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Tomorrow evening, I'll be giving my presentation, 10 Things Every Writer Should Know, at Long Hill Library, NJ. Kick-off's at 7:30pm. If you'd like to come along, I'd love to see you there.

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My friend June Yazel and I are putting together a workshop called: Tackling Technology in a Writer’s World. We are planning two different versions, one for elementary teachers and another for content area secondary teachers. Although similar, the secondary version will focus more on research and informational writing while the elementary version will focus more [...]

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Here's the link to the prezi.  Just an FYI:  I updated the livebinders book trailer resources to include online photo editors : )

http://prezi.com/m68smuvk3bi9/book-trailers-making-students-want-to-read-created-by-naomi-bates-northwest-high-school/

http://prezi.com/4knxruygzvuv/book-trailer-survey/

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Thanks to everyone for coming to the presentation at SLSA day in Ft. worth!  I learned a lot and enjoyed sharing as well : )  Here are the two link for the presentations I showed:

http://prezi.com/tv8s3pv207ky/fall-2010-ya-booktalk/  (Fall 2010)

http://prezi.com/fnd9om_dpp4h/spring-2011-booktalk/ (Spring 2011)

Enjoy!!

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David Lee King and I rarely cross paths, but it’s always great to get to see him speak. Over the past month he’s been creating a really good set of posts called 10 Tips to Do Presentations Like Me. Each post has a headline and an explanation of why that thing is a good way to do presentations. Of course everyone has their own way of doing things, but it’s nice to see someone who has an effective and engaging presentation style really taking the time to outline just what they’re doing that’s working. It’s not magic, it’s hard work and some attention to detail.

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In the past month, I've helped both of my kids make PowerPoint presentations for school.  I begged them to do Prezis, but they were happy to do PowerPoints.  Which is fine.  But if every kid in each of their classes did PowerPoints, that means that the poor teacher had to sit through Lord knows how many of the things over the week of presentations.  Now, I don't have much sympathy for the teachers because they assigned the things and no one has ever taught the kids how to create a great PowerPoint presentation.  (Actually, my son's was entertaining.  He embedded a video from YouTube and ended the whole thing with a Blabberized Thomas Jefferson.  But, both of those sites are blocked at his school, so neither worked on the day of the presentation. But that's neither here nor there...) My point is this: PowerPoint is dangerous.  It can kill you.  It can bore you to death.  Below is a great Slideshare that addresses this very topic.

The slideshow was created by Alexei Kapterev.  Thanks to EdGalaxy for posting this.  Also check out Jesse Desjardins's  You Suck At PowerPoint slideshow from the same post.

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SO, this summer I had the opportunity of providing some professional development for librarians and teachers around this grand old state, and had a great time doing it! Not only did they learn some things from me, but I also learned from them as well!! And then there were those moments I just stumbled into....and here's one that I had to share!!
If you use Prezi, did you know that you can embed youtube book trailers into the presentation? This is the place where publishers are putting their trailers, and they are very professionally done...
Well, if you embed them into Prezi and then use it offline, the video is still maintained even if you're not online - LOVE IT!!
And there are some great prezis to search through too! Someone in a workshop found this Prezi, and I LOVED the layout...had to share it as well!! Thanks Cassandra, for making this a public prezi!!

http://prezi.com/imt-qzhr_fph/great-books/

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Children’s and YA Book Blogs: Enhancing Library Services.
Sunday, June 27, 2010
8 a.m – 10 a.m.

I presented with Travis from 100 Scope Notes and Pam from MotherReader. Despite competing popular programming, such as the YALSA “speed dating with authors” coffee klatch, as well as an 8:00 a.m. start date, 130 people attended this panel on using book blogs to assist in library services such as collection development, readers advisory, and programming.

The PowerPoint, should you want to look at it, is available at SlideShare at http://www.slideshare.net/eaburns/ala-presentation

Travis has a terrific video at his website; and Pam also reports on ALA at her blog. The Photo is from Mitali Perkins. (Thanks Mitali who doesn't know I borrowed it...well, she knows now.)

Blogs mentioned in the PowerPoint, in order they were initially mentioned. All were accessed and live as of June 2010; I added a couple of updated URLs were appropriate.

