Web 2.0 Expo: Web 2.0 and the Reinvention of Marketing and PR - Brian Solis

Brian Solis of FutureWorks had the last morning session on Wednesday, Sept. 17 of the Web 2.0 Expo here in New York City. Here are my notes of his main points (and not necessarily a neat prose rendition). As always, these should not be taken as an exact transcription of his words.

He pointed out that Web 2.0 is more of a dialog than a broadcast medium. He dared to ask rhetorically: "When was the last time a press release worked for you?" Web 2.0 has created a new era of tools, channels, communities, and methodologies to connect with and cultivate relationships and influence. (This has resulted in a realization: public relationships people aren't the most popular people in marketing. )

Web 2.0 is the social web where anyone can facilitate conversations. It's the democratization of information with the potential to transform people. Today, markets are conversations - read about it in The Cluetrain Manifesto. You engage them through conversation; if you attempt direct control, they remove you from their radar. Markets are not conversations and are cyclical. They're driven by the voice of the people. Controlling the message is no longer a goal, because every conversation with consumers is an opportunity.

Everyone contributes to the definition of a brand. The perception of a brand is the sum of all conversations. How do you define influence? You need new metrics for a new era of public relations. How Web 2.0 redefines the landscape: through curation, content creation, forums, blogs, social networks, new influences, events, and traditional media. Public relations is no longer defined by "hits' (on a website), because Web 2.0 creates many new opportunities. Now, the "conversation index" is the new form of measurement: videos, podcasts, tweets, etc.

And they're trackable: A conversation index indicates your placement, status, ranking, perception, and participation in social media. The roadblocks are that some marketing people are perceived as "not getting it." They belong to the "sell rather than tell" school of thought. But today it's a new world of public relations and marketing. We're no longer the sole content creators, but should just be part of the community. It requires a new hybrid form of marketeer.

What are the qualifications for this new kind of marketeer? Empathy, market exposure, understanding the competitive landscape, relevant stories, benefits, true intentions, customer approach, observance of online cultures, and experience with social tools. This all sounds like common sense but should not be underestimated.

There are new rules for "breaking news." Be wary of bloggers, because they don't adhere to the same rules of traditional press. They want scoops. The rule guiding this landscape is: less is more. So identify a list of newsmakers and build relationships with them.

The Magic Middle and the Long Tail

Today we're in a world of social media, conversational marketing and word-of-mouth marketing. The key is people - they are what makes something viral. None are rooted in old-style broadcast, i.e. one-way marketing. Who's responsible for participating? Everyone -- including you.

We must become sociologists in order to become participants. How do we listen? Through the conversation prism -- everywhere where conversations are taking place.

But how does this translate into delivering value to communities? You must participate, have conversations. Humanize our story (and beware of what not to do). Conversational marking is not a campaign. It must be done every day.

New elements are introduced into public relations for measuring return of investment and success -- web analytics are useful for this.

It's about how to change the way we are perceived. The public relations/marketing world of today is about less noise, and more listening. You are the brand: respect the communities and they will respect you. Ultimately, companies get the relationships they deserve.

After the main part of the talk, an audience member, responsible for maintaining decorum in his online community, asked how do deal with constant complaints. Brian retorted with a smart answer: "How does Batman sleep at night?" One does what one can.

Be a champion of your brand. Invite others to lunch in order to proselytize . Find champions in your company.

I was particularly taken when, at one point in the talk, Brian said: "Research librarians are better than marketing directors." (Meaning that their depth of knowledge is richer.) Bravo.

Web 2.0 Expo: Viral Marketing 2.0 with Jonah Peretti

The second talk I attended on Wednesday, September 17 was “Viral Marketing 2.0” by Jonah Peretti. Little did I realize he is already a well-known "star" in market research and his talk was well attended. He went extremely fast and I couldn't capture any pics of him (his hair is brown or black, not red as in the Wikipedia photograph) or of his presentation slides which whizzed by.

The core concept of his talk: the Bored At Work Network (BWN). Some facts (as seen by Peretti):

• Millions are bored office workers, ready to share media, blog post and instant messaging all day
• The BWN is bigger than CBS, NBC, or any traditional media network
• The BWN is a decentralized network that enables media to go viral if ordinary people enjoy sharing it.

The old broadcast model is simple and reassuring – broadcaster is at the center and decides what's important and what's popular. (Examples: television, newspapers, and similar one-way media.)

The new networked world is confusing, counterintuitive: BWN decides what is popular, so it’s a more complex thing to understand. (Perhaps even irrational.)

What can make something popular on the web? The key research is: Influentials, Networks, and Public Opinion Formation by Duncan J. Watts, Peter Sheridan Dodds (Journal of Consumer Research, December 2007). There are no movers and shakers, or “special influence people” who can make something popular. Rather, the network decides what is popular.

A network structure is more important than influence. Whether or not something spreads depends mostly on network structure. If a network permits diffusion, anyone can start something and if not, no one can. Some examples of diffusion: forest fires, early Facebook apps (the platform was perfect for spreading applications), blogs, embarrassing homemade videos, etc. Compare these phenomena to viral marketing. Why videos? Because of YouTube’s existence – it’s a platform that allows the spread.

