LIKE

LIKE's Summer Walk - discovering the familiar

Fri, 29 Jul 2011 10:00:00 -0700

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!

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LIKE 26 Information Architects

Mon, 04 Jul 2011 05:56:17 -0700

From sorting and classifying records to cleaning data for the burgeoning web: these activities span information architecture but perhaps the trajectory from one to another is not so obvious. Martin Belam took us through his career from record shop to doing SEO before it was SEO at the BBC, working in Greece before it was broke and to his current role where he can be found asking bored looking readers in the British Library to help with some research as lead user experience bod at the Guardian.

Some highlights:

- how differently our users can be from us: log analysis of how people search the web shows what people do when they can't find something and how their expectations may balloon into something we didn't foresee (e.g. using the BBC website as if it's Google).

- it might be helpful to come up with a fictional character to represent our users - reference this person in projects!

- the joy of faceted taxonomies especially tagging and how to encourage users (here journalists) to use them without making them do too much extra work

- how useful and low risk doing pencil and paper sketches of websites can be before you get a designer to do a prototype for you

- the magic of tags! Building a website that preempts new content, allows user input within boundaries of editorial control, supplies trends and Googlewhack combinations such as chessboxing. A catalogue of editorial obsessions at the Guardian - tags represent corporate memory, internal knowledge and future business drivers?

- while being pragmatic is great, idealism has its place - perhaps in future newspapers will be printed from the CMS content? Born digital content driven by user demand not just in terms of content but format also?

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LIKE 24 The human library

Sat, 23 Apr 2011 02:36:43 -0700

If you were a book what would you be about? This metaphor became
reality at April's LIKE meeting.

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.

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LIKE 23 Information in the palm of your hand: the evolution of mobile information access

Tue, 05 Apr 2011 01:09:18 -0700

Comparing mobile devices is what you do when you meet someone now
argued Mark Needham. But the technology behind being able to do this:
microprocessors, the internet and wireless networking have been around
for 20 years, it's just taken some consolidation and growing public
demand for it to take shape. So the example used was steam power being
invented and then a delay before the first Ford Model T coming off the
production line and then consumer expectation being built on the back
of it. Further Mark predicted that the mobile devices we carry around
with us will be recognisable to future generations like the first car
and the modern hybrid car share common features. Librarians and
information managers are arguably strategic planners in an environment
built for horse and carriage but with people driving through it.

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

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LIKE 20: The Spirit of LIKE, the spirit of Christmas

Sun, 05 Dec 2010 13:27:46 -0800

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!

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LIKE THIS YEAR

Sat, 20 Nov 2010 09:40:03 -0800

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

, Lesley Robinson will lead us through a number of interactive sessions, culminating in the suitably seasonal activity of networking with Santa and exchanging 'virtual' gifts.

...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?

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Like 19 Open source in action

Mon, 15 Nov 2010 11:21:00 -0800

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..............

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LIKE 18 months

Sat, 02 Oct 2010 11:43:03 -0700

LIKE’s Learning Curve

After a year and a half LIKE enters a new phase and that seems to be a perfect time to reflect on what we have learned from this first 18 months and what we can do better in the years to come.

LIKE began as a café-style group for information professionals who wanted to network in a relaxed and open atmosphere.

We wanted LIKE to be a bit different from already existing networking groups, but still work together and be open and free to anyone who wishes to join, unfettered by rules and regulations.

LIKE has grown from a handful of members to over 300, coming from all over the UK and even the world. Clearly LIKE offers something that people really want.

In September 2010 we asked members what they appreciate about LIKE and what they wanted LIKE to do. The results showed three things that really stood out:

1. Friendly and open atmosphere – LIKE is open to all who work in the field of information and want to talk about work and related issues with other interesting people. LIKE is also free- there is no membership fee, but participants pay for their dinner.

