At CiL2012 I did a preconference about management of personal electronics called “Personal Electronics & the Library”. Here are the slides from that presentation, for your perusal:
I presented an encore of my VALA2012 presentation to librarians in Perth as well, at Curtin University. Here’s a recording of that particular presentation, where you can better see some of the slide effects and design choices that I talked about previously. The audio isn’t fabulous, but is serviceable and the video came out quite well.
I had a handful of people at VALA 2012 ask me not about the content of the talk (although I got a ton of those) but about how it was I put together and ran the presentation itself. My goal with the presentation was to make it look and run like no other presentation that people had seen…I don’t think I got 100% of what I wanted to achieve, but I got about 75% of the way there, and definitely got the idea across. I told a few people that what I wanted was for my presentation to look like something out of Harry Potter, something that was surprising and magical.
So how did I do it? I create all of my presentations in Keynote, the Apple presentation tool. It’s slide-based in the same way that Powerpoint is, but Keynote makes it very easy to produce awesome looking presentations. Honestly, the difference in the two couldn’t be more apparent as soon as you start using them. Keynote makes things like spacing, fonts, effects so smooth and easy that there’s no excuse for bad slides.
You may want to give these images a second to load…they’re pretty huge animated gifs. They were the easiest/fastest way I could think of to show off some of my animated slides.
One of Keynote’s strengths, especially in relation to Powerpoint, is that it handles media very, very smoothly. When I started thinking about my VALA 2012 presentation, I made the choice to include a ton of video content, including animated backgrounds for some of my slides. Some of these were animated gif files, and some of them were Quicktime videos (or other formats that I converted to Quicktime via IVI Video Converter). Keynote has controls available for Quicktime files built-in, allowing you to choose a start frame, end frame, poster frame, and whether or not the video (or gif!) loop, or loop back-and-forth. So I collected or created the videos and gifs and then used Keynote to set their start and stop times, and in the case of some of the gif backgrounds, whether they should loop directly, or loop back-and-forth. This gave the presentation a very distinct feel.
To drive the presentation, I use the Keynote Remote app for the iPad, which links to Keynote on your Mac via either Wifi or Bluetooth (but NOT BOTH…that can be really weird). This lets you use the iPad as a remote, moving from slide to slide and seeing your Presenter Notes as well (you do know that Keynote and Powerpoint both have a Presenter View…right?). So the iPad is my “cheat sheet” for the presentation, showing me where I am and my notes for that slide.
If it all works, it’s brilliant! If it doesn’t (and sometimes it doesn’t…wifi goes down, bluetooth is being flaky, tech gremlins act up) then we need to have a plan B…or C, or sometimes D. I always have a backup presentation remote with me, just in case, and I always know my presentation well enough that I don’t need my notes, mostly, to do the talk.
Between the ease with which Keynote makes beautiful slides, the iPad as a remote to make my life easier, and a bit of aesthetic judgement in the arrangement and choice of images (if it helps, I like to think of my slides as the set of of a play), I think that you can put on a pretty compelling presentation.
If you’d like to see the presentation in full, a full videocast of it is online. It’s not exactly as it was in person, as the slides didn’t always get captured as video, but it’s as close as you’ll come without being there. 🙂
Yesterday I had the pleasure of presenting to the librarians at Western Kentucky University during their 2011 kickoff event. When discussing a topic with the Dean, I was told that they were interested in the future of the academic library, technology, and how to manage the changes that are coming. That’s definitely in the sweet spot of my library interests, so I gave it a shot. Below you’ll find a slideshow with accompanying audio of my presentation, along with the Q/A session at the end. The whole thing is about 1.5 hours, but my presentation is just the first hour or so. I’d love to hear what you think, especially if you disagree with any of my points.
Keynote about the future of libraries, change management, and technology over the next 5 years given to Western Kentucky University Libraries, August 24, 2011 by Jason Griffey
I could do these dishes I could try
To do these dishes
I could decide to do these dishes
Time to decideor i could go to Australia
And carry a bowie knife
and wear my hair like Hepburn parted on the side
and learn card tricks and physics and buy
everyone drinks and take boxing and try
eating things only with chopsticks and finally
be like a person I think you might likeI could do these dishes
I could try to do these dishes.
