LIKE

A grand place to start our saunter around King’s Cross - we met up outside the Midland Grand Hotel. Nobly resisting the urge to go inside and admire the renovations from a seat at the bar, we gathered around Rachel Kolsky as she told us how Sir George Gilbert Scott’s Gothic confection was rescued from more than 70 years’ neglect and abuse.  After Rachel had competed with the traffic and sirens for a while, telling us some  history of Cubitt’s King’s Cross and the undesirable area that’s now NW1 – we headed into St Pancras to pay homage to Sir John Betjeman (who fought so hard to save London’s architectural heritage).  We heard about William Henry Barlow’s impressive feat – the largest single-span roof in the world at the time – and about the thousands of barrels of beer, from Burton’s breweries, that were stored in the station’s undercroft.   Then we walked past the bars (strong-willed eh?) and through St Pancras to emerge opposite the German Gymnasium, the soon-to-be renovated tenements, and near to where the old gas holders were.  Rachel reassured us that the gas holders are going to be reconstructed, once all the building work and landscaping has been completed in the development area.

On the way to York Way we visited beautiful St Pancras old church, marvelled at St Pancras Yacht basin (who knew there was a dry dock in NW1?!) were delighted by Camley Street Natural Park, then arrived at King’s Place and learnt about the wonders it houses.  Some LIKE members are lucky enough to work there, and I don’t remember any of them telling us how cool the place is:  inviting public spaces, art exhibits, music (in September there’ll be 100 performances in 4 days) and a canal-side bar. 

Wonderful as the walk had been we were now really looking forward to our supper and a long, cool drink.  So we thanked  our informative and enthusiastic guide, Rachel, and walked along the canal path to Canal 125

Over dinner we noted the highlights of the tour:   for some walkers it was the spectacular Midland Grand, for others the previously unexplored areas around the back of the stations - such as the Gymnasium and canal-side renovations, the statue of John Betjeman with his nylon shopping bag enchanted one of the group, and someone else planned to return to Camley Street to explore the park.  For most people the old churchyard - with Hardy’s tree and John Soane’s phone box tomb - was a  tranquil high-spot, and the focus of one of the best stories of the night.   Angela Burdett-Coutts  isn’t buried at St Pancras, but her memorial obelisk (she was Lay Rector of the church)  prompted Rachel to tell us about the woman’s  inexhaustible philanthropy (she gave something like £3m to good causes during her life)  and impressive achievements -  including  becoming the first female peer in recognition of her accomplishments, being given the freedom of the cities of London and Edinburgh, surviving  into her early 90’s and, at the age of 67,  marrying her 29-year old secretary.  I bet she wouldn’t have been flagging after a two-hour saunter around King’s Cross!

Inspired by what was previously known as the Living Library project
and very much routed in community outreach in public libraries Linda
Constable took us through a Human Library session from introducing
some of the history of the project to facilitating a session between
books and readers.

The Human Library as a project started in 2000
http://humanlibrary.org/ at the Roskilde festival as a way of pushing
forward an anti violence message to Danish music fans. It reached
Britain in 2007 via an MLA funded project and Linda's got involved via
CILIP's Community Services group
http://www.cilip.org.uk/get-involved/special-interest-groups/community-services/
and has engaged members of the public via the use of human books on
homelessness, world war II and knitting. Linda said it is award
winning community cohesion and she was certainly an inspiring speaker.

Back at the LIKE meeting we could read books about comics for adults,
information literacy, Hackney, travel in Italy, gardening and online
gaming. Books wrote down the title of their book and a description to
lure us readers in. Readers could approach books and have
conversations one to one or in small groups. Borrowers and books had
rules of engagement about being open but also respectful and the
quirks of a human book mean that a human book can ask questions. So a
human library facilitates two way discussion and like a lot of LIKE
meetings it is about making connections, talking about different
experiences and having conversations: there are no stupid questions.
There was much amusement about how reservations and extension of loans
works with human books but once conversation flowed we had to issue
some more books so that there were enough to go around.

The Human Library is still very much being explored by new countries
and organisations. LIKE members asked whether it was irrelevant to our
largely middle class and not particularly marginalised group of
people: of course not Linda said, can not everyone learn? In a
workplace context of course it links very much into the knowledge
management agenda, how can we know people in our organisations who
have the specific and specialised knowledge that we need to tap into
to do our jobs more effectively? How can we capture tacit knowledge?
Human resources departments could use it as a tool in promoting
diversity awareness in a fun and relaxed way but like the Gurteen
knowledge cafe it could be used much more widely to get people
talking.