Elizabeth Burns, A Chair, A Fireplace & A Tea Cozy, http://yzocaet.blogspot.com/

Pam Coughlan, MotherReader, http://www.motherreader.com/

Travis Jonker, 100 Scope Notes, http://100scopenotes.com/

Melissa Wiley, Here in the Bonny Glen, http://melissawiley.typepad.com/bonnyglen currently blogs at http://melissawiley.com/blog

Cybils, http://dadtalk.typepad.com/cybils and http://www.cybils.com/

Robin Brande, http://www.robinbrande.com/

Annual Kidlitosphere Conference, www.kidlitosphere.org/kidlitcon and information about the October 2010 Conference is at http://kidlitcon2010.blogspot.com/

Kidlitosphere Central, http://www.kidlitosphere.org/

A Fuse # 8 Production at School Library Journal, http://blog.schoollibraryjournal.com/afuse8production

Kids Lit, http://kidslit.menashalibrary.org/

American Indians in Children’s Literature, http://americanindiansinchildrensliterature.blogspot.com/
Charlotte’s Library, http://charlotteslibrary.blogspot.com/

From the Mixed Up Files . . . of Middle Grade Authors, http://www.fromthemixedupfiles.com/

Little Willow, http://slayground.livejournal.com/

Scrub-a-Dub-Tub, http://childrens-literacy.com/

Color Online, http://coloronline.blogspot.com/

C

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Watch this OUTSTANDING presentation from Tulika Books about multilingual children's book publishing!

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I visit a lot of schools, and interest in the old-style author visit (with an author speaking to an auditorium full of children) seems to be flagging. These visits typically consist of an author or authors speaking about overcoming obstacles such as rejection to reach their dreams. The authors intend to motivate students and might spice up their speech by singing, dancing, playing a musical instrument, or using whatever other talents they possess.

With the No Child Left Behind Act and other legislation, I’m finding teachers would rather have author visits that directly apply to or complement instruction in the classroom. Schools are under pressure to attain high test scores, and teachers view all instruction time as precious.  If an author can teach children to write better, that’s more valuable than discussing the road to authordom.

This is fortuitous for me. I’ve never enjoyed being “on stage,” speaking to large groups primarily as an entertainer. I enjoy a smaller audience I can interact with. The two presentations I conduct most in classrooms might be more accurately called “workshops.” In my “You Be the Artist!” presentation, I speak to younger children (usually kindergartners through second graders) about the process of publication and they take part in illustrating a page for a book. In my “Great Aunt Mabel’s Sweater” presentation, I speak to older children (usually middle schoolers) about descriptive writing and they perform two writing exercises and volunteer to read their work in “share time.”

I led both of these workshops at a public school last week, and a teacher said to me, “This is what we need. The kids were more interested than they usually are in author visits, and they learned more.”

I’m going to pass this along to my author friends. Some despair about visiting schools because they “have no talent but writing.” But writing talent is precisely what many teachers and schools hope authors can spark in students. Increasingly, schools are looking at authors more as mentors for students than as entertainers.

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Today George and I presented "Keeping Your Head While Serving the Community" at the Association for Small and Rural Libraries Conference in Gatlinburg, TN. Play our slides if you'd like, though they may lose some context without the audio.

This conference has been a big boost for my spirits. I've been serving on the ARSL board since February as an ex-officio member from WebJunction, and even that didn't prepare me for this wonderful conference. I learned that Kansas librarians arrived by bus, having driven the 16 hours to Gatlinburg from their home state (I'm sure some of them traveled longer). Further, I have to say, Kansas really represented the social networking scene by being the biggest contributors to the #ARSL2009 hash tag! I forgot to add the tag most of the time I was there, so, that was sort of lame of me, but Go Kansas!

It was also really good for me to have the opportunity to present with George; an honor. I think it's fair to say that I was a little bit slammed with work-related things before this conference and so I didn't have the time to collaborate as much as I would have liked before the presentation. But I thought our content went together very well and I really enjoyed doing the presentation overall. If you by chance saw us, please tell me what you thought of our talk (a dose of my own "evaluation" medicine, so to speak ... so that I too can iterate!).