2. Interesting speakers and topics including Tim Buckley Owen, Susie Andretta, OpenRightsGroup, Chris Collison. Discussions on taxonomies, knowledge management ROI, Sharepoint implementation - we’ve also discussed our favourite books!

3. A variety of events: meetings in a regular place (the pub), alternated by external visits. We’ve been to see Tim Burners Lee at the Science Museum, walked around the City with London Walks and had an indoor picnic.

The ‘people factor’ is most important to LIKE.

Web 2.0 tools such as LinkedIn, Flickr, Twitter and the LIKE blog have definitely helped in making a difference to the ease of organisation of communication, but the face-to-face meetings and open, relaxed atmosphere has made the real difference.

The popularity and growth of LIKE is largely due to another human factor: word-of-mouth!

Just this September LIKE hosted a KM masterclass with Chris Collison, facilitated by the British Dental Association.

For the first few meetings LIKE attracted no more than a dozen attendees to its gatherings. The first event entitled ‘Dinner with...’ - in this case with Tim Buckley-Owen - attracted more than 20 members. For people coming to the event, not having to worry about getting home for supper proved very welcome.

From then on the group’s growth was rapid. Every month we had 20 to 24 people turn up for LIKE.

The Perseverance became too small and so we found a bigger venue; The Crown Tavern on Clarkenwell Green.

A mix of excellent speakers selected to ensure interesting and lively debates and the food and drink guarantee a great atmosphere.

LIKE’s future

So what will the future for LIKE be?

That is a question that we hope will be answered by our members. They drive LIKE with their contributions and comments. We greatly appreciate their involvement and want to see much more of it. We would like to keep discussions going after the events on our blog. We hope they’ll come up with ideas for talks and put themselves forward as speakers.

But most of all we want to see LIKE remain open, friendly, relaxed and and fun!!!

Marja Kingma

Founding member of LIKE

Published articles. FUMSI (Feb 2010)

Read our blog

Join us on LinkedIn

View our photos on Flickr

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LIKE Survey

Mon, 27 Sep 2010 02:07:00 -0700

A few weeks ago we asked LIKE members to let us know what they thought of LIKE so far and any ideas they had for what the group should do in the future.

19 people responded to the survey. Of those 8 were regulars and 6 had attended one event. But the biggest surprise was seeing responses from 5 people who had not yet attended a LIKE event. A gentle reminder that we have members who want to be involved with the group but aren't able or interested in attending events. So far LIKE has been very focused around the monthly events we put on but we'll need to think more about what we can provide to people beyond these monthly gatherings.

Most of the responders were happy to stick with the last Thursday of the month (this got 13 votes compared to 2 for Mondays, 1 for Tuesdays and 2 for Thursdays.) Interestingly 5 responders voted for LIKE to be held on different nights of the month each week. This is certainly something we could consider in future but it looks like we're best sticking with the last Thursday of the month for now.

There was a definite agreement amongst responders to stick with charging £15, with only one responder voting for the £20 option which would have enabled us to offer concessionary rates. Another responder noted that they would have preferred the rate to have stayed at £10. We hope the rise to £15 will be acceptable to most members as we suspect people were spending about £15 at a LIKE evening anyway if you consider the additional drinks bought at the bar. By providing those drinks as part of the offering at our new venue we hope to give people more time to mingle by saving them time queueing at the bar.

We asked what subjects people would like to hear more about from our guest speakers. The role of the professions and IT developments were ranked equal first with 15 votes. Career/business development and personal skills both got 11 votes. We asked what professional sectors interested you most. Your primary area of interest was Information Management with 16 votes, then Knowledge Management with 14 votes, Records Management with 10 votes, and finally Library issues with 9 votes.