Andrew Swaine from ARM (a company powering mobile devices via
microprocessor technology) commented that it's power consumption not
speed that is most in demand and that is shaping the programmes
written for mobile devices. These are consolidating times with cloud
computing and operating systems being developed to a backdrop of users
expecting to be able to use a single desktop environment. The
popularity of apps surprised the industry but Andrew predicted that
web apps will take off and hopefully solve some of the problems
associated with proprietary software and interoperability. Now when
something doesn't work and a user has a problem this is bug, a big
change from before when hardware was king: now user interaction is
much more important.

So what are the challenges facing professionals of all stripes needing
a diverse range of information from doctors needing hospital records
to aid workers out in the field being able to communicate effectively
when conventional routes of communication are down? Problems included
ease of use 9size, lack of keyboard), geographic challenges and lack
of signal/bandwidth, privacy and legal issues and information
security.
Some things on the wish list for mobile technologies compiled by LIKE
attendees were:
-voice recognition
-secure connectivity
-currency/language applications
-single log in

Networking with Santa - with Lesley Robinson

by Paul Margree 

I suppose the first thing I should say about this final LIKE meet up before Christmas is that we didn’t actually network with Santa. Anyone expecting tips on how to hobnob with elves or hang out with reindeer will, unfortunately, be disappointed.

In fact, we were privileged to hear some top tips on networking from Lesley Robinson (http://lesleyrobinson.co.uk/), a consultant who has not only had some pretty amazing jobs in her career, but, crucially, gained all of these positions via recommendation. This is a pretty amazing fact and made me – and I’m sure everyone else in the room – keen to hear Lesley’s tips on successful networking.

Lesley made an important distinction early on in her talk, between networking in the online environment, via web 2.0 tools like blogs and social networking systems, and ‘real-life’ networking – meeting people you don’t really know and talking to them. It seems that librarians and information professionals are pretty good at the online bit – you only have to scan the vast amounts of blogs written by librarians to prove that – but that the real business of mixing with real people and exchanging information tends to prove somewhat problematic.

Why is this? Opinions around the room varied. Some felt that, to get any real benefit from networking you had to engage in a lot of meaningless or insincere small talk. Others (yes, me in fact) struggled with the thought of having to be relatively quiet about their job hunt with relative strangers. And some people expressed nervousness or anxiety at having to engage with a roomful of new people, the majority of whom they hadn’t met before.

Never fear. Not only did Lesley provide some absolutely rock solid advice about how to deal with these potentially difficult situations – including some great advice about positive body language, how to ‘break into’ a group of people seemingly deep in conversation, and how to avoid getting trapped in a conversation – but we were given some activities too, to put our new-found expertise in action.

I won’t go into details about these - except to say it proved remarkably difficult to find another person in the room who went to school in East Anglia and played the guitar – but they were great fun, and a superb demonstration of just how much information you can find out about people just by chatting to them.

I left the event with a much sharper idea of what networking is and how I could use it to benefit my career development. And, as Lesley pointed out, networking is not only a useful way to tap into other peoples’ networks of expertise, but also a good way for me to contribute my own knowledge or experience – it is, after all, about sharing and collaborating.

All in all, a fab evening: a stimulating speaker, yummy food and beverages, and some interesting things for me to put into action over the next few weeks.

Well done LIKE – and thanks again Lesley!

LIKE 2010

As the last LIKE of 2010 approaches, it's a good time to look back at LIKE's event-full year. 

Here's a reminder of the monthly events we've shared - and a note on what's to come....

LIKE 10 Thursday 28 January

Dinner with Liz Scott-Wilson, Carol Scott and Virginia Henry

Knowing me, knowing you: information behaviour & culture change

Do professional traits influence information behaviour? A knowledge specialist interviewed a social worker and an engineer about how they see their world, their work and their knowledge and records.

LIKE 11 Thurs 25 February

Dinner with Fran Alexander - Taxonomy Manager, BBC

Taxonomies in an open world

How can we use knowledge systems like taxonomies to create common ground so that we understand each other and share information effectively? At the same time how can we make knowledge systems flexible enough so that we can all use terms we want to use?

LIKE 12 Thurs 25 March

Dinner with Chris Collison

No more consultants

Chris talked about his recently published book, "No More Consultants", co-authored with Geoff Parcell. In their book, Chris and Geoff argue that automatically reaching for external consultants to solve a problem misses the opportunity to use the expertise held within the organisation.

LIKE 13 Wednesday 28 April

Dinner with James Lappin

A file for our times: re-imagining records for the real time world

James presented us with two questions for discussion: What types of records do 21st century knowledge workers want to read? and What types of systems or standards would be needed to support the capture and management of those records?

