InfoCamp 2007: Wrapup

I don't know if I have a whole lot to say that I haven't already. You can see all the posts I made from InfoCamp Seattle 2007 by checking out my infocampseattle2007 tag.

The event was great. I met some great people like the keynote speaker, Nick Finck, the plenary speaker, Bob Boiko, some of the organizers, Aaron Louie and Kristen Shuyler, and some innovative librarians, such as Whitney Edwards and Justin Otto.

My second session on short cut access to information was cancelled since there were only about 20 people left by the end of the second day and there were about 4 sessions competing for them. But I did get to attend a session that showed an example where a lot of work got done without enough user research and led to a lot of unanswered questions about how to proceed.

At the end of the day we had "five minute madness" where we all shared a few comments about what we liked, what we didn't like, and what we learned. Nick Finck pointed out what a great ROI we got from this un-conference: the whole thing cost $20 for registration, we got two days worth of breakfast and lunch, tons of sessions, a great keynote and plenary, and we got to meet a lot of smart people from across the information ecosystem. And he's totally right. InfoCamp Seattle 2007 was supported in a big way. From the InfoCamp Seattle 2007 wiki:

• ASIS&T - The American Society for Information Science & Technology
• UW iSchool
• Information Architecture Institute
• Ascentium - interactive marketing and technology
• Blink Interactive - user experience consulting
• Digital Web Magazine - online magazine for web designers, web developers and information architects
• One Economy - a nonprofit organization that brings broadband to the homes of low-income people
• ZAAZ - web design services with technical and creative design
• Ginger Palace Restaurant - sponsor for lunch on Saturday

InfoCamp 2007 Live: Plenary by Bob Boiko

Day two at InfoCamp Seattle 2007 is underway. We began the day with a YouTube video titled "Information R/evolution". It's pretty slick:

We just got a very interactive (reminds me of my best lectures back at Cornell) plenary session delivered by Bob Boiko, instructor at University of Washington's Information School, author of the Content Management Bible and Laughing at the CIO, and president of Mediatorial Services.

Bob started with a quote from the cover of an issue of (the now defunct) Business 2.0 magazine: "Forget everything you know about business". He argues that we don't actually throw away old information. In fact, he argues, we "reinvent, refine, [...] and rearrange" information, building on what has come in the past.

The plenary consisted of trying to answer the question, who are we as information professionals? A couple of highlights from the answers he elicited:

• We make the process of accessing information easier
• We deliver information of high quality
• We elicit the right question from users to answer their questions
• We improve the experience of finding the question and then answering that question

Bob rounded all this out with the statement:

We hook up the knowers with the want-to-knowers.

However, he argues that this process needs to be personal and typically should involve lots of people. He argues that there are tons of idle brains around; "this is not a limited resource" he says. This sounds a lot like the current trends in social sites (a.k.a. web 2.0).

Then there's the notion of "cross pollinators" which Arron Louie brought up while introducing the key note. Regarding this, Bob asked three questions:

• Are we cross pollinators?
• Is that valuable?
• How do we do it?

Regarding the first two, we all agreed that the answer is yes. As for the third, that's what this BarCamp is all about!

In fact, Bob asked me to give a session about making access to information "easier" (in this case, faster). This was after I brazenly argued that I know how to speed up access to a specific type of information by an order of magnitude in all cases. I think I'll call the session "Shortcuts to Information: Increasing Time to Access by an Order of Magnitude". By the way, an order of magnitude may just be a rhetorical device in this case...

InfoCamp 2007 Live: My Session on Calendaring

For my participation at InfoCamp Seattle 2007 I presented some user interface issues with calendaring systems which is something I've been doing for a while now. I'm far too modest to go into too many details (maybe I'll write a blog post about it in more detail later, plus I'm dead tired after Thingamajiggr last night, and a full day of InfoCamp), but below is a quick overview of some of the problems I'm interested in investigating and addressing. I also looked at some different calendaring systems and programming languages with regards to how they address these issues.

