Day 2: Lust and love in the library

Day 2 arrived and the author was much more at ease with the early wake-up, getting to Hatfield trainstation without missing the turn-off, and finding a good seat on the train. Once in Sandton, I saw Yvonne Halland (an ex-manager at the CSIR) right in front of my and we ended up walking to the conference venue together.

Elmi had reserved a part of the second row of the venue for the social reporters; a very convenient place as most of us were also interested in taking photographs of the speakers in action. The keynote speaker of the morning was Stephen Abram....during his talk I had twitter duty and am once again proud to state that we managed to end up trending with #saoim!

After teabreak I thoroughly enjoyed the talk by Pavlinka Kovatcheva discussing the embedded librarian or as her subtitle blatantly stated : how to get in bed with your users. I had first heard Pavlinka speak as Dr Google at the 2010 SAOIM meeting and apart of having me in stitches with her spontaneous comments, quirps and remarks, I was mesmerized by her lively presenting style, her obvious enthusiasm for the job as well as the extra mile she is walking in her quest to be a topnotch information specialist.

Another interesting talk later in the day was by Liezl Ball titled "If love is in the air....will students put more effort in information seeking?". She discussed challenging second year students to search online for articles about love, with the intention of seeing whether the topic of love as well as the reward of teddy-bear (but no rewards/credit towards exam results) would have an influence on the participation and effort of students involved.

The remainder of the day, although initially hampered by iffy web-connectivity and issues relating to bad acoustics, included many interesting talks and eye-opening information sharing. All in all busy day 2 of the conference and a glimpse into the trending online issues faced by the library profession.

                                     

On the social reporting side I had participated in a twitter feed during the keynote talk, written a blogpost on Michael Stephens' workshop, updated my own blog, played the role of photographer, attended a social reporter meeting, and attended all the presentations. It was becoming clear to me that I might have bitten off more than I was able to chew.....blogging, taking photos, tweeting profusely, absorbing presentation content, travelling to and from Sandton from Pretoria, while still trying to follow the Roland Garros tennis action......I was not quite delivering what I had initially promised.....

  

Conference day 1: photo album

Conference day 1: Baptism by twitter-fire!

Early 4.30 am wake-up.....wanted to get to Hatfield train station just after 6 am to be in Sandton no later than 7 am. While driving to the station, I was surprised to see so many cars on the road at that hour! I am now even more grateful to be living 5 km from work and only having to get up at 6.30 am.

Arrived at the station, loaded the Gautrain card, and got my seat of choice. It was a chilly, quiet and dark winters morning, everyone dressed in coats, scarves and boots, dead-serious and reserved, and combining this with the fog visible outside and the quiet ultra-modern train.....I had a back-on-a-train-in-Europe-in-December feeling.....

(observation: I had eight people in my line of sight on the train; six of them were on their phones: texting, listening to music, or webbrowsing during the whole duration of the trip....mobile connectivity and information sharing is here to stay!)

After disembarking from the train, I bumped into Christelle Steyn from UP, a fellow social reporter at the conference. A welcome bump, as I had never been to the Sandton station or the Sandton Conference Centre before and she was able to lead the way. Registration at the venue was followed by taking our places at a table in the middle of the workshop venue reserved for the social team. Our conference bags were bright and cheerful, the social reporter scarves a special Pavlinka-style red, and the wifi connection up and running and reliable.

My first task of the day was to report via twitter during Michael Stephens' presentation Taming technolust: technology planning in a hyperlinked world. Tweeting during the talk was fun and presented no problems.....this is actually quite an understatement as our #saoim tweeting resulted in our hashtag ending up trending at position number 4 for a while!

                           WAY TO GO SAOIM TWEETERS!!!

From a librarian/delegate's point of view the workshop was a great success; touching on topical issues such as identifying and implementing new technology trends, and ways in which new technologies can be used to better serve users and attract them to the library and its services. Interesting terms such as technodivorce and technoshame were also explained and enjoyed.....we've all had experiences of those feelings and emotions at one point in the workplace!

Many photographs of the speakers as well as delegates were also taken by the social reporters before, during and after the workshop. The social reporters posing proudly with their red scarves were also photographed!

Lunch was followed by Karen Blakeman's workshop titled Personalisation of search: take back control. Karen highlighted a variety of search engines, explained the idiosyncrasies of various search engines, exposed us to ways enabling better search results and techniques to bypass search-engine pitfalls. I found the talk interesting indeed; while listening to her talk I was also spending some time working on this blog posting.

One day to go: packing and panicking

Time sure has flown and with the meeting starting tomorrow, it is time to make a final decision on the gadgets and kit to be packed. Have almost everything laid out on the bed and I am faced with the following sight:

Items not visible here but which need to be packed as well include a tripod, an extension-cord, plus the usual assortment of items women carry around in their handbags. Have decided to pack everything into a laptop backpack, with the exception of the big camera and lens; a separate holster bag will take care of that.