LIKE 14 Thursday 27 May

Dinner with Susie Andretta

Transliteracy: In the world of ubiquitous computing are we all competent 'transliterati'?

"a unifying perspective on what it means to be literate in the 21st Century [including] the ability to read, write and interact across a range of platforms, tools and media from signing and orality through handwriting, print, TV, radio and film, to digital social networks".

LIKE 15 Thursday 24 June

Civil rights in the digital world with Glyn Wintle - Open Rights Group

Glyn Wintle's talk covered all the areas in which the Open Rights Group are involved from the Digital Economy Bill, to the BBC breaking your TV, to Knitting, to the goverment breaking Wikipedia, to Copyright and Digital Rights Management.

The Open Rights Group exists to preserve and promote your rights in the digital age. Founded in 2005 by 1,000 digital activists, ORG has become the UK's leading voice defending freedom of expression, privacy, innovation, consumer rights and creativity on the net.

LIKE 16 Thursday 29 July

Guided tour of London's Square Mile

From the Monument, through the city's streets and alleys to St Dunstan in the East and via Wren's churches to the NatWest Tower and the Gherkin - concluding at the Jamaica Wine House - London's first coffee house (but we didn't settle for coffee!)

LIKE 17 Thursday 26 August

LIKE Posh Picnic

Didn't make it to the Park, but had a great indoor picnic at Gordon Ramsey's York & Albany.

LIKE 18 Thursday 30 September

21st Century Info Pros

Discussion led by Luisa Jefford, Director of Public Sector Recruitment at TFPL, on the skills required of Information Professionals and the roles available to them in the 21st Century world of work.

LIKE 19 Thursday 28 October

Making the leap to Open Source

Choosing and implementing Open Source software at the King's Fund Information and Library Service

Ray Philips – chaired by Hanna Lewin

In the Autumn of 2009, The King's Fund Information and Library Service decided to become one of few UK libraries using the open source LMS, Koha. Ray Phillips, Head of Information Services and Matthew Hale, Online Services Librarian, explained some of the strategic reasons behind that decision.

LIKE 20 Thursday 23 November

The Spirit of LIKE, the Spirit of Christmas.  (Networking with Santa!)

Strategic Business Consultant and expert networker

 .…..coming soon

LIKE 21 Thursday 27 January 2011

Detecting, preventing and reversing information black holes. Hanna Kazerani will be asking whether companies really need to know everything they know?

Let’s get my prejudices out of the way first. I never brought into the idea of open source, in fact that’s not true, I haven’t really given it much thought (except at university when I had to.) To me it has always sounded like good idea in theory, but not something to lose any sleep over, a product is a product, if it does the job it then great if not then i don’t want to know, it matters not to me who it was built by and whether it was developed by some keen teenage kid in between games of world of War craft, or by some over paid developer for Microsoft. To paraphrase Ian Brown It’s not where your from, its where your at.

If I have spoken to people who are passionate about open source (which to be fair isn’t very often) the conversation has always steered towards how evil Microsoft are (spare me that one) or general bashing of the software industry, not really something that interests me either. I would end up reminding people that in the early days of open source the same people providing you with you free open software solutions may well have been the same people writing the viruses that brought you ole 286 to its knees. I also got given a tired list of advantages, basically cheaper, no sales, err nicer people, no of which i believe.

At first I thought my personal experience of open source software isn’t great either, I was forced to use Unix at university and frankly it’s a bit poop, played a few games and heard a few horror stories that’s it basically. And then I thought hang on there must be some open source software that I use. Isn’t Wikimedia open source and of course Firefox.  I guess there is lots of software that I use that is open source but I don’t just think about it, if a piece of software works and delivers a solution then should we really care?  Obviously it is an issue for some people, at my current place work we use free (i presume open source) plug ins for SharePoint, and no one says anything (ok may be one of the network guys might start moaning, but they tend to do that about everything anyway, comes with playing to much X box,) besides i have never not used an open source product for any reason unless it didn’t do what it was supposed to......

So why you ask would i bother going to LIKE 19 then?

Well firstly i see LIKE as an opportunity to meet and talk to fellow information professionals. The talks could be about anything and i would attend, I never look at the topic until after have accepted the invite.

For the reasons i have outlined before i suppose i was curious as to why it was seen as an issue. Its good to hear that open source can work, in the end it kind of revalidated my opinion that unless someone else raises it as an issue it will not register on my radar. Maybe i have worked at particularly liberal companies?

As for the rest of the evening I am beginning to think I am becoming a SharePoint bore, that’s right  my company is developing (or deploying) SharePoint, my boss keeps using that horrible phrase, an information one stop shop. I am becoming a Microsoft pimp, but that ladies and gentlefolk is a story for another occasion..............