So the Special Libraries Association annual conference is being held this year in Seattle and the Seattle chapter of SLA has created a great wiki for attendees and those who want to see what’s going on at the event.  Lots of great stuff there and Daniel Lee, President of the Toronto Chaper, has created a great piece on using Twitter at the conference.  It is part of the Innovation Lab  that current preseident, Stephen Abram, is pushing to get our members our try new technologies and techniques for communicating.  Good going guys!

It is hard for me to imagine that I have been married for 35 years today — yes I was only 3 years old when I was married  (kidding!).  AND, my business partner, Rebecca Jones, and I have been together for more than 15 years.  I am blessed with two long-standing, and wonderful partners.   My mother recently pointed out an article in the newspaper about the longevity of marriages/partnerships being due to annoying your partner.  Guess my partners know all about that!   Partners take the good and bad, the strengths and challenges, and support one another in all the important ways.  I have been reflecting on this for a few days and want everyone to know how lucky I am! 

Further to my post last week about the Google competition for K-12 students, here is the winner of the contest.  Since we seem to have gone from long, cold winter where I live to a  rainy, cool spring, I agree this is great!  Thanks Google for encouraging students to share their artistic insights.  For more info check out Google’s blog about this.

Thanks so much Amy for pointing this out to me!  Most people know I love the Google doodles they publish for vaious occasions as I often include them here (see Mother’s Day Google doodle below).  But how about this from Google:

Doodle 4 Google is a competition where we invite K-12 students to reinvent Google’s homepage logo. This year we asked U.S. kids to doodle around the theme “What if…?”

And you can vote for your favorite from different levels of school kids!  I have two favorites in the K-3 group — the kids (called friendship rules) and the butterflies/birds/flowers (spring into Google — probably because winter here was so long this one really draws me).  And the fish Google doodle (thinking like a goldfish) in the 4-6 group is hilarious!  In the 7-9 group I really like the dragons and castle called ‘Once upon a Google”.   These kis are talented.  Check out the 10-12 “Gothic Google Architecture Blueprint”.  Awesome.  Only problem is there are so many good ones, I’m finding it hard to vote!

Alex Bennet, former (and first) Chief Knowledge Officer of the U. S. Department of the Navy, just sent me a copy of the book she, her husband and others just published — Knowledge Mobilization in the Social Sciences and Humanities: Moving from Research to Action.  From the prologue: “The leadership shown by the government of Canada in creating and implementing the Knowledge Impact on Society program designed to moe knowledge from the researcher to the citizens has stimulated the preparation and research forwarded in this book….The Canadian approach to knowledge mobilization serves as a model for future research…”  Chapters include: Exploring knowledge mobilization(KMb); Theory & approaches; The KMb program and process; The KMb activities model; Involving & evolving students; Execution in the action space; Outcomes & impacts; The KIS of SSHRC (mini case study of the Social Sciences & Humanities Research Council of Canada); Power plus comes of age.  

Alex & David Bennet are also founders of The Mountain Quest Institute – “a research, retreat, and learning center dedicated to helping individuals achieve personal and professional growth and organizations create and sustain high performance in a rapidly changing, uncertain, and increasinly complex world.”

Darlene Fichter is one of my favourite people. And I say that with all sincerity. Not only is Darlene a dear friend, she is incredibly intelligent and conveys her deep knowledge of library technologies and tools with humour and insight (check out her blog that I’ve linked to on her name). Now she’s shared a way for us human adults to “get over” the everyday frustrations and anger-moments that too often weigh us down and impede our thinking.

There’s much we can learn from animals — ducks, in this case. Ever watched 2 ducks fighting over a scrap of food in the middle of a pond? They physically bicker back and forth and eventually 1 of them wins. The duck who loses heads for another section of the pond where he/she flaps their wings, splashing furiously, then shakes them self off and goes on their way. Done. The anger they’ve no doubt experienced at “losing” is gone - shaken off.

Now think about how we as humans handle this. We have a verbal fencing session with a colleague, a family member, or maybe just someone in line ahead of us for a coffee……and after the encounter the negative emotions plague us for minutes, or maybe even hours (hopefully not for days!). So the next time you experience this, learn from the duck: flap your arms and let those negative thoughts and emotions go. First of all, it’s just funny to be flapping away - and secondly the actual physical actions get those positive endorphins flowing, literally kicking the negative emotions out. The anger, frustration is GONE, and we can adjust our focus to where it should be. Maybe that’s where the expression “just ducky” comes from!

Thanks Darlene — I’m flappin’ and not scrappin’ no matter what’s happenin’.

Try it.  Experiment.  Play with it.  Learn about it.  Do a pilot project or beta test.

These things are not new, and I’ve talked about them for years with peers, students, clients and friends, but they came to the fore recently and I wanted to reiterate my thoughts on the subject of innovation, change and learning! 

So much is going on with Second Life these days and if you want to know more about what is happening and why so many organizations are playing with it, then Jill Hurst Wahl’s web conference for the Education Institute on Tuesday March 18th is just for you.  Entitled, Tour of InfoIsland, Second Life, this informative session by an experienced ”second lifer” will give you a great base to understand all the activities and excitement around Second Life.  Jill is part of the Tech Tuesdays: Talking with Techies series hosted by the Education Institute.  Sign up here.

Yep, it IS all the in money. We librarians know that, but relating to our budgets in the same way that our funders relate to budgets continues to be a struggle for many of us. So I was delighted to talk with John Latham and learn that he’s bringing his 2 day Financial Management for Information Services course to Toronto, April 10 - 11, 2008. John is an accountant who not only understands libraries and information functions, but manages SLA’s information center. When I asked John about his course, he responded in his usual candid way: “If we are going to play with the “big boys” we have to learn how to play with their toys: budgets, balance sheets, and income statements (1). We are always whining about not being paid enough and not being at the executive or decision-making table, but my experience is that info pros either don’t think it’s important, or are not willing to learn about financial management. I devoted my September 2007 Information Management column in Information Outlook to the subject, and have given presentations on the subject at various venues.” And members of OLA and SLA receive a discount! Now that’s talking money….

Stephen Abram, VP Innovation, SirsiDynix and Chief Strategist, SirsiDynix Institute spoke to the Education Institute today about keeping up. He talked about learning styles and how you can spend 15 minutes each day to learn something new, and hopefully it’s a lot like playing. He suggests keepinga list (started by his love for 43 things) of things you don’t know about so you can find out about them and/or try them out. Stephened referenced Helene Blowers, Technology Director, used of 23 things to stir 2.0 learning in her organization,
Public Library of Charlotte and Mecklenburg County.

Stephen’s top 10 tips (many borrowed from Helene):
* Don’t confuse learning with training
* Design the program for late bloomers
* Allow participants to blog anonymously
* Use 1.0 methods to continually communicate
* Focus on “discovery” & offer challenges
* Encourage staff to work together
* It’s not about “doing IT right”
* Practice transparency & enable radical trust
* Continually encourage staff to “Play”
* Consider rewards — they work and focus attention