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Wired West: Volume 11, no. 4

Inspiration 2008

By Allan Cho

If SLA in Seattle had a main theme, it should be "Inspiration SLA 2008" as the sessions had a plethora of motivating speakers and enthusiastic sessions.

Stephen Abrams' Reality 2.0

Keynote speakers were at the forefront of the conference menu. Stephen Abram's session, "Reality 2.0 - Transforming ourselves and our Associations" offered the most thought provoking ideas - definitely the highlight of my experience at this conference. Stephen Abram, 2008 President of SLA and was past-President of the Canadian Library Association, is also Vice President Innovation for SirsiDynix and Chief Strategist for the SirsiDynix Institute. Abram's discussion revolved around three key themes: technology, creativity, and continued professionalism.

In terms of technology, there is nothing wrong with Google and Wikipedia. It's okay for librarians to refer to Google or Wikipedia. Britannica has 4% error; Wikipedia has 4% error, plus tens of thousands of more entries. It's not wrong to start with Wikipedia & Google, but it is wrong when we stop there. Abram also indicated that this is perhaps the "whiniest generation" this century. The generation that dealt with two world wars and a depression did find learning new tools like refrigerators, televisions, radios, and typewriters. And they survived. Why can't we? Is it so hard to learn to use a wiki?

With creativity, there must be focus. We need to focus on the social rather than the technology. Wikis, blogs, and podcasts will come and go. But connecting with users won't. We must not use technology just for the sake of catching up. There has to be a reason to use them. More importantly, change is to come, so expect the world to be even more connected than it already has. With HDTV, that means more cables are freed up for telecommunications. Google's endgame is to provide wireless accesss through electricity. There are already laser keyboards where one you can type on any surface. The world is changing. So must information professionals. But ultimately, we must build paths, not barriers. Where libraries once commonly erected fences to prevent pedestrians from creating path lines, should we not follow these existing paths to create new ones? Librarians must go to the user, not the other way around. If patrons are using Facebook, then librarians need to use that as a channel for communication.

Abram also makes an astute observation about the profession itself. Why is it that we never give our taxes to a nameless accountant? Our teeth to a nameless dentist? Heart surgeon who has no title? If these professions don't, then why are information professionals hiding behind their screens? Why do we prefer anonymity for the fear of privacy? Go online! Use social networking as your tools to reach out to users, argues Abram. Though there is much to learn from youths about technology, there is also much need to mentor and train the younger generation for this profession to prosper and flourish. Technology without the right personnel is like a bookshelf without books. This is also the first generation in human history that its younger generation can teach its previous generation, and therefore, we must be aware of maximizing talents of everyone to make this profession work.

Seth Godin On Being Remarkable

The second speaker I had found extremely noteworthy was Seth Godin, whom BusinessWeek called the 'ultimate entrepreneur for the information age.' Best known as being an author of books such as Unleashing the Ideavirus, the Purple Cow, and Permission Marketing, Godin's blog is not only one of the most popular blogs in the world, Godin also helped create a a popular website Squidoo, which is a network of user-generated lenses --single pages that highlight one person's point of view, recommendations, or expertise. According to Godin, the way marketing works now is not by interrupting large numbers of people; rather, it is through soliciting a small segment of rabid fans who can eagerly spread the word about one's idea. The challenge is how to engage each person to go and bring five friends. What tools do we give them so that they can reach out to colleagues? A website like Zappos.com is so successful not because it sells shoes, but because it connects consumers to products, and then encourages consumers to spread the word to their friends and colleagues -- and hence, more consumers.

In this new era of permission marketing, spamming no longer works. Services such as PayPal which connect users to products or Sonos, which engage users as customers through recreating data into knowledge, and producing a conversation using the web as its platform, are the new models of success. "Be remarkable," Godin argues, and "tell a story to your sneezers" so that they could spread the word and "get permission" from consumers for their attention to the product. Godin concludes with a controversial assertion. "Books are souvenirs," he said, to a hushed audience. Most people find everyday facts and information from digital documents. "When was the last time you got your information from a book?" Although Godin might have made a gross overgenerationalization, his assertion of the divergence between the digital and the physical is a reality. In the Web 2.0 world, "enemy is obscurity, not piracy."

Together, Abram and Godin's sessions propose that information professionals need to shift their mentality from one of passivity to one of actively promoting themselves, of engaging information services in new ways, and of accepting change with an open mind. Although the world of libraries no longer resemble the way it once looked like, it is important to keep in mind that libraries have never been static to begin with. It's always been a growing organism, and this conference is just another reminder of that.

Allan Cho is the Program Services Librarian at the Irving K. Barber Learning Centre at the University of British Columbia.

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