Digital December: The Wrap Up

Photo Credit: Ellen Forsyth (@ellenforsyth)

What a thought provoking day we had today at the State Library for Digital December, a seminar featuring Michael Lascarides (@mlascarides), John Allsopp (@johnallsopp) and Tim Sherratt (@wragge).

Here are my Top Five Take Aways from today.

1. Local content is where libraries have pulling power.
   Your users can't get this stuff anywhere else and it's interesting.
2. The best way to expose your collection is one item at a time.
   A digital narrative can be a powerful discovery interface. Telling a story with passion using one item from your collection is a great way to encourage people to explore more deeply.
3. Obliterate the line between physical & digital.
   Which items in your collection wanted to be something else all along?
4. Make sure you're not getting in the way of the passion of you users.
   The catalogue is a great place to have a conversation about books. Your data is a great source of material for developers. Don't put policies and protocols in place that discourage users from collaborating with you and each other.
5. Data is fuel for the imagination.
   Don't worry about the format. Release your data because you can't possibly imagine what others will do with it!  Folk will work with it however you provide it.

And just as a bonus, here's my thoughts from discussions about how to encourage the use of all this data we're trying to open up.

• Think about what data you have that might be of interest.
• Arrange for volunteers & community programs to help libraries turn content and collections into data.
• Annual library hack day (perhaps a collaborative project across libraries). Ideas are as important as building apps.
• Seed developer interest in your data with a proof of concept or even better, finished projects (maybe you have to pay for this) . Show them you value this stuff!

If you went along I'd love to hear what you got out of the day in the comments...

Mo Disgusting - Mr Twit for Moreads

OK, so what about something for you gents to read to your children during Movember?  What better way to spend some time with them than over a story.

The Twits by Roald Dahl is a perennial favourite in our house. There's plenty of books I've read to my kids over & over again, most of which I would gladly never pick up again. But the Twits is one of the few books I'm happy to keep re-reading to them.


Added to that, it has arguably the finest description of facial hair ever...

We can also, if we are careful, eat our meals without spreading food all over our faces. But not so the hairy man. Watch carefully next time you see a hairy man eating his lunch and you will notice that even if he opens his mouth very wide, it is impossible for him to get a spoonful of beef-stew or ice-cream and chocolate sauce into it without leaving some of it on the hairs.

Mr Twit didn’t even bother to open his mouth wide when he ate. As a result (and because he never washed) there were always hundreds of bits of old breakfasts and lunches and suppers sticking to the hairs around his face. They weren’t big bits, mind you, because he used to wipe those off with the back of his hand or on his sleeve while he was eating. But if you looked closely (not that you’d ever want to) you would see tiny little specks of dried-up scrambled eggs stuck to the hairs, and spinach and tomato ketchup and fish fingers and minced chicken livers and all the other disgusting things Mr Twit liked to eat.

If you looked closer still (hold your noses, ladies and gentlemen), if you peered deep into the moustachy bristles sticking out over his upper lip, you would probably see much larger objects that had escaped the wipe of his hand, things that had been there for months and months, like a piece of maggoty green cheese or a mouldy old cornflake or even the slimy tail of a tinned sardine. Because of all this, Mr Twit never went really hungry. By sticking out his tongue and curling it sideways to explore the hairy jungle around his mouth, he was always able to find a tasty morsel here and there to nibble on.
Roald Dahl, The Twits.

The Twits is one of Dahl's shorter stories, recounting the disgusting Mr Twit, his old hag of a wife, Mrs Twit and the awful (but cleverly funny) things they do to each other, the local birds and children and poor Mugglewump the Monkey and his family.  Fear not though, for in the end Mr & Mrs Twit reap what they sow in a gloriously ironic demise.

NSW.net eResources Seminar 2011

Yesterday I spoke at the above named conference. It was a good day with some interesting reports about how public libraries are dealing with the challenges of everything electronic - eBooks, databases, discovery layers and federated search tools.

My presentation was titled, 'Creating Great Content for Library Websites'. It dealt with the fact that most content on library sites is created and maintained by librarians who don't have any professional experience in the web design or development, and that often it shows.

A show of hands in the room confirmed my suspicion - while about 80% of people had responsibility for creating and maintaining web content, not a single person was dedicated solely to web duties. All had other duties and no one had any formal web design or development qualifications.

Despite these stats it was pointed out a number of times by different speakers the importance of having a professional web presence when it comes to increasing usage of our resources.

As I pointed out in my presentation, fortunately it's not that hard to create good content if you focus on what your audience wants and needs from your slides.  Anyway, here are my slides.

