Some post-Computers-in-Libraries reactions are floating in about SWIFT, the conference software purchased by ITI. (Note: before I get into this, I want to underscore what a fabulous time I had in my drive-by attendance — trip report forthcoming, I promise! — and I bow and offer my humble thanks to Cindi, Roy, John, and Kate for putting on “a really good shew.”)
Jason Griffey summed up my conclusions almost to the letter. See, there was this meeting with the Otter Group. I was only at the meeting with the Otter Group for twenty minutes, since I had to catch a flight, but it seemed o.k., as far as meetings go.
I’d add that at the end of a long day at a conference, trooping into a classroom setting with no food or beverages didn’t improve anyone’s opinions of the software, but then, it really takes more than that. If DRA came back from the grave with shrimp and steak, would we love them? I hope not.
Then again, what was the point of that session? If you have to explain what your tool is really supposed to do, then your software is broken. Stop talking and stop making excuses. If you are the developer, go fix it, and if you are the customer, check your deliverables and ask yourself if you need to choose another product — or if you need the product to begin with.
I’ve been at IA Summit 2008 since Friday, and here’s the difference. The Crowdvine software actually works (and I could see how it worked BEFORE I signed in). It allows me to connect with other attendees, view sessions, and follow the zeitgeist. I didn’t have to sign a crappy term of service. It wasn’t broken the first time I logged in. The interface is pleasingly pulled together, the fonts are not squinchy-tiny, and yes, rumors to the contrary, it “interfaces” with Facebook–and with RSS, Flickr, and other social software.
Deep down, I don’t care about Crowdvine, but I care a lot about how well I can function as a conference attendee, and from that standpoint, it works. Also, Crowdvine isn’t perfect, but I suspect if I had to give this product grief, ASIST would take it in stride — because they too aren’t invested in Crowdvine. They’re invested in making IA Summit a success.
Not only that, but the wifi access at IA Summit has been fabulous. They don’t have the electricity thing down — people huddle around outlets, and the small power strip I tote with me (an idea from Cindi Trainor) has been a smash hit — but wifi has been consistently fast and smooth. ASIST realizes that a conference hosted by an organization with “Technology” in the title needs to deliver the T.
I’ve stoutly insisted that ITI puts on good conferences. But I’m going to qualify that now, and I have the credentials to do this. ITI puts on really good conferences… for LibraryLand. Grading on that curve, they’re an easy B+. Compared to conferences that serve technology communities outside of our profession, ITI conferences are a D, and that’s a kindness grade.
That doesn’t mean I won’t attend ITI conferences; the content is often worth it. But I feel so bad when LibraryLand makes do with crappy technology. It’s like we’re living out our own worst stereotypes.
Now someone might bring up how broke we are as librarians. Fair enough. But we’re talking here about the difference between one conference software and another, and the difference between burpy or nonworking wifi and wifi that is “just there” when I open my laptop. We don’t want cheap stuff that doesn’t work. I am better off “off the grid” or using a simple wiki than I am trying to cope with broken tools.
Which brings me back to my original suggestion. Given limited resources, I suggest ITI focus on providing incredibly good wifi and encouraging us to live blog conferences with the slides posted to slideshare.net or other high-traffic sites.
If ITI can’t afford truly functional conference software that meets the needs of the people who would actually use it, then you know what? Don’t trouble with it. A factoid from today is that when people like a product, they tell three people, and when they don’t like a product, they tell seventeen people. I would update that to “seventeen bloggers.” Why not focus on the happy 3? We’ll all be better off for it.
I’m so glad you wrote this and I’m with you 100% - and if the focus does move to more reliable wireless I’ll buy you a drink for making these great points
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If Information Today wants to spend money on an improvement, ensuring MESH wifi for their conference sites would be my vote. Meanwhile, horseman, SWIFTly pass by.
Michael Sauers and I were saying the same thing the other day! Good wifi is much more important than a corporate “social web platform” that I really don’t need anyway.
Thanks, Joshua! I am sure they’d rather spend their money on something that will keep us coming back.
Yep. I can’t see a single reason to even think about using this from a end-user perspective. This has “ALA Message Center” vibes all over it. Otter Group has not shown me, with the exception of a nice comment on my blog, that they get this whole arena at all.
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This is all good. And I’m enjoying getting to hear your feedback, kickback to this experiment.
A few years back, I wrote a little paper called, “If Information Wants to be Free, who’s Going to Pay for it.” http://www.dlib.org/dlib/may00/kaser/05kaser.html
You don’t have to tell me how great free wireless is, since I’m constantly working from remote locations, often with my laptop balanced on a window ledge to steal someone’s open access link. But the point I was making in that Y2K paper still applies. For something to be free, someone has to pay.
My understanding is that the hotels where we hold our events want to charge us a fee for each person in order to make wireless available.
Now take $29 a day (or whatever egregious rate the hotel wants to charge) and multiply it times 2000 people, times 3 days and you can see why we might not be able to pay that, and still charge a registration fee that our attendees would find reasonable.
I’m not convinced that if we paid that fee anywhere near 2000 people would take advantage of it. Nor am I convined it would actually work, since most hotels were not designed with this technology in mind.
Don’t get me wrong. I’m with you. I’d like to make that happen. And hopefully one day we will be able to give you an entirely wireless conference experience.
In the meantime, we’d like to give you something that we can give you. A sandbox.
You don’t have to play in the Swift sandbox if you don’t want to. In fact, your decision not to participate, tells us something important about our need to provide a Web 2.0 platform for our delegates (something that others have suggested to us. with as much fervor as you are going after wireless).
The Swift experiment is giving ITI an opportunity to decide whether providing our attendees with Web 2.0 stuff is something they want to do, without our having to invest in inventing the platform.
You’ve made a rather convincing argument that you don’t really need anything special. You can just use the tools you’ve already got. Great feedback! If nothing else, maybe this trial will provide me with the ability to cross off one expressed user expectation from the development list.
But our decision not to do 2.0 stuff for our conference goers will not result in a decision to provide free wireless. There is no comparison in the economic models.
Dick Kaser
ITI VP, Content
I’m reading this on a holiday so I’m going to stick with the events of the day and respond to this by tomorrow evening. But the gist of this message is to explain to me and my readers that stuff costs money. As messages go, it’s not that far from the sergeant in my Air Force days who used to shout “righty tighty, lefty loosey!” as he walked past me while I was working on an aircraft engine. It’s always telling what people think they need to explain.
Also, a friend pointed me to David Lee King’s take on this SWIFT stuff. Good analysis, DLK.
[…] the holiday weekend, Dick Kaser, ITI’s VP for Content, posted a comment to my post about SWIFT, the not-so-swift “2.0 platform” ITI had invested in for its […]