You sent us some great suggestions for topics which we'll be looking into:

How to influence the development of digital systems.
Wider advocacy of the skills of the information professional.
Work with, not against, IT people!
"Enterprise 2.0" and culture change: which comes first?
What makes an intranet social?
The Cynefin Framework, sensemaking and knowledge management
Organisation of Digital Media
Linked data
Digital economy
Idiots guide to new tech and implementation in the information world
The rise, fall and rise again of KM
The link between ECM, KM/IM and the cost of managing and storing information
Information governance / information and society

As well as suggestions of well known speakers to approach, a couple of you told us how much you appreciate hearing our own members talk, "I would rather come and listen to speakers who I haven't already seen or read about!"

We asked you for your favourite memories of LIKE:

"Many great memories - of members demonstrating their expertise such as Fran on taxonomy and Cerys on struggles with Sharepoint; of speakers such as Tim on the info landscape, Susie explaining transliteracy, Chris on practical KM; of the brilliant spontaneous dynamic when people sit down to eat and chat together. And of finding such valued friendships!"

"They're all really good. Very much like the range of speakers."

"Too many to chose. Invaluable in keeping me in touch with developments in the profession."

"Very difficult to pick out any one - the USP and attraction for me is the variety of topics and speakers and presentations are an excellent vehicle to open up questions/challenges/opportunity for us to ruminate over."

"I really enjoyed the recent Walking tour around the City. It was great on many levels as it gave everyone a chance to learn a bit about London and the buildings we pass every day, as well as allowing an informal networking opportunity as we walked between the tour's destinations."

"The opportunity to meet new and interesting people is always welcome. I love the informality and willingness of all attending to talk and share experiences. There's no cliquey feeling - everyone is made to feel welcome and part of the evening."

"LIKE helps me to keep a broad and balanced view of information and knowledge work in a variety of sectors by providing a wide range of topics and knowledgeable speakers over the course of the year."

"My favourite memory of a LIKE event was attending the picnic afternoon, even though it started to rain. The event helped to meet like-minded professionals who speak the same language."

"LIKE has enabled me to overcome my fear and dread of networking (!) and shown me the value of it. The group is open and friendly to all and provides a comfortable and relaxed environment to meet people from all walks of the information sector industry. The use of a speaker and topic ensures that the conversation flows throughout the evening."

"I've enjoyed all the LIKE events I've been to and have learnt things every time. But the thing that gave me the most lofty aspirations for my organisation was probably Chris Collison's talk and the practical exercise on river diagrams."

"I enjoy the informal sessions as much as the more formal ones. If I had to single any out, it would be my first LIKE (when we came together to discuss books) and the city walk and the talk on records management where we considered the implications of keeping blogs/tweets etc. as historical records. LIKE helps me to keep in touch with current issues and to keep my networking up!"

"I think LIKE has an excellent balance of formal and informal events. It also caters to the professional diversity of its members in that not every subject is going to suit everybody - but it is all very interesting!"

We asked what support for your professional development were you currently lacking. Sharing and finding good practice came top here with 15 votes. Networking opportunities and Keeping up to date with news and current developments came in second with 12 votes equally. Interestingly responders who felt they didn't have good networking opportunities were mainly those who hadn't attended a LIKE event - so come along to the next LIKE event and get networking! Opportunities to promote yourself and Advocacy and promotion of your professional skills to the wider world were equally scored with 8 votes each.

Finally we asked for suggestions of how we could improve. You suggested:

Post-event follow ups: more consistent publication of write-ups after events.
An opportunity for 'new starters' or professionals who are seeking a change of direction in their careers to find a mentor.
More of the same and speakers from within the group.

And we were delighted you were kind enough to say:

It's great the way it is
Keep doing what you're doing :-)

LIKE has been an amazing adventure and we're so pleased so many of you have joined us to create a group that clearly delivers so much value to its members.

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LIKE on transliteracy – 27th May 2010

Tue, 01 Jun 2010 15:10:47 -0700

In the world of ubiquitous computing are we all competent ‘transliterati’? asked Susie Andretta, lecturer at London Metropolitan University and author of a soon to be completed PhD on information literacy (not to be confused with the subject of tonight’s talk).