Creating Great Content for Library Websites

View more presentations from Martin Boyce

Local Government Web Network 2011 Conference Wrap

This year's LGWN conference was a thought provoking couple of days with some very interesting speakers and themes.  I throughly enjoyed it and want to start by extending a warm thank you to Reem Abdelaty (@reemski) and James Purser and (@purserj) for all their work organising the conference.  The audio from most of the speakers are now available on the LG Web Network site and many of the presentations have also been made available as well.

As always a large amount of ground was covered but for me a couple of key themes emerged.

Crisis Response

This was a big one this year with talks from Jason Dawson (@WebTaniwha) about the information response to the earthquakes in Christchurch and Anthony Baxter (@AnthonyBaxter) from Google's Crisis Response team.

Jason related his experiences in the aftermath of the disaster in Christchurch as the Public Information Manager.  The challenges their team faced with so much damaged infrastructure, including the official Christchurch City website were enormous but the way they managed was inspiring.  His talk served as a warning for us all to give more time and thought to preparing for the worst and also reminded us of the value of social media in such situations.

Anthony Baxter introduced us (or me at least) to Google's Crisis Response Project, which I had no idea existed.  Google swings into action in the immediate aftermath of disasters to ensure that critical information remains accessible.  I hadn't thought about it but not many local governments (or, I suspect, state or federal governments for that matter) have the infrastructure to deal with the massive amount of web traffic generated as a result of these crises. Anthony showed examples from the Victorian Bushfires (locating fires on a map, etc) and the Japan Earthquake and tsunami (which roads are open and the amazing crowd sourced people finder). Understandably, the first thing that happens when everyone goes online for information is that the official sites crash under the load.  He outlined how Google goes about collecting and re-publishing critical information as they have no trouble handling the server load.

Openness and Accessibility

Anthony Baxter ended his presentation with a plea to us to make our data available in open formats with re-use licenses, ie. Open Data.  They can strip data from PDFs if necessary but from the sound of it, if he has to do that for your data in a crisis situation, Anthony will be ready to track you down and kill you!  However, if we work on making our data open, accessible and licensed now then reacting to a crisis becomes exponentially easier.

On a related theme, a presentation by Gian Wilde (@accessibilityoz) on the accessibility problems associated with PDFs provided another reason (if we needed one) to move away from closed formats toward open ones.  A quick look around any local government website will illuminate our ridiculous reliance on PDFs as a way to publish information.  Imagine the panic if a local government was successfully sued for a breach of discrimination legislation due to their use of PDFs!

What makes it worse for me is that I believe it comes down to our own inertia and laziness - being stuck in the 'way we have always done it'.   How many publications are prepared by local government with the expresses intention of creating a PDF to upload to the website?  When we realised we could outsource the printing costs of our publications to our community we jumped right on board.  But when will we realise that if it's not going to be printed then it doesn't need to be a publication.  Create that information in a format suited to the medium in the first place - is that too much to ask?

It might be timely to reaffirm the Three Laws of Open Government Data:

• If it can’t be spidered or indexed, it doesn’t exist
• If it isn’t available in open and machine readable format, it can’t engage
• If a legal framework doesn’t allow it to be repurposed, it doesn’t empower

Picking up on the last point above, Professor Anne Fitzgerald spoke about how 'open content licences - specifically, Creative Commons (CC) licences - can be used by governments as a simple and effective mechanism to support the reuse of their copyright-protected Public Sector Information'.  As is often the case with conferences, this was one presentation that I didn't actually get to sit in on as it was on at the same time as another talk I wanted to hear.

Finally on the theme of openness, Matt Crozier (@MattCrozier) from Bang the Table gave us the benefit of his experience with online consultation and how, if done well, it can be an effective tool for getting your local community engaged.  I certainly felt the vibe in the room pick up as he spoke about how online engagement can help decision makers put the sqeaky wheel minority in perspective. With many traditional forms of consultation often responses are received only from a relatively small number of people in the community.  An easy way to respond online can elicit feedback from people who may not otherwise be bothered.

Mistakes are Inevitable

One thing that Matt's presentation did reveal is that in any new area you learn by taking risks and trying new things. While not strictly from mistakes, it was clear that many the lessons he has learned about running an effective online engagement program came from trial and error. In the online world it's simply not practical to expect to do anything perfectly first time. The benefits of jumping in a trying new things far outweigh the risks associated with making a mistake.

