I am super honored and excited about a number of things coming up in the next few weeks. The first is Library ONCON, a free virtual conference using Google Hangouts. I will be leading the conversation on community engagement and simply cannot wait to hangout with everyone who registered! A big THANK YOU to Gwyn and Barbara for planning. They're both totally inspiring and I'm so pumped they invited me to participate in this first year of ONCON.

Also over the next couple days I will be presenting at On the Front Lines at the University of Illinois in Springfield. I always enjoy this conference immensely and more importantly, learn tons from my peers. If you're going to be there, please find me and say hello! I will be presenting The Modern Book Discussion and An Indie State of Mind.

Dominican University's GSLIS program, my alma mater, asked me to be a part of their alumni success program and I couldn't be happier to participate. Library programs can very occasionally get a lot of flack for a variety of reasons, however, I had an amazing graduate school experience. You can learn more about it here: http://bit.ly/1tNv3Qa

And finally, after two years of extremely hard work, the book that I have been working on with my partner in crime, Dr. Anthony Molaro, will be released in the spring of 2015.

This book has been a work for love for many people and I simply cannot wait to get my hands on a copy! You can pre-order a copy right now: http://www.alastore.ala.org/detail.aspx?ID=11142. It has so many amazing ideas, a foreword by R. David Lankes, and of course, the blood, sweat, and tears of yours truly. 

Check it out! Buy a copy! Give them as gifts! Or check out a copy from your library. :)

I recently had the pleasure of doing my final two presentations for 2013. The first was New Technologies: Creating the Ultimate Library Experience. I co-presented this mini-version of The Beast with Toby Greenwalt and Richard Kong of the Skokie Public Library. It was such a pleasure to speak to the Laconi Circulation crowd!

The second was An Indie State of Mind, a presentation on merchandising, displays, and what librarians can learn from independent booksellers. I created this new presentation for the Adult Services staff at Downers Grove Public Library and we had such a blast! About part-way through, I passed out index cards and sharpies so everyone could make their own shelftalkers. It was so much fun!!

And with those two done, I am all done with presentations for 2013. It was a very (very!) busy year - 14 presentations in all. I learned so much from every single one of them. You can check them all out, here: http://bit.ly/186I5Pb

GUYS!! I am super excited to announce the Adult Reading Round Table's first reader's advisory unconference. Full disclosure: I am planning the program, along with Debra Wischmeyer of Downers Grove Public Library. I will also be the MC. So yeah...you will see a lot of me if you attend. So you should TOTALLY come!

Jason Smith of The Book Table will be our keynote speaker and the rest of the afternoon will be dedicate to brainstorm and discussing YOUR topics of interest! Seriously, it will be super fun. You should totally register. You can do so, here: https://arrtunconference.eventbrite.com/

I hope to see you there!

When I first found out I would be doing a three hour presentation for the Small Public Library Management Institute (SPLMI) on technology in libraries with Richard Kong and Toby Greenwalt, I thought two things. One: this is going to be awesome. Great friends. Great topic. We are going to rock this. And two: THREE HOURS?! OMG THAT IS SO LONG! HOW AM I GOING TO TALK THAT LONG?

And yes, I do think in all caps sometimes.

Yet as we prepared and started building our presentation, which we now lovingly refer to as The Beast, we all realized that the topic is so vast and three hours is probably going to go by in the blink of an eye. 

This topic is no longer just a talk about website management. This encompasses soooooooo much more these days - from social networks and eBooks to digital media labs and makerspaces, we had a lot of ground to cover. So on Wednesday, our time went quickly and we decided to blog on the topics that we couldn't cover in the presentation.

If you follow along with the slides, I will be writing about building a tech friendly organization, which begins on slide #158.

• How are you evaluating your use of technology in your library? (slide 159) 

PLA created the Edge Initiative to help libraries with this problem. Currently in beta, this program will be launched by the end of the year - with 25 libraries in Illinois participating. Once you've gone through this self-assessment, you can identify strengths, opportunities for growth - and concrete metrics for sharing with other members of the community. 

• Learn by doing (slide 161)

When you give staff the time and permission to play and teach themselves new technology, it builds enthusiasm for new projects. On slide #162, the Virtual Services Librarian, Cathleen Doyle, and I are playing around with Skype and podcasting software. After some playtime, we created the very first podcast for our library - an interview with the author Libby Fischer Hellman. You can also embed tech activities into each day. At Skokie Public Library, they do something called TechMunchies, where they use staff meeting time to teach other tech related lessons they have learned.

Experiential models, such as Learning 2.0, show that people learn best when given the opportunity to learn things on their own terms. Later this year, we will see a resurgence of this with Michael Stephens'  MOOC project.

• Learn from one another (slide 164)

If you check out the picture on slide #165, you can see an example of one librarian teaching another librarian at the ILA Video Shootout. Each year at the annual Illinois Library Association conference, librarians who are passionate about the value of digital video skills help other librarians shoot, edit, and then publish their own videos. It is fun for everyone involved and a wonderful example of how we can teach each other.

In a similar way, Northbrook Public Library implemented a Summer of Learning in 2012. Librarians and staff members who were passionate about certain types of technology taught classes on their favorite topics, such as Foursquare or Pinterest. By making it an event and finding people who are already truly excited about their topics, we were able to drive enthusiasm for learning about these technologies.

• Make tech a part of your workflow (slide 166)

When you start using technology to help with everyday duties, your fluency and comfort level rises. Skokie Public Library uses a wiki to assist with their BookMatch readers' advisory service. This helps librarians keep track of previously suggested book titles and increases efficiency for future advisory services.

On slide #168, you can see Toby, Richard, and I collaborating on this presentation. As we continually failed to find a time when all three of our schedules would allow us to meet in person, we decided to meet online instead. Using Google Drive, we were able to meet remotely, often between the hours of 9pm and midnight - the only time all three of us were available - and worked collaboratively to build our presentation.

• Support people's passions (slide 169)

Northbrook Public Library's social media committee is a strong example of embracing people's passions and then empowering people to act on those passions. The people running our Pinterest page are active, engaged Pinterest users, which makes our page much more successful than if we tried to push this responsibility on someone who isn't interested in the social network. We use this philosophy for all of our social networks.

• Support the creative and the functional alike (slide 171)

Skokie Public Library's Video Bootcamp is a great example of this. It gives people opportunities to tell the library's story - through its patrons, through its staff. It's the human factor that really allows this to come through.

• Never stop learning (slide 171)

This is the simplest and most crucial slide of the presentation. It explains itself. Never stop learning. Never. The world of technology is a big, beautiful place. Jump in. Head first. We believe in you.

Thank you so much to everyone at SPLMI, the Illinois State Library, and of course, to the library directors in the audience. It was truly a pleasure.

Check out both Richard's and Toby's posts for more on this presentation.

• Three Hours is Really Not A Lot of Time by Richard Kong
• Deleted Scenes by Toby Greenwalt