I could decide to do these dishes
I should decide to do these dishes
Time to DECIDE….Fuck it
I’m gonna go to Australia— Australia, by Amanda Fucking Palmer
I am completely thrilled to be able to announce that in February of 2012, I’ll be doing one of the keynotes for the Victorian Association for Library Automation (now more formally called VALA – Libraries, Technology and the Future Inc.) 2012 Conference. While “Victorian Association for Library Automation” sounds a bit like a group of steampunk library cosplayers, it is actually an incredibly forward-thinking organization that helps foster and understand the use of technology in libraries and other information professions.
So come February 6-9, 2012, I’ll be in Melbourne, Australia for the VALA 2012 conference. It will be my first time visiting that particular continent, and I can’t wait to meet with all the great Australian, New Zealand, and other librarians that will be attending.
In the next 5 days, I’m speaking for two different state conferences that someone out there in bloglandia might be interested in.
First, I’m heading out to Minneapolis, MN for Academic & Research Library Day. I’ll be presenting a keynote tomorrow morning entitled The Everywhere Patron, where I’ll be talking about the expectations of patrons vis a vis personal electronics and services. I’m really excited about the talk…if you’re going to be at ARLD please say hello!
After that, I head over to Stamford, CT for the Connecticut Library Association conference. There, I’ll be doing a presentation on eBooks, both in terms of content, containers, and the challenges for libraries during the transition to digital texts.
If you are at either presentation, come introduce yourself and say hi!
My very brief slide deck from Computers in Libraries 2011 for my Cybertour on Tablets & Superphones. Just showing off some of the new and shiny tech, and talking a bit about why we should care as libraries.
I also created a Lanyrd page for my presentation before it happened, just to see if anyone was using it or would refer to it. If you see any mentions of the Cybertour around the ‘net, please throw a link in the comments or on the Lanyrd page.
In the middle of April, I’ll be doing a set of two webinars for ALA TechSource on how to manage gadgets inside the library. I’ve done a lot of talks about the theory of gadgets, and why I think they are important for libraries, but this is the first time I’ve tried to put together some real practical day-to-day tips for how to deal with these things. Here’s the description from the registration page:
From the iPad to eReaders, gadgets are everywhere. As these personal electronic devices become more and more ubiquitous in everyday life, it’s essential that libraries are fluent in the language of these devices. Whether your library wants to make use of these items in its services or purchase them to lend out to patrons, this interactive workshop will give you the foundation you for bringing your library into the future through gadgets.
Session 1: Non-e-Reader Gadgets
Wednesday, April 13, 2011, 2:30pm – 4:00pm EasternThis session will cover the following topics:
Personal Electronics are Personal
Operating Systems vs Devices
iOS & Android
Circulation & PolicySession 2: E-Readers and More
Wednesday, April 20, 2011, 2:30pm – 4:00pm EasternThis session will cover the following topics:
Types, differences, decisions
Amazon, Nook, Sony
Cataloging and Representation in Systems
Summary and Conclusions
The webinars aren’t free, unfortunately, but it’s a flat rate for both ($85), and if you want to gather your entire library together to watch, you can do so.
If you’re interested, please register…and if you have questions for me about what’s going to be covered, or you signed up but want to tell me exactly what you’d like me to cover, please leave a comment. I’d love to hear from you.
Here’s a little thing I put together for the Bay Area Library and Information Systems group that were kind enough to have me speak to a group of Children’s Librarians a week or so ago. Was a brilliant time, and I really appreciated getting to hear from a group of librarians that I just don’t talk to enough. I also had the pleasure of presenting with two very impressive people, Roger Sutton of Horn Book fame and Kristen McLean, Founder and CEO of Bookigee.
I’m really happy with the way this presentation went, especially since I used Eliza as the theme for it. 🙂 The downside of the way I do my presentations, however, is that the slides themselves are a tiny fraction of the actual content…most of it is me, and talking, and asking questions and such. But I liked the slides too much not to share.
I had the pleasure of presenting the keynote at the GLA Midwinter meeting this past Friday morning, where I gave a talk I entitled “Experiences become Expectations.” The thrust of the talk was one that I’ve written about before; that our patrons expectations of libraries are influenced by the experiences they have with technology in the world. I’m really pleased with the way it turned out, and will be continuing to explore this idea for the next few months in various ways. If you’re interested, take a look at my slides below for some idea about the sorts of things I talked about.