So what is transliteracy? I had never heard of the phrase which originated in communication and cultural studies with a major exponent being Sue Thomas, a professor of new media who heads the Production and Research in Transliteracy group at De Montfort University in Leicester. Transliteracy she says is ‘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’. Mariis Mills, a Danish PhD student explains: “ Transliteracy can be characterized as:

a possible unifying perspective on what it means to be literate in the twenty-first century

an extension of transliteration that also includes the increasingly wide range of communication platforms and tools at our disposal

a concept that calls for a change of perspective away from the battles over print versus digital, and a move instead towards a unifying ecology not just of media, but of all literacies relevant to reading, writing, interaction and culture, both past and present...”

Susie took us through a series of interviews she conducted for a paper she presented at the IFLA conference in 2009. Most people she interviewed hadn’t heard of transliteracy either but found themselves as practitioners even if their workplaces weren’t as keen to take up new media or web 2.0 technologies as they were.

So is transliteracy just about new media? Transliteracy it was argued (and please do argue with me here) goes beyond literacy as it is almost like a behaviour so instead of having a written text to examine and disseminate it is storytelling, it is encouraging people to interact with a blog, not just writing it. It is using new forms of language, the much maligned text speak or should that be txt sp?!

Is it helpful to label it thus if transliteracy is just engaging with technology? Some speakers argued that labelling means giving something significance and importance and that perhaps being transliterate should be on library school curricula. Often people push a technology before they have decided rightly or wrongly to use it or else sometimes people hide behind a technology and the unknown as an excuse to not engage with it: I’ll lose my privacy, my corporate identity is at risk, where is my data being transmitted to...

We touched on the buzzwords we’re perhaps all more familiar with such as the Google generation and the work of David Nicholas. Is it really about age or generations and has anything really changed -as with letters there is etiquette just as with Google chat there is etiquette...so perhaps we are just dealing with change but on a more rapid scale. Does going beyond literacy mean we are going beyond meaning and transliteracy leads to nonsense?

One speaker feared that the face to face interaction as a communicative form was losing out to teleconferencing (essential in my own work) and web chat (through which Susie conducted one of her interviews). New technologies also bring about opportunities to connect with people that would never happen in real life such as the Kmers who have regular online chats and provide a valuable forum for all those interested in KM on a global scale.

Finally a speaker noted how just as the lines were being blurred between musicians and music producers and artists and writers perhaps in information circles we are feeling our way in a landscape which blurs the lines between content producer, consumer and manager. As transliterati it is the decision to engage that defines us and whether that means librarians or info pros play the role of facilitators or just bit players like everyone else it certainly was an interesting debate.

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LIKE 11

Tue, 02 Mar 2010 02:45:38 -0800

 

LIKE11 Taxonomies in an open world.
 
