inc., & Author, Search Engine Visibility
* Elizabeth Lane Lawley, Asociate Professor, Information Technology and Director, Lab for Social Computing, Rochester Iinstitute of Technology, and visiting researcher at Microsoft Research

Information professionals and mystery readers will have an exciting treat at Information Today’s Internet Librarian. Mystery writer J.A. Jance, creator of the J. P. Beaumont & Joanna Brady mystery series, among other works, gives the opening keynote for the conference with a talk about, Grabbing Attention: Keeping Pace with Readers & Technology. As a former K-12 librarian and author of The Edge of Evil, a new book about a blogging journalist (see my earlier post), we are looking forward to hearing her speak in Monterey on Monday October 23rd.

Steve Rubel, a global thought leader on social media who has been with PR firm Edelman for 2 months, writes the popular blog, Micro Persuasion, which is listed in the top 100 at Technorati. He participated in a great keynote conversation at Mesh06 this morning. His top tips for using blogs for PR:
1. Find out where your audience/customers hand out — where are they online?
2. Set up the infrastructure for listening — some dedicated & reader like Bloglines or Newsgator
3. Engage your audience in conversation
4. Empower your audience, helping them achieve or do what they want

Other quotes:
* “Befriend the community and further their goals”
* “Credibility? The community will tell us who’s credible”
* “We’re looking for niche & reeach”
* “Look at where people are hanging out — which galaxies”
* Focus on the “terms of the community. Integrate being polite and acceptable to the community.”
* “Engage, and take your lumps — the good and the bad”
* “What to measure? Converstaions, engagements with influentials (touchpoints with influentials), web traffic, in-bound links, Yahoo/Google ranks”

Om Malik, a journalist and blogger for more than five years says that the most important thing he has learned is how to say, “I’m sorry”. The self-correcting nature of blogging has certainly been humbling.

Scott Karp of Publishing 2.0 talked about bloggers as news gatherers and context makers.

Michael Geist talked about new voices and impact of bloggers and illustrated with the story of political influence during the recent Canadian election, the Sam Bulte campaign and explosion of media attention (new and old media) regarding a fundraising event for her campaign. Powerful story. He went on to talk about collaborative content creation and how content and creating are moving online.

Much discussion of broadcasting versus conversations and old versus new media and how new media and conversations are changing the way people behave.
mesh06

Mesh 2006 in Toronto started today with close to 400 attendees. Organized in 9 weeks by five guys to “connect, share, inspire” it has definitely started that way — networking over breakfast, first keynote a conversation with Om Malik and then a short presentation by Michael Geist followed by more converstaion aournd copyright in Canada.
mesh06

I’m so pleased that we chose mashups months ago as the theme for Information Today’s Internet Librarian, October 23-5, 2006 in Monterey CA. The official theme is Integrated Experiences: Compelling Content Combinations, or mashups!

John Musser’s site, programmable web, chronicles the mashup phenomenon and includes: the latest on mashups, mashup listing for ideas, mashup of the day, populars mashups, a how-to guide, reference center, and lots more. John started the site because he couldn’t find what he was looking for — a technology focused starting point for web platform development.

Another article on mashups popped into my inbox today, Websites are a Hacker’s Dream Come True, dated 13 May 2006, from NewScientist.com news service.

Our discussions of mashups at Internet Librarian next October, should be interesting!

A great list from Bill Ives and Stan Garfield.

Studying personas of our communities helps to get a deep understanding of their goals, values, and lifestyles so that we can design and deliver products and services that match what they need. Stephen Abram, VP, Innovation, SirsiDynix spoke today to the Education Institute about personas and knowing your library community. He talked about what personas are, how they can help librarians know their communities, and presented preliminary results of research done by SirsiDynix & The Kennedy Group, highlighting some of the learnings. Further resources about personas:

http://research.microsoft.com/research/coet/
Grudin/Personas/Pruitt-Grudin.pdf
http://www.infotoday.com/online/jul03/head.shtml
http://www.steptwo.com.au/papers/kmc_personas/
http://www.cooper.com/
http://www.cooper.com/content/insights/
newsletters/2003_08/Origin_of_Personas.asp
http://www.cooper.com/newsletters/2001_07/
perfecting_your_personas.htm
http://www.uie.com/articles/personas/
And a good webliography at:
Stephen also recommends Alan Cooper’s “The Inmates Are Runningthe Asymum “, a basic text on the concept. Stephen’s slides from an earlier presentation on this topic.

In my web travels recently I found a couple of good sites for web designers by experts in the field. I’m sure there are lots more but here are a couple:

Graphic design, search engine marketing, banners and web site design tips
From Shari Thurow, Webmaster & Director of Marketing, Grantastic Design & Author, Search Engine Visibility

Five Website Mistakes to Avoid
By Kim Weller, Principal User Experience Consultant, Molecular
iMedia Connection, April 12, 2006

Patricia Brusha, Co-Founder, A Couple of Chicks Marketing, talked about measuring success last week at the Search Engine Strategies event in Toronto by the principals of Search Engine Watch. Loved her quote, “If you focus on results you don’t get change; if you focus on change, you get results.”