A couple of the other speakers indicated that they had made mistakes in the way they used the web or the things they said.  Indeed it was one of the major themes of my own talk.  The web is not like an annual report that you prepare over weeks and get to proof read over and over and having all your tweets approved just doesn't make sense.  The web is more akin to a telephone call these days that it is to a printed document.  If you don't occasionally make a mistake you're probably not communicating anything of much relevance.  But mistakes aren't the end of the world.  If you are prepared to accept them, correct them and move on you'll be OK.


There were a bunch of speakers I haven't mentioned above that gave us all food for thought.

I personally really enjoyed Eric Dinkin's (@ask6d) discussion of his trial of Online Chat for live customer service and Anita Hulme championing that Toyota Camry commas channel - email newsletters. And who could forget Jason Richardson (@showcasejase) imploring us to stand up for our health and longevity!


If I had to highlight a couple of personal take-aways from the conference they would be as follows:

Consider your backup strategy -  how would you cope if you lost everything?  In a situation like Christchurch, keeping your backups in a different building in the same city is not much help!  This isn't just related to earthquakes though, think about widespread flogging, major bushfires, even an interruption to the electricity supply (are both buildings on the same grid?). It's very easy to lose both your primary and backup data in the same incident.  Consider partnering with another city in a different part of the country to host each other's data.

Secondly, Twitter and Facebook have proved robust, redundant and effective communication channels in disaster situations.  Between the physical damage and the traffic that it was experiencing in the aftermath, as people were trying to contact friends and relatives, the fixed line network was unreliable at best.  The mobile network, on the other hand, was remarkably robust.  The widespread adoption of Twitter and Facebook and their availability on the proliferation of smartphones meant that these channels were an effective means of communication and became pseudo official channels.  The lesson to be learned here is that you don't want to leave it until there is a disaster to learn about how best to use social media.  If you're not already at least experimenting with Twitter, get in and try it out. It's not that difficult and it can be life saving in a disaster.

And that brings me to the closing keynote by Stilgherrian (@stilgherrian). His entertaining talk on the paranoia of organisations and how sticking a toe in the water with twitter can be the way out made it seem so easy and obvious as a tool that all local governments should be using. If only all our decision-makers were forced to listen to him speak we might all be in a better place!

Local Government Web Network Conference Presentation

I recently spoke at the recent Local Government Web Network Conference about Sutherland Shire Council's Web Project.  The project covered everything including selecting a CMS (via tender) & creating our Intranet, but focused mostly on the redevelopment of the website.

The Prezi is available online and thanks to the good people at LGWN you can also relive the full audio experience.

download mp3

Sutherland Shire Council Web Project: a case study on Prezi

If you would like any more detail about any aspect of the project, as the presentation really just skimmed the surface, then I would encourage you to contact Adele Ezzy, Manager Online and Business Development at Sutherland Shire Council (aezzy@ssc.nsw.gov.au) or let me know and I can put you in contact.

Look...
There's even a photo of me talking!

Libraries = Culture, Learning, Knowledge, Delight

I came across a nice post by Tom Chatfield called On Libraries.  The whole thing is worth reading but what really struck me was the following quote:

This is not, I think, an argument about books. It’s about what a public building carefully stocked with books represents: a free encounter with culture, knowledge, learning, delight.
Tom Chatfield, On Libraries. 24 July 2011

I've talked about books being the library brand before, but I think this quote beautifully sums up the role of books in the future of libraries.

I love that so many libraries are trying so many different things while exploring their future but I do think we need to keep this idea in mind. When we are exploring new programs and services we need to ensure that libraries keep representing a free encounter with learning, knowledge and delight users while doing it.

What's Wrong with your Social Media Policy?

MPOW recently drafted its first social media policy.  I wasn't completely happy with the outcome.  It's not terrible by any stretch, and it is similar to many social media policies I've read from other organisations. Here's my thoughts on what's wrong with social media policies in organisations.  (please bear in mind that these are my personal professional opinions and do not represent the views of my employer)

Many social media policies are concerned solely with placing restrictions on what staff can say online, who can say it and who's responsible if someone says the wrong thing, whether as representitives of the organisation or in their personal accounts on social networks.  The biggest problem I have with this approach is that nowhere in the policy is there a recognition that social media is social.  In my opinion the way the policy is written suggests a fundamental lack of understanding of social networks.

To be social a network must be a two-way conversation.  What if someone went to a meeting (substitute a party or any other social situation) and began to talk without listening to anything anyone else was saying. What would be the point of going? If you are not going to listen to what others are saying then you're missing the point of social media. 