My favorite presentation of the day introduced me to Give Em the Pickle a customer service slogan from Mr. Farrell (of Farrell's restaurants -- it may look totally cheesy, but this guy is hilarous and has great advice for serving our patrons well). My favorite interactive session of the day was from the State Library of North Carolina on "getting your community back to work". I have more to say about that, but it will have to wait for another day...

Finally, I had amazing conversations with colleagues all weekend either working in small and rural libraries, or working in state libraries to support small and rural libraries. It has been too long since I've been out and about. Cindi Hickey, thank you for giving me the encouragement I needed about the presentation! I tell ya, it really helps me to remember why we do the things we do back at the office.

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Aaron has a good post about giving good presentations. As always, stick around for the comments. I offered my advice. Even in the short thread, it’s interesting that people have such different ideas about what makes a good presentation. Should it be something that can be repackaged and replayed without the presenter at a later date? Should there be handouts? What’s the balance between charisma and raw data?

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I’ve posted two more slide presentations from the workshop today over on our Presentations Page.  Below are links: Establishing a Community Getting Started with Focus Lessons I’m not sure how useful these will be, because they are brief overviews and then the participants roll up their sleeves and get to work.  I allow the same philoshopy which guides [...]

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Just a little FYI, to let you know that I posted a couple of the slide presentations from day one of the Beginning Writing Workshop Training.  Here’s the link to the Presentations Page which offers a description of each presentation. Here are the presentations: Writing Workshop Overview Writer’s Notebook Introduction Living Like a Writer [...]

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I woke up early this morning and decided to get started on the PPT for my presentation at the 2008 Fall NEATE Conference in Nashua, NH. The title is, “INSPIRING CHILDREN TO WRITE: Teaching Writing Workshop with Our Notebooks Wide-Open,” which is very similar to the title I used when I presented at [...]

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TWT on Two Computers at Courthouse Coffee Originally uploaded by teachergal As you know, Ruth and I got together to work on our presentation for NCTE this past week. Now that I’m back home, I’m marveling at the fact that we got SOOOOO much accomplished. We started out at Courthouse Coffee on Wednesday Morning with [...]

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It’s been a crazy couple of weeks, but I’ve had the pleasure of giving a flurry of presentations that I promised attendees I’d link to from here. I love that the Illinois educators I spoke to at the end of February were just as enthusiastic as the Dutch librarians who attended my presentations in the Netherlands. Thank you to everyone who came to them all and helped make this a very special time for me.

I’m still uploading pictures from the Netherlands trip on Flickr, but I will definitely post about the amazing Delft and Amsterdam libraries I had the great fortune to visit (special Flickr sets to appear online soon).

• Gaming in Libraries at the Illinois Technology Conference for Educators
• Emerging Technology Trends and Tools that Make Your Online Life Easier at the Illinois Technology Conference for Educators
• Gaming in Libraries: Intersections of Service at the UGame ULearn conference in Delft
• Tagging Your World at the Tagging conference in The Hague

educators, gaming, holland, illinois, netherlands, presentations, tagging

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Ben McConnell of Church of the Customer, Creating Customer Evangelists and now Citizen Marketers fame came and spoke to OCLC staff and area marketers on Thursday, Feb. 22. I've been slow to post my notes from his talk--but here we are, finally:

There are 48 million content creators out on the Web. (That is like the population of all of South Korea.) Most of these are amateur content creators. Meaning--they are not being paid to create this content. So when this creative group of people connects with products, they become "Citizen Marketers." It's the idea that your brand reputation is in the hands of a customer, for good or ill. Anyone who interacts with you has the power to praise you or to vilify.

More stats:

• 55% of kids aged 12-17 use social networks.
• 84 million households have broadband.
• There are 1 million new broadband subscribers per week, worldwide.

The democratization of access to information is spreading like wildfire.

An example: my.Barackobama.com is the Barack Obama for President community. The tagline--"This campaign is about You." You can join in, find other supporters, create a blog, learn more about the senator's stance on issues and more. In the first week it was launched, it gained 700,000 members. Those members in turn created 40,000 blogs and 2,400 groups. (Alice editorial note: Who says youth don't want to be engaged in the political process? They just want it on their terms!)

The Control of the Message (previously the realm of marketers and strategists) is now totally Out of Control. And if you give people a voice, a vote and a vocation--they can influence your brand in today's culture.