On the eve of LIKE’s first anniversary 22 LIKE devotees assembled in the Bloomsbury Lounge of The Perseverance. The questions up for discussion were: How can we use knowledge systems such as 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?
I am in no doubt that Fran Alexander explained how to make that work better than anyone in the field. Apart from being a taxonomy expert, she is an expert speaker who managed to make a technical topic interesting and even entertaining. 
She started by taking us on a quick tour through the long history of taxonomies. It’s been a relatively uneventful history, until developments picked up speed with the arrival of the internet, and then went into overdrive when Web2.0 came along. 
Whereas before full-text searching, preferably via Google, seemed to be the solution, nowadays this is no longer true. Google is only useful when we already know what we are looking for, but falls down when we want to get an overview of a certain topic.
Nowadays taxonomies have to be able to deal with the modern day internet and social networks, where everyone contributes, including metadata. For me, the introduction of hash tags in Twitter, no matter how crude, has shown that, not only do we need metadata, but we are eager to create our own, just as we want to create our own content. 
Despite the enormous intellectual efforts poured into traditional classification systems and taxonomies, they are no good without the collaboration of users in today’s web environment. That is exactly what Fran is arguing for: open up our carefully-crafted taxonomies to our users and let them add to them and we’ll improve their user-experience. The central ‘high brow’ taxonomy will function as the backbone of the system: strong, but flexible enough to be able to bend in all required directions, just like a body’s backbone. 
Linking other taxonomies to the central one allows everyone to search a large collection or archive (like that of the BBC) from different angles, whether that’s sport, politics, or from a child’s point of view, and we’ll increase our chances of finding exactly what we need. My hope is that this in turn will lead to a higher usage of the collections and archives taxonomies serve, now so often being criticised for gathering dust and not being worth spending money on. 
Growth will be organic and taxonomies will become three-dimensional, because we can move deep into them and out again. Fantastic! 
The taxonomies of today are the best proof that opening up systems to the outside world strengthens, not weakens them. It is again the power of Web 2.0 with its interactions between people that’s the driving force behind all of this. We can only dream of what Web 3.0 will bring us.
After a brief Q&A session dinner was served. The menu had been expanded significantly and soon both wine and conversation flowed abundantly! It was one of the best LIKE events I have experienced, thanks to taxonomies and their champion Fran Alexander! 
 
Marja Kingma 28-02-2010 

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LIKE IT - February 2010

Thu, 25 Feb 2010 05:14:00 -0800

Guest bloggers Ben Summers and Jennifer Smith of OneIS present their monthly round-up of the latest IT developments.

iPad
February started with the excitement that always surrounds the launch of a new Apple gadget. Only this time the launch was met with massive disappointment from Apple's usual stalwart aficionados. Technical developers, the traditional crowd of Apple early adopters, are seemingly not the target market of Apple's latest offering - the iPad.

So who is the iPad aimed at? This blog post suggests it's for "everyone else" - from technophobes to grandmas. Whilst the developers are frustrated that it's locked-down so they can't "tinker" with it, this is exactly the sort of unbreakable, ultra-simple machine the rest of us have longed for.

But the iPad isn't just a dumbed down computer - it could be the start of a revolution in user-computer interaction as this author argues And it's certainly likely to add momentum to the e-book revolution that has taken years to get off the starter block.

Apple is going to be a powerful force in the ebook market through the iPad - controlling the price and the marketplace of ebooks sold in its App Store. Whilst the Apple iBooks app is just another app, on equal footing to any other ebook reader, it won't stop Apple promoting it heavily in the app store so it is likely to become the dominant ebook reader for the iPad.

It looks likely Apple will use the Fairplay DRM (Digital Rights Management) so books sold via iBooks will be subject to restrictions and (in the US) legal issues with breaking the digital locks. This will be annoying for users wanting to ensure they can keep the eBook they've bought, but won't affect the pirates it's trying to stop as DRM is trivial for them to crack. As Bruce Schneier, IT security expert, argues that DRM is like trying to stop water being wet: give people encrypted content and the decryption key so they can view it, and they'll be able to remove the locks.

Internet Explorer
Good news this month for everyone fed up with Internet Explorer. Finally there's some momentum in getting rid of the hugely out-of-date and buggy Internet Explorer version 6 (IE6) with a Downing Street petition and most significantly, Google phasing out their support for it.

What's the problem with IE6? Most of us use web-based applications in our work and private lives, since applications accessed anywhere through a web browser is so much more convenient than using something you've installed on your computer. People have a choice about which browser they use to access these applications - Internet Explorer, Safari, Firefox, and now Opera and Chrome - so developers need to make sure the applications work well in 'all' browsers.

This isn't straightforward, but without Microsoft it would be significantly easier. Everything other than IE supports "web standards", so if your application works in one of the non-Microsoft browsers, it'll probably work in them all. But not only does Microsoft implement things slightly differently, making your application work in a ten year-old non-standard browser like Internet Explorer 6 adds significantly to the development time required. To add insult to injury, it limits how innovative you can be in developing the application if you want every user to have the same experience of it.

