Liz Azyan

So, I know its been a while since we’ve left the tranquil settings of Colchester and resumed back to our normal possibly mundane but interesting lives. But it seems the thoughts and ideas from #iwmw2009 hasn’t quite left our minds. There was lots being said and also lots to be done. So let’s have a recap of the introduction and keynote speech. Hopefully this will inspire and renew our energies for current and future projects. Hope you’ll find this useful!

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Introductory session

The first thing you noticed as soon as you walk into the lecture hall where the introductory talks were being held is the Twitterwall on the screen. This is the second event I’ve attended that had this and I find it really livens up the mood and certainly grabs people’s attention. Just have a look at the tweets…

catmachine:  http://twitpic.com/bx04p – Tweets going up on this big screen… so if I post a photo of it, instant recursion.

marcus67:  Just so I can get on the screen again!

boagworld:  They have a twitterwall at #iwmw2009. That is asking for trouble! One could write very rude messages. http://twitpic.com/bx0dh

gmcaleese:  enjoying the twitter wall

I found it quite funny and everyone seemed to have a bit of fun with it which was quite expected, if you ask me Though if there was one thing I would say is, I wished the background to the text wasn’t black as it was hard to see the coloured text on that background. Possibly next time use white or a light colour so it could be easier on the eyes??? (Just a suggestion!)

Keith Brooke’s introductory slides and speech

If you flick through the slides, you’ll see all the wonderful descriptions and pictures of University of Essex and also the web team who are involved in IWMW2009. There are some hilarious pictures up there, so be sure to check it out! You won’t regret it !

Keynote Speech – Derek Law (Strathclyde Uni) “Headlights on Dark Roads” this is a title of a song by Snow Patrol btw…

Derek Law – “Headlight on Dark Roads” IWMW2009 from Liz Azyan on Vimeo.

I have to say I’m really impressed the way the slides were being made immediately before and during the actual speech. This is a very rare occasion at events like this, so a big “Well done” to the organizers for being on top of things. Its the little things that really matter sometimes and I was pleasantly pleased. Thank you UKOLN!

Derek starts off by asking by saying “Everyone thinks it is a good thing to have a library, but no one is very clear why” (via @iwmwlive).  This is a very fair point just looking by the way people depend on the internet to find out mostly about anything.  Derek also stresses that “we have reached a fundamental tipping point in HEI (via @boagworld)”. And this seems to be down to the failure of of libraries or librarians causing complancey, lack of underpinning philosophy and the rise of managerial technocrat (via @jaducms).

The failure to engage with technology…

There is definitely a sense of failure to understand what do we actually do with technology once we have it i.e. failure to engage with e-resources (via @jaducms). Its almost like having an iPhone or any smart phone for that matter and only using it for phone calls and text. You have it because its nice and shiny and you were told it could do all those fancy technical dancing features .. but in the end you end up using it like any old phone anyways.  It seems that we are more obsessed with licenses and digitizing oddities (via @jaducms).

There was an interesting bit in Derek’s presentation that made me sit up in my seat which was…

jamesclay:  “Currently, 17.8% of all Twitter traffic in the United Kingdom consists of status updates from @stephenfry ”

jamesclay:  “A further 11% is his 680,176 followers replying ‘ @stephenfry LOL!’ & ‘ @stephenfry EXACTLY the same thing happened to me’”

I definitely thought that was hilarious because I follow @stephenfry myself and he definitely tweets his pants off! LOL

On a more serious note, Derek mentioned that there is a possibility of shifting college life to google and some uni’s are already using google mail too! (via @jaducms) I wish my uni would use google mail…:-s So there’s definitely a possibility for this to happen as its really not that big of a leap… or is it?

Images replacing words….

So according to Derek, “we are moving to image-based cultural reference points, rather than word-based” (via @iwmwlive). I couldn’t agree more, I mean I even find myself moving another step forward and saying that I think we are moving to video-based cultural reference points as I use YouTube as my primary search engine just as much as I use google. I mean lets look at some of the facts pointed out from the twitterstream

iwmwlive:  We are moving away from authority to consensus: 57% of teenagers create content for the Internet

pierotintori:  #iwmw2009 “73% of students use the internet more than the library”

Why write it when you can record it???

As an academic myself who finds writing papers quite fiddly and would rather blog, I definitely find Law’s opinion on a new way of documenting research methodologies to be really appealing!

iwmwlive:  why write a research methodology when you can just video the experiment and upload it?

pierotintori:  #iwmw2009 why write a science paper, create a video and publish it http://www.jove.com/

Conclusion….So what is the Digital Overlap Strategy?

This was actually something I felt I have to share.. its certainly something you could take away and implement straight away at your institutions! The way you do it is… BY KEEPING YOUR FINGERS CROSS!

iwmwlive:  most universities are employing a digital overlap strategy to deal with the problems they are facing.

marydeeo:  Law: “digital overlap strategy” – cross your fingers and hope for the best

webpackets:   – liking the digital overlap strategy – am going to use that one

kammer:  Excellent anecdote from Derek Law ultimately defining ‘digital overlap strategy’ (ie keep your fingers crossed). All too familiar.

Links for this session worth checking out!

1. Oxford library website (via @j4)
2. OpenWetWare – marydeeo: Law: social networking moving into real research apps, OpenWetware allows sharing among scientists
3. Journal of Visualized Experiments (Jove) – Love it!
4. Open Research Notebooks
5. Catch my earlier review of IWMW2009 – The good, the bad and the ugly

Hope you’ve found this useful!

Liz xx