All that needs to be done now, is:

• charge the laptop, cameras and cellphone
• pack extra batteries, memory cards and memory sticks
• clean the camera lenses
• make sure to pack chargers in the morning after charging

Must admit that I have never carried this much kit around on me for a daytrip! Have travelled with all this kit, all over South Africa and abroad, but then it would be for a longer period, staying over, leaving my laptop and chargers in the room....with this event I have to carry everything from my car to the Gautrain, travel on the train, walk to the conference venue, use all the gadgets during the day at the conference, then do the reverse back to my car at the end of the day....four days running.

But I am pretty excited......this will be my first semi-similar attempt at what I believe could easily have been a career I would have enjoyed and excelled in: writing interesting pieces, combining this with photography, seeing new people, hearing novel viewpoints, visiting strange places.....yes, for the next four days I will lead the exciting life of the adventurous field reporter! And if things get a bit rough, controversy rears its head, or some Sandton dangers arise, well, what else to do than pursue some spiritual guidance by pondering:

                                         WHAT WOULD TINTIN DO?

Group video interview: reality check!

A different type of interview that had to be attempted before the actual conference was the multi-person interview. Three fellow CSIR colleagues, one a conference delegate and two others attending as well as serving on the SAOUG committee, were willing to assist me with this venture. This impromptu interview, although quite informative in the way that it reflects the different expectations and topics of interest even to librarians/information specialists working in the same company, revealed a few technical problem areas that I hope to improve upon come conference time: 

• Angle of camera: the camera was placed too low and should have been headheight instead. This error resulted in the shoes and legs being the closest visible part of the people being interviewed. 
• Field of view: in my opinion, too much of the subjects interviewed can be seen. With face plus upper torso being the preferred displayed sections, zooming or even moving the camera closer to the subjects would have cut out the lower half of the subjects.
• Sound quality could have been better. Not only was there background noise coming from the adjacent kitchen area, but the camera should be placed closer to the subjects. This observation will probably prove to be an invaluable item of knowledge when conducting an interview during breaks at the conference: there WILL be background noise: isolate your subject or move closer to him. In stark contrast to this, the interviewer was too close to the camera. Comfortable listening to the video clip would then entail constantly adjusting the volume setting to a satisfactory level.
• Another aspect, not necessarily an error, was the final length of the video clip. Although only two questions were asked, using three subjects meant that the clip ended up being longer than 3 minutes. I now know that one can to estimate the expected length of a typical interview to be approximately 30 seconds per response per subject.  

In retrospect I would say that I definitely prefer conducting a one-on-one interview. Interviews are shorter, and retakes would take less time. Doing a one-person interview would also mean that less time of the subject is being used. Furthermore: I find it easier to approach a single person than trying to get a group together. On the technical side of things it is easier to frame the shot, gauge the best distance for volume, as well as correct angle, when conducting an interview with a single subject only.

5 days to go: webalbums and other issues

I met up with Elmi Bester at the Knowledge Commons yesterday; a decision regarding the choice of either Picasa or Flickr as web album for the SAOUG conference blog (using wordpress) and my own blog (using blogger) had to be made. It had to be one or the other as duplication would be time-consuming as well as confusing. As I had already started using Picasa we tested the use of Picasa with a wordpress blog, specifically trying to embed a Picasa webalbum into the SAOUG blog.

We were happy to discover via this site that a Picasa webalbum can indeed be embedded in a wordpress blog. Picasa's free account also allows for 1Gig storage while Flick allows 300MB per month. Picasa turns out to be the better option for use with this conference photos while Flickr seems more suitable for year round use, incorporating other SAOUG events as well. It was also decided to inform all conference photographers that photos should not exceed 1MB in size.

During this meeting we also decided on the process of uploading videos to youtube and informing other bloggers about the video, and on using just a select few photos on the SAOUG conference blog while using more photos on my personal blog.

Issues that still need finalizing include the exact phrasing of two questions to be asked by fieldreporters when interviewing delegates, plus the collection of social reporters' contact details. It was also emphasised that with regards to the SAOUG conference blog a great deal of content will be added during the week after the conference had ended.

5 days to go : Interviewing practice

To further hone my interviewing skills I had decided on interviewing a few CSIR employees who would either be presenters or delegates at the conference next week. This was easier said than done: a few of the people asked refused to be interviewed, and then one of my delegate interviewees had to attend to a sudden medical emergency on the day of our scheduled interview!

I am quite pleased with the interview done with Natalie Bowers, the youngest presenter at the conference next week. Her paper/presentation deals with the Virtual Research Environment and we were both happy with our third take: I was planning on following Natalie's road to the conference, also on attending her dry run presentation at the CSIR, but will be unable to attend due to conference attendance. I was also interested in interviewing her after the conference presentation; hoping this will still realize as it would be interesting showing a young presenter's conference preparation, actual conference presentation as well as immediate on-the-spot interview after her talk.

The camera was not handheld during the interview, but balanced on a stack of books. A definite improvement in the stability of the picture when compared to the video interview on training day can be noticed. The shakes at the end of the interview will be eliminated by using a tripod, as is planned for the longer conference interviews.