The latest version of Internet Explorer is now 8 - IE6 is two versions behind. As such it receives only limited support from Microsoft and is full of security flaws as it was written in a previous age where the internet was not full of threats.

But it's not all good news. The biggest users of IE6 are large corporates. Their IT departments are not willing to go through the hassle of updating their user's browsers, and their unlikely to be forced to change whilst most users can't even answer the question, "What is a browser?"

In other Internet Explorer news, Europe's Competition Commission decreed at the end of last year that Microsoft must allow Windows users to be able to choose browsers other than Internet Explorer. That agreement comes into affect from 1 March.

Dave Heiner of Microsoft explains how users will be presented with the new choice. But the easier way of getting rid of the browser choice window is to close it, or click the "choose later" button. What will people who don't care about web browsers do? Most likely click to get rid of the message. It's hard to see how this will make any dent in Internet Explorers market share.

So which browser should you use? Take advantage of a decade of development, and use anything but Internet Explorer! Firefox or Chrome are our recommendations for PC users, and the latest Safari for Mac users.

Personal security alerts
Social media encourages us all to share more with anyone who follows or friends you, or to just tell the world in general everything you're up to. A new website, pleaserobme.com is a timely reminder of the need to use some common sense when sharing personal information on the internet.

It's worth remembering that it's easy to share everything publicly because it's in the interests of the social media technology companies for you to share openly. Their products and user interface promote broadcasting information to the world, without warnings, because warnings would stop you doing it and reduce the amount of content they can profit from. We all need to think about the implications, and remember that these apps are not for our benefit, they're ultimately for the benefit of the people who run them.

Sun/Oracle buyout
Two heavyweights of the computer industry merged this month when Oracle's buyout of Sun Microsystems was finally sealed. Whilst probably not a company name familiar to most computer end-users, Sun's contribution to innovation in IT has been significant and many customers and commentators feared the IT world would be worse off from this merger.

It seems the outcome of the merger is not as bad as it could have been with important Sun initiatives and products kept, and customers relying on Sun equipment can feel some reassurance that it will be business as normal. However, smaller initiatives have been dropped, key Sun employees sacked, and Oracle won't continue to support open source work to the same extent as Sun. The days of Sun as a benevolent research lab for the IT world, acting as a natural counterbalance to Microsoft, are gone. Oracle will likely be far more focused on short-term profit, and inevitably there will be far less support for the blue-sky innovation at Sun which has resulted in some great contributions to the IT world.

Barbie - the computer engineer
And finally this month we have the launch of Barbie, the computer engineer.

Is it any surprise the new Barbie doll is a computer engineer? If you hold an online vote to choose her next profession, it's hardly surprising that the result is the profession of the most vocal, connected, and technologically literate people on the internet.

Is a doll with glasses and a pink laptop really going to do anything to encourage a better gender balance in the profession? Surely pointing out the huge influence that computers have in our society, and the potential power of those who can control them, would be more inspiring to a new generation of female engineers?

But then again, it's probably more about selling chunks of expensive plastic than changing the world.

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Visual Storytelling: An exploration of ‘Telling Tales’ at the V&A

Mon, 31 Aug 2009 04:09:00 -0700

Storytelling is used in many ways to convey messages, be it values, mores, or how to best run your business. LIKE4 explored the knowledge sharing side of story telling. Telling Tales at the V&A explores human emotions - our hopes and fears; our sense of wonder and of loss. It links story telling to art and design and in this show it is hard to say where one ends and the other begins. This is one of the themes of the exhibitions; the merger between art, craft and design.

Telling Tales showcases designers from Europe, mainly Dutch designers including Tord Boontje, Maarten Baas, Jurgen Bey and Studio Job. Their furniture ‘objects’ combine functionality, originality and fantasy, but also have a deeper meaning.

