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So you may have noticed we have been suspiciously quiet since ALA. Is it because we used up all our decent ideas at the LITA Forum? Blog salon?
Hardly.

• I think it's because we're all trying to dig out from the "ALA preparation" hole that we (at least, me) invariably find ourselves in.
• Chrystie is busy launching a new WebJunction site.
• I spent a week in Ohio and now have a new official role as the consumer marketing guru for WorldCat.org. (My words, not OCLC's).
• George is valiantly trying to have a summer in between speaking engagements and entertaining IFLA fellows.
• Eric, well, Eric last I know was organizing a baseball outing. But that was in his spare time.

Chrystie on why she loves Twitter:



From the LJ ALA 2008 wrap-up.

True Story about a Horrible Business meeting where "we already do that" killed all innovation ideas.

*Intelligence is wildly overrated as a virtue.* What holds us back is not that we’re not smart enough. “Yeah yeah yeah, we do that”—self-delusion is a big obstacle. If we talked about it, it’s happening?

Internet designed to be a network of networks: exchange and share information (interoperable). Exchange, sharing and interoperability.

Real big potential win for libraries: on an organizational level: which partners, colleagues and peers should we interoperate with? For us as an organization (not just as a creator of technologies.)

The most important product of the Mines… (Obligatory Profound Design Quote) is the Miner.
(Not the stuff they did out of the ground. It’s the people. It’s the system. It’s the human capital.)

The most Important product of the network is the networker. The kinds of networks we build…depend on what kinds of networkers we really want people to be.

What’s the most Important Product of the Library?

Mission statements, public documents that answer this question.
(Readers) and (Research)
“A Scholar is a Library’s Way of Creating Another library.”
What SHOULD the most important Product of the Library be?

What institutional innovations and adaptations best boost your chances of getting there? (And who owns the keys?)

“Competition” –like “innovation"�is a means to an End.
Frenemies/Froes? Are people a competitor or a co-marketer?
Spectre of competition—Institutions seek protection, instead of rising to the challenge.

“Competition” is about Perceived Value from Choice.
Newspaper circulation has stayed flat since 1950. Average reader age: 56.
Newspapers don’t know how to compete. Reluctance to creatively compete.
Rupert Murdock always buys the 2nd best—he competes. It’s the perceived value.

Libraries as physical spaces that house books and artifacts= no competition. We’re great.
Libraries as information=huge space to compete in.
Libraries are creatures of subsidy rather than market forces.

How do your uses and user communities brand you as a competitor?
“Serving the community” “Serving the underserved”
Permit Competition
Or
Permit Subsidy
?

4 particular things as suggested actions
1. Learning from our Lead users. (What is the segment of users that we learn the most from? Not just segments—but segments we learn from.)
2. With Whom Do we want to collaborate to Create value? Why?
(Collaborative—who creates value…what are our organizational protocols?)
3. Nurturing our Best Internal Arguments/Disagreements (be transparent—make your user know what’s going on. Don’t seal off the complexity
4. Establishing “Liberatory” (a mash-up of library and laboratory) that best attract talent and inspire hypotheses.

What does the institution itself stand for? Provoke new thinking and new value.
Success comes not from taking the path of least resistance but the path of maximum advantage.

Alice's note: Once again, hotels are not willing to provide widespread wifi access without paying through the nose in the 4 digit range. So Beth Gallaway and a few other library bloggers sat on the sides and took notes to post later.
These are them...

Full house! Lots of people here. In fact, the hotel staff started bringing in more chairs…


Andrew Pace kicks off the Symposium
Creativity Exercise:
What is your Greatest Resource?
What is your Greatest Challenge?
What if…(dangerous ideas)
*We stopped cataloging?
*We participated fully with the FBI? (Sienfeld’s Library Cop)
*We mased up Connexion x WoW=WorldCat of Warcraft…

Michael Schrage (keynote)

The Content of the Audience is more important than the Content of the Talk.
The economics of innovation:
How do organizations use models and prototypes and manage risks and innovation?
Emphasis: Managing the challenge of institution innovation. (immovable bureacracies?)
Is it harder for a good library to be innovative than an entrepreneur?

Definition: Innovation is the Conversion of “Novelty” into “Value”
Whose novelty? Whose value?

Innovation is a means to an end. (Not an end unto itself.)
Is innovation a spice? Or the whole meal? Forces the organization to address what it really does.

*Innovation isn’t what innovators offer, it’s what customers, clients and users ADOPT.

Mobile phone: How many of us know how to use more than 20% of the features of our phones? (This isn’t being innovative for phone companies to create new, little used features…it’s being wasteful.)

We need a different paradigm: Move away from “creation of choice” and toward “Value from Use”
Make the center of gravity= Value for Use. Measure THAT.

Ask your users: “What’s the most Innovative thing you think we do?”

I’ve been invited to liveblog and solicit questions for an Annual Conference session about a newish ALA grant project designed to educate the public about privacy rights. More info will be up soon at their site, Privacy Revolution, but for now, they have a top-notch panel speaking about this subject at Annual (Cory Doctorow, Dan Roth from Wired, and Beth Givens, the director of the Privacy Rights Clearinghouse), and they’re soliciting questions from those who can’t attend the session. If nothing else, there is a survey available on the site that they’re hoping you’ll take in order to collect data about information privacy policies and practices.

Jessamyn West has a longer explanation on Librarian.net, and I think it’s probably easier if everyone just posts their questions there, although I will definitely ask any relevant questions posted here, too. If you’ll be at the conference, we’ll be in room 201D in the convention center from 1:30-3:30pm, so please join us.

As soon as there is more info about the project available online, I’ll post a note about it here. I’m hoping good things will come from this, as I think this country needs to have a serious and frank debate about privacy issues, and I believe libraries are a good forum for this.

I’ve finally had a moment to collect room numbers, and since I see that some of the gaming stuff isn’t listed in the program guide, here’s a quick run-down.

• Open Gaming Night
  7:30-10:30pm
  Hilton, Pacific Ballroom C
   
• Games and Gaming MIG meeting (open to any attendee)
  10:00am-noon
  Sheraton Park Hotel in Plaza A/B
   
• DDR at the Wellness Fair
  10:30am-2:30pm
  On the exhibit floor
   
• More gaming sessions in an easily scanable format on the Annual wiki
   
• And of course, the California Dreaming game will be everywhere!

I had it this morning.
On the new computer.


Happily preparing for ALA antics. There will be a blogger salon, hands-on play with WorldCat social tools workshops, a somewhat offbeat game show (complete with prizes) and much, much more.
And I just booked my flights. Oh, the anticipation of it all. Wha Hoo!

Pandas really know how to dance! I Guess they like fanny packs too.