What are the top 5 most influential media?
5. Articles
4. Newspaper inserts
3. coupons
2. TV
1. Word of Mouth

Ben and Jackie have separated the Citizen marketers into four broad categories: Firecrackers, Filters, Fanatics and Facilitators. They've got great examples for each type--and each type is someone to encourage, be ready for and respond to--immediately.

One ominous note: You are your Google results!! Ignore natural search engine rankings at your peril, because for many people that's the only way they see you.

Ben and Jackie also brought up something they call the 1% rule. And it's that a whole multitude of people may READ or WATCH stuff--but only 1% of people will be motivated enough to create something. So how do you work with those Citizen Marketer 1%ers?

• Enable co-creation: Ben's example is Shakira's fan-only "Hips Don't Lie" video--Shakira used all the home video segments on her real video. It was co-created by her and all her fans.
• Enable community: The Discovery channel formalized their evangelist network of 1%er educators to help train one another. (And sure enough, usage skyrocketed...)

In marketing traditionally there are 4 Ps: Product, Price, Placement and Promotion. Ben posits that in today's world, there is a 5th: Participation.

So how do we integrate the 5th P into our libraries?

1. Blogs
2. Reaching out to your 1%ers: your advisory boards/teen panels/Friends of the library groups and empowering them even more to take the message out
3. Lay the foundation for social networks. (Alice editorial: Alane and I are part of the last week next week of Five Weeks to a Social Library!)

The book has lots and lots of examples and stories. It's a quick read with lots of YouTube clips mentioned.
One parting question: How recommendable is your product?

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For those avid readers of the Church of the Customer blog, you already know what's coming in this post. If you don't yet read Church of the Customer (or listen to the podcast), I would recommend it! Basically, author Ben McConnell is coming to OCLC to speak to staff about the idea contained within his and Jackie's new book, Citizen Marketers: When People are the Message.

Here's the write-up on why we think it's cool (thanks Carrie!):

Ordinary people (i.e. consumers) are banding together to form whole communities of online advocates. The power to publish is no longer held by gatekeepers. Anyone with an internet connection and some knowledge of social media can broadcast their opinions to many.

Businesses are quickly learning that these individuals can either boost their sales or plummet their revenues, sometimes overnight. Suddenly, anyone has the ability to influence consumer loyalty, product innovations and marketing campaigns.

A new participatory culture of business has emerged. Are you prepared?

Since 2000, Ben McConnell and Jackie Huba have been researching the effects of word of mouth on customer loyalty and how that can build into customer evangelism.

Their previous book, Creating Customer Evangelists: How Loyal Customers Become a Volunteer Sales Force, was praised by The New York Times as “the new mantra for entrepreneurial success,” and Forbes dubbed it “the word of mouth gospel.”

McConnell and Huba have advised companies such as Starbucks, Microsoft, Ulta, General Mills, Discovery Education, Eli Lilly, PBS, the Corporation for Public Broadcasting and others. They are also advisory board members to the Word of Mouth Marketing Association (WOMMA).

Ben McConnell will speak at OCLC Online Computer Library Center in Dublin, Ohio February 22, 2007 from 2-3 p.m. This event is free and open to the public, but registration is required. (So we can plan for seating!)

Ben McConnell will also be available for signings after the presentation.

For directions to OCLC, click here.

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I'm here in Toronto, my favorite city in the world, attending the Ontario Library Association's Super Conference (believe me, it is super in every sense of the word -- super-sized, superlatively organized and super-interesting) and have finally come down from the amazing high of presenting to over 160 people at my morning session on pop culture, called (natch) Pop Goes The Library. This was a teen-centric presentation, but as I was putting together the slides (to be uploaded to www.popgoesthelibrary.com/talks/ola2007.pdf as soon as I get home & get my hands on Acrobat Distiller) for it, I realized that as much as I love focusing on teens & pop culture, that's a really easy sell. I almost prefer the challenge of selling my more traditionally-minded colleagues on pop culture's importance to library service. Maybe next year! Anyway, this was a wonderful experience, and I want to thank my Convenor, Kate Morrison, and my OPLA liaison, Maria Politano, for making the whole process of being a speaker move so smoothly.

UPDATE: I uploaded the handout. It's available here.

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