I know how dangerous that laser is, and I still want one.
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Bibliotech Podcast
I was lucky enough to be the guest on the Dquarium Bibliotech podcast earlier this week, and had a great time talking to Kayhan, Erin, and Doug. We talked about library technology, the Librarybox project, ebooks, and more. Listen in, and if you have any questions feel free to drop them in the comments.
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Gadgets in the Library Workshop
On two days in May I will be doing a workshop for ALA Techsource called Gadgets in the Library:Â A Practical Guide to Personal Electronics for Librarians. If you or your library is interested in managing tablets, ereaders, or other gadgets for staff or patron use, and if you’re interested in hearing about where I think gadgets in libraries are going in the next 2-3 years, spend 3 hours with me. I’ll help you get comfortable with gadgets and try to give you options for how to deal with them.
When: May 10th and 24th from 2:30pm until 4pm Eastern time
Where: Online! Listen from your desk?
Who: You! Or if you’ve got a handful of people that are interested, get a discount with the group rate.
Why: Because you want help with managing personal electronics in the library
How: Register here.
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Choc Creator Version 1
Preorder your very own Chocolate 3D printer! That is, a printer that uses chocolate as the print substance, NOT a printer made from chocolate.
Just so we’re clear.
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Festo SmartInversion
Very interesting new model for flight, like nothing I’ve ever seen.
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Eliza at Easter
Sony is going to be releasing heads-up display glasses to theaters for accessibility issues (read as: hearing and visual overlays of subtitles).
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Commoditizing our complements
In business and economics, there is a concept that is often expressed with the phrase “Commoditize your complement”. A complementary product is has some form of necessary connection to the product in question…the usual example is automobiles and gasoline. As Joel Spolsky puts it:
A complement is a product that you usually buy together with another product. Gas and cars are complements. Computer hardware is a classic complement of computer operating systems. And babysitters are a complement of dinner at fine restaurants. In a small town, when the local five star restaurant has a two-for-one Valentine’s day special, the local babysitters double their rates. (Actually, the nine-year-olds get roped into early service.)
All else being equal, demand for a product increases when the prices of its complements decrease.
Thus the concept of commoditizing (making available uniformly and interchangably) your complement. If you can decrease the cost of your complement, you by necessity increase the cost of your product. Microsoft learned this very early, and went on to great success, making hardware (the complement to it’s product, software) a commodity product…it didn’t matter if you bought from Dell, or Gateway, or Asus, or IBM, or Lenovo, or…the list goes and on. Those companies struggled to make money in a market driven to complete interchangability, while Microsoft made billions on software. A reversal of this strategy, as Marco Arment has pointed out, is Apple is attempting to commoditize software via its iOS and Mac App Stores, because its product (where they make their profit) is the hardware.
My questions to the library world: What is our product? What should we be commoditizing in order to make our product more valuable? The concept isn’t just about money, it’s about market values, even when the market in question isn’t measured in dollars but in reputation, importance, and community value. What should we be pushing to commodity so that our business becomes more valuable to our communities?
I have my theories, but want to hear yours.
This is…interesting.
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Guest on Bibliotech
On Monday, April 23rd, I’ll be the guest on the BiblioTech Podcast, talking about technology, gadgets, LibraryBox, and whatever else the gang decides to ask. As soon as it’s done, I’ll post the link to the audio here.