Going into the ‘Forest’ you can stay on the straight path, or get lost. There are childlike, 'innocent' pieces of furniture that put the world on its head (how about a boat-bath?) and the two wardrobes on display challenge our preconceptions about what a wardrobe is. Fairy tales and myths are important here; Little Red Riding Hood and Genesis are juxtaposed in the design.

And if you think that by entering the second room you're out of the woods, you are mistaken. The Enchanted Castle tears up one’s ideas of proportion, functionality and the relationship between art and day to day objects.

Here we enter the adult world, against a setting inspired by the 18th century, when the first novels appeared. References are made to Jack and the Bean Stalk (still a fairy tale), Alice in Wonderland and Gulliver's Travels.

The sound in the room reminded me of a Dr. Who episode 'The Girl in the Fireplace' .it's the sound of a clock mechanism reeling off and the ticking and striking of clocks. Quite eerie, and a bit menacing, too. The furniture has a distinct feel of luxury, with heavy structures and gold and black decorations. This was still good fun with pieces like a chair underneath a mirror and a painting; and a set of chairs, with some peculiar back rests.

The third room is where it gets deadly serious. Here the designs are influenced by human hopes, anxieties and fears of Hell. Still, there’s lots of humour around, albeit morbid. How about a hugging pillow, shaped like a nuclear mushroom-cloud, for when you feel down or depressed? Or chilling out on a beautiful snow white mohair cushion, until you realise it portrays (and very strikingly) a nuclear explosion on an atoll. Walls around the objects force you to walk through narrow corridors, sometimes leading to a dead end. How symbolic.

Unlike in the other two rooms there is no overview (there's also no sound); you need to look at the objects through windows in the walls, which restrict your view. However, as you walk on and peer through another window, you get a different view of the objects. Very cleverly done. Needless to say the dominant colour here is black, with some red, and the only lighting is on the objects; visitors have to find their way in the dark. Dante and Freud reign here.

At first glance one could say that the exhibition shows us that it is possible to make a design statement and at the same time deliver a functional piece of art/design, unlike some 'fashion statements' one sees on the cat walk.

If you dig a bit deeper the exhibition becomes a life story: artfully designed objects take the viewer from childhood, through adulthood towards death, and leave you with thoughts you never thought you would get by looking at a chair!

By Marja Kingma

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The Role of Storytelling in Knowledge sharing

Mon, 29 Jun 2009 13:19:10 -0700

LIKE 4 THE ROLE OF STORY TELLING IN KNOWLEDGE SHARING

Frogs in the British Library?

On Thursday 29 May 2009 LIKE4 kicked off with the telling of a story about a frog. Why frogs?

Pool frogs from Norfolk are the subject of a case study run by the Science Team at the British Library.

To start the evening with a bit of fun I transformed the case study into a fairy tale.

Spring Board stories

Another reason why I chose the frog case study is, that it comes very close to what Stephen Denning, a former World Bank knowledge worker, calls a “Springboard story”.

In essence a Springboard story is one that triggers ideas in people’s minds; that change their perceptions of certain situations. This works especially well where an organisation needs to implement change.

In order for this to work a Springboard Story must have certain characteristics:

Be true, or at least believable
Be brief and not contain too much detail, because this may prevent a train of thought arising in the mind of the listeners.
Have one protagonist (a person or organisation) that users can identify with
Embodies the change message, and contain a level of surprise
Have a happy ending – negative stories only trigger defence responses in people and won’t help people accept a change message.

Discussion

The discussions centred around three main topics:

1. Types of stories

We can tell stories in many different ways, from fairy tales to charts and graphs, and from novels to Twitter tweets. Humans have been telling stories for thousands of years and continue to do so. Stories capture our imagination and we can’t get enough of them.