• Storing Time
• Storing Repeating Entries
• Editing and Deleting Repeating Entries
• DST and Repeating Entries
• Entries on the DST boundaries
• Users in multiple timezones (especially when not all observe DST)
• Programming Language Support for Date Arithmetic

So that sums up day one of InfoCamp Seattle 2007. So far, so good. By the way, my Lenovo Thinkpad X60's battery performed admirably: after a full day of note taking, blogging, and presenting I'm at 47% with an estimated three hours and 21 minutes remaining. Not too shabby.

I should also point out that I'm using photos (most graciously thankfully for) from Kristen Shuyler, one of the organizers of InfoCamp. You can find more at Flickr tag infocampseattle2007.

InfoCamp 2007 Live: Gateways to Information and Information Technologies in Public Libraries

The first session I attended at InfoCamp 2007 was titled "Gateways to Information" presented by Justin Otto, a librarian at Eastern Washington University. He was primarily interested in investigating how to bring the often vast information resources at libraries to library patrons. In fact this is a topic of interest to many of this weekend's participants, many of whom are librarians.

The session was part feedback session for EWU's library website, and part general discussion on accessing large amounts of information from many different (and often walled-garden style) data stores.

Consider the many kinds of information available at a library:

• Library Catalogue
• Research Databases (such as JSTOR and ProQuest)
• Subject Guides
• Library Events
• Information About Local Organizations

It seems as if most of these libraries traditionally present the user with lists of links (dozens), sometimes categorized, but typically along single dimensions (such as subject areas). Often there are search facilities, but either the search is not a unified or federated one (meaning you must already know what data store you're searching under first) or the search facility provides poorly ranked results (perhaps due to poor result integration).

My fellow session participants and I came up with a few general principles which we find useful:

Unified Search

Make all information from the library (events, catalog, research databases, etc.) available from a single search interface, with high quality results integration. Make this search facility available on every single page.

Bread Crumbs

Someone brought up Steve Krug's infamous Don't Make Me Think with respect to his comments on creating a bread crumb trail to help users navigate a site.

Card Sort Analysis

This is one I hadn't heard of before, but someone suggested placing content areas on cards, handing the cards to users, and asking them to categorize the content into a hierarchy. Given the amount of content at a library and its complex relationships, this seems like an excellent technique to get a feel for how users might want to navigate subject areas.

I stayed for a second session on Information Technology in Rural Libraries given by Whitney Edwards, Elliot Edwards, and Katy Herrick of the Libraries of Stevens County in Eastern Washington. It sounds like they're addressing some interesting problems with some innovative techniques.

Stevens County has nine very rural libraries, each with different resources and its own collection. The population of Stevens county is technologically literate (seemly very much so!); however, the internet service opportunities in Stevens County seem to be limited. Most patrons of the library have only dial-up access.

Whitney and her colleagues provide several important services to their community. A very popular one is high-speed internet access (available wirelessly). The Stevens County librarians also maintain a wiki for the library that also performs as a local organization repository.

InfoCamp 2007 Live: Keynote by Nick Finck

I'm attending InfoCamp 2007 today and tomorrow and (trying to) live blog it. I just sat through the keynote given by Nick Finck from Blue Flavor. What a great name eh? I was competing with him to present a session, but he gave up and rescheduled his once we saw my name go up :)

Nick started by bringing us into the context of the information age as it transitions into the age of information overload. He cited two studies, the first in 2000 discovered that each user produces over one exabit of information (I'll check on this when I get a chance). The second study, in 2002, revised this number up by double, and discovered that the amount of information doubles every three years. From this data he draws the conclusion that we're drinking from a fire hose of information.

Nick also lead us through the notion of differing user experiences and contexts. Specifically he noticed the difference between the developing world, our culture, and societies embracing ubiquitous, mobile computing experiences. Did you know that in Japan even posters are tagged with barcodes which mobile phones can read, automatically adding the event to your calendar? Nick asked the question, how can we create user experiences, and provide access to this wealth of information to all these various users, through their various modalities and contexts?

Finally Nick asked, what's next? And admitted to having no crystal ball. However he did note that he sees more and more ubiquitous computing (an LG internet fridge in the UK). And he sees a place for this ubiquitous access to information. He concluded that this is a good industry to be in, noting the many attractive job postings for "information professionals" (not the MS definition). This is good news for you and me :)

I gotta run to the first session now, I'll update later (and try to cite those two studies on information production rates and provide more concrete details)