Social networks are different from traditional forms of media such as print, radio and television.  By there very nature these are broadcast media - information published centrally and then offered for consumption by the masses, hence the term mass media.  Social networks should not be treated as an extension of the broadcast media.

The raison d'être of social media is as a place for people to come together because they share a common interest.  You publish information in reports and websites.  You promote things in the advertisements.  To use social media effectively you make friends with the people who might find what you're talking about interesting.

Despite this, the emphasis of many social media policies lean strongly towards ensuring that nothing is said that could damage the organisation's reputation.

Now, reputation management is crucial as we move increasingly toward a reputation economy - nowhere more so than online - but I don't believe you can control the conversation that is happening online. On the contrary, you develop your reputation online by building trust amongst your connections. In social networks you build that trust, person to person, by being a good citizen. By listening before you speak. In many cases, who you are connected to, friends with or following has as much impact on your reputation as anything you might say. I really like the following illustration of the reputation cycle in social media.

Social Web - Reputation Management Cycles diagram by Laurel Papworth, on Flickr

The nature of social media should be reflected in your organisation's social media policy.  Rather than simply setting out the rules, a good social media policy should provide guidance to staff on best practice in social networks.  It would be great to hear from anyone whose social media policy at work does address these concerns.

You're only as good as your worst customer experience

It's funny how a short simple idea can be the jump off for so many ideas.  I had one of these moments this morning when I read a post from Seth Godin called, The worst voice of the brand *is* the brand.

We either ignore your brand or we judge it, usually with too little information. And when we judge it, we judge it based on the actions of the loudest, meanest, most selfish member of your tribe.

It's so obvious, yet how many organisations... councils... libraries... give this any thought or attention?



It has been bugging me all day, how many opportunities we have to provide a bad experience to the people we serve.  How many times have you formed a judgement about a company based on one or two interactions? A dispute with over a transaction; a telephone call transferred all over the place; staff who are too busy talking between themselves to notice you; even something as insignificant as staff who's use of language leaves a little to be desired.

And our websites aren't immune.  You can spend all the time in the world on developing your site but if there's a key interaction or transaction that has been designed poorly you can leave your visitors with the impression the site is a waste of time.  This was brought home to me when we started receiving feedback about our recently launched site.  The feedback was generally positive, however, there were a few key things that didn't work as expected for our site visitors.  We hadn't really tested some of the key touch points well enough. Because we understood how things worked we didn't, or couldn't, see where the experience broke down for users.

I'm not completely pessimistic though.  I think that the converse is also true.  Going the extra mile to make your customer experience better can have far wider positive influence than one happy customer.

Going out of your way to satisfy a customer request; taking responsibility for someone's enquiry even if it's not your area of expertise rather than just referring them on; working to make an interaction easier for the customer even if it means more work for the organisation. These are all ways that we can leave our users with a good impression. A good impression will leave them more willing to come back again.  Do this enough and your organisation will build trust with our customers and that's something no marketing campaign will achieve.

How to make sure that all areas of your organisation are on the same page when it comes to this attitude? Well, that I don't know. Any thoughts...?

Don't Leave it to the Vendors!

I couldn't agree more with a recent post by James Robertson at Step Two when he suggests that companies shouldn't rely on vendors to supply mobile interfaces for their products.

Let’s go back in time to when the web became popular. Enterprise apps all started delivering web front ends for use by staff. What did we end up with? A separate ESS portal from the HR vendor, a web login to the ERP system, a separate interface for the online timesheet, and a standalone staff directory.

This applies just as much to libraries. Now that we're in an environment where we are sourcing web products and services from multiple vendors - the ILS, online databases, electronic journals, e-book suppliers and so on - libraries are finding their web presence increasingly fractured. We're sending users all over the place.

The vendors are trying, they offer the option to customise the colours and add your logo to their web products (bless them!) but it never quite looks or works the same as your website.  To my mind they are focusing on the wrong place.  We need to demand they put more effort into building ways to integrate with their data, rather than try and be the complete solution.  As James puts it...

We should expect them to provide good integration options, including web services and tailored interfaces. We should demand that they make it easy for us to draw out the information and functionality we need to deliver the mobile solution that staff require.

But libraries aren't of the hook. We are complicit.  We haven't put enough money or effort into recruiting or developing staff that can work with these new technologies and techniques.  We invest large amounts of money in web based products but not all that much in making sure our users can take advantage of them - easy user interfaces from a single, well thought out starting point.

Go and read the whole article (it's only short).