Stories in organisations range from anecdotes to stories about the founding history of the organisation, sometime called business evolution tales. A typical example is 3M, the company that gave us the Post-it note and Scotch Tape. The stories told in this company underline the values held by 3M, quite unusual values one might say. Both anecdotes and more elaborate stories can covey the key values of an organisation.

Case studies are very often used in organisations, for instance to demonstrate a competence, but also to encapsulate business values. The case study project run by the Science Team of the British Library aimed to show the relevance of the Library’s scientific collections to present day research.

The discussion identified numerous story-telling vehicles available to us - whether in words or images; Pictures/photos, graphics, mime, letters, Twitter, role play, film, radio, TV. Even architecture can tell a story.

2. What makes a good story?

Mitchell refers to Klein, who lists the characteristics of a good story, most of which are also mentioned by Denning in relation to the Springboard Story: plausibility, conveying drama, invoking empathy, uniqueness and having an element of surprise. [1]

Throughout the discussions all these elements were mentioned, but in addition we came up with aspects such as the need for a relaxed setting, a safe environment to encourage others to tell stories. A good story allows the audience to relate to the character(s) in the story and a good dose of humour always helps to bring the message across.

3. Value to business of stories?

The Xerox Corporation discovered that ‘a quick breakfast can be worth hours of training’.[2] What does this quote tell us? I think it says that story telling is a very engaging and appealing way of conveying knowledge, often more effective than training; that it is less time consuming and therefore more cost- effective than traditional ways of transferring knowledge. The informal setting helps people to shed their inhibitions about ‘speaking in a group’.

Stories are a way to package boring topics in a more palatable form and therefore make it easier to remember the message, especially if the message isn’t an easy one. They are the perfect vehicle for conveying lessons learned, whether in the form of fairy tales and folk tales, or in the shape of case studies.

They provide a context for issues and for understanding informal rules and values (culture) in organisations, once a critical mass of stories circulating in an organisation is captured.[3]

They prepare the ground for instigating change and throw light on the bigger picture.

A good story makes you think.

Conclusion

From my research and the discussions at LIKE4 I conclude that story telling plays an important role in knowledge sharing. This is mainly because it is a way of communicating that has appealed to humans for thousands of years. A good story attracts attention and makes people think.

But maybe storytelling works so well because we all like to hear and tell stories.

I would like to thank my colleagues of the Science Team at the British Library and Sandra Agard, story teller at Peckham Public Library for their help and input.

Bibliography

Bennet, Alex, The Use of Storytelling in DON. http://tiny.cc/U9OM9

Denning, Stephen, The Springboard : how storytelling ignites action in knowledge-era organizations, Boston, 2000.

Mitchell, Helen J. , Knowledge Sharing- the Value of Story Telling

In: Int. J. Organisational Behaviour, Vol. 9, 2005, nr 5 (May), p.632-641.

For more information on story telling you may find these websites helpful:

Story Tellers Society www.sfs.org.uk

Stephen Denning on Spring Board stories: www.creatingthe21stcentury.org

The Story tellers; www.the-storytellers.com/why-storytelling

[1] Mitchell, 2005

[2] Id, p, 638

[3] Bennet, IL Toolkit – The Use of Story Telling in DON.

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LIKE 4 28 May 2009, 6.30 PM. What is the role of storytelling in knowledge sharing?

Mon, 25 May 2009 06:43:37 -0700

What associations does the word ‘story’ conjure up with you; pyjamas or pin striped suit?

Storytelling is as old as humankind, but what makes a good story and what makes storytelling such a powerful tool in knowledge sharing?

Join the debate and bring your own stories.

We'll be meeting in the upstairs room of The Perseverance, 63 Lambs Conduit Street, WC1N 3NB

Arrive at 6pm, so we can start at 6.30pm. Buy drinks from the bar below. Buffet will be served @ £5 per head.

Reserve your place via the LIKE LinkedIn group.

Look forward to seeing you on 28 May!

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