I’m wrapping up the end of “talk season” here at librarian.net. I’ll be speaking at the Rhode Island Library Conference on June 6th and the Connecticut Library Consortium on June 9th. Then I’m done except for ALA. Yes, I’ll be going to ALA, giving a presentation with the incredibly talented Louise Alcorn for the MaintainIT people. It will be the first time I’ve been funded to go to a library conference… ever. Exciting times afoot at the Disneyland Hotel.
This afternoon I finished giving a talk online for the Education Institute. It was called Collaborative Information Systems & Reference Service and I’ve put a lot of notes and links online. Basically I talk about the changing nature of how people look for information and “Ask A” type services like Yahoo Answers and, of course, Ask MetaFilter. I have some statistics there that I think are sort of nifty. It’s very strange giving a talk online. I basically sent people to tmy website and then did a talk over the telephone. Except for the convenor, Liz Kerr, I wasn’t really aware of other people being present and it was unnerving. I know that continuing education is important and especially so for people who are too remote to go to standard talks or conferences, but I still feel like we’re trying to find a good delivery mechanism for this sort of content.
I’ve done several lectures for the SLIS program in Tuscaloosa over the past couple of years. They use Wimba, which allows the students to see my slides, but not me. I can’t see them, but we can hear each other, and there’s a chat function. The first time I did it, it was very awkward — I hadn’t fully realized just how much I depended on seeing the audience to pace myself (and time my jokes). So now I think of it as if I’m on the radio (those NPR folks manage to sound intimate & spontaneous without audience feedback) and it has worked really well. The students are more familiar with it now as well, which helps.
It seems to me that this question on online costs to conversation very sharply as some people are simply compelled to do it because of that that them divides big enough distance.