Hindsight bias. Beware of people’s recollections of what happened:

• after the fact, influential people seem like the key factor (aggrandizement)
• East Village hipsters wore lots of ridiculous clothes besides hush puppies
• Jeff Jarvis complained about many things on his blog besides Dell

The problem with hindsight bias is that it is not repeatable in the future. If not repeatable, then it’s less interesting because it means it's something one can do with consistency.

Key research: the music lab experiment:

• subjects are shown a grid with mp3s from unknown bands
• they choose, listen, rate, and download favorites
• behavior is tracked in several different worlds to measure social influence.

The results of this experiment shows that people don't know what they like

• different songs were popular in different worlds – no consistent hits
• social influence increased inequality and unpredictability
• best songs never do badly and the worst never excel but all other results happened

So the big problem is radical unpredictability (sounds like Dan Ariely’s Predictably Irrational)

• the latest research shows that we can't predict who can make something popular or what will become popular
• the web is confusing, counter-intuitive and unpredictable
• So: how do we succeed on the web despite this?

Solution no. 1: Contagious Media

• Make something that ordinary people want to share with each other
• Make it easy to understand, easy to share, and include a social imperative
• Make media perfect for the BWN

Examples: The New York Times’s list of articles most shared and most blogged – shows behavioral patterns of ordinary people.
Another example: Nike sweatshop email story

• Nike offers to custom-print a word on sneakers, so Peretti ordered a pair of Nikes customized with the word “sweatshop” (i.e. so that the sneaks would read “Nike Sweatshop” – unflattering to company)
• After some back-and-forth, Nike rejected Peretti’s request
• Peretti then forwarded the exchange to a few friends – who continued to forward it until the email led to a viral cascade – and became legendary on the Internet.

Compare these: People dedicate their life to fighting for human rights whereas Peretti did not even know much about the sweatshop issue. In the first case people deliberately try, whereas Peretti didn’t even have to try and yet got more coverage.

Another example: BlackPeopleLoveUs.com. Bogus website that nevertheless developed following of those who thought it was racist and those who didn’t.

The lessons he draws from this are:

• The BWN trumps influentials
• The BWN network creats its own influentials

The limits of contagious media: most things are not viral. Contagious media is usually silly, free, shocking, simple – for BWN. (For example: the Montauk Monster, or other things on BuzzFeed.com).

(See article: Viral Marketing For The Real World – by Duncan Watts And Jonah Peretti)

Solution 2: Big Seed Marketing

l small seeds lead to failure

l but subviral growth is still growth

l big seeds lead to successs

l examples; Proctor & Gamble, Oxygen,

(see article: http://cdg.columbia.edu/uploads/papers/watts2007_viralMarketing.pdf )

Tide Cold Water campaign. by making it sharable and social, it increased penetration.

World of mouth without tipping points.

Solution 3: Multi-Seed Marketing

l try lots o creative ideas- no one can predict what will be popular

l test to see what's working using real data

l big seede the stuff that is worki9ng

l more data enables more creativity

BuzzFeed.com tracks these viral feeds

Solution no. 4: Mullet Strategy – (a mullet is a haircut cropped in front but long in back)

Businesss upfront, and party in the back - use this as a webstrategy

Example: Huffington Post: real news upfront, and crazy stuff in the back.

An editor's view of huffington post: you can analyze it immediately, know how many clicks and how often people visit.

The power of mullets

l the front always looks sharp

l no need to find influentials and predic thte future, just let good stuff bubble up

l other examples: YouTube, MySpace, Digg

Solution no. 5: personality disorders

The web is ruled by fanatics like Perez Hilton, Ron Paul, Apple fans, , blog commenters, animal lovers, and other crazy people.

Examples (a catalog of personality disorders in real life that inhabit the Internet):

histrionic/narcissistic personality disorder – great for bloggers!

obsessive-compulsive persoality disorder (wikipedia, online games, del.icio.us, etc.)

and so on.

If we had more time, we could discuss other disorders such as paranoid, schizoid, antisocial, etc.

Learn advertising from this humorous example: Jews vs. Mormons

While Judaism may be a quality religion, quality has nothing to do with it. Quality is extra constraint and liability. Instead, learn from the Mormons:

l quality is not a growth strategy

l make evangelism core of your strategy

l focus on the mechanics of how an idea spreads, not the idea itself

Conclusion: This is what is Viral Marketing 2.0

Contagious Media – make media that works for the BWN

Big-Seed Marketing – do viral marketing without needing elusive tipping points

Multi-Seed Marketing – try many ideas and optimzie on the fly (think of BuzzFeed.com)

Here’s another summary of the session:

http://mashraqi.com/2008/09/viral-marketing-20.html

Web 2.0 Expo: Customer Service is the New Marketing - Lane Becker

On Wednesday, September 17, I focused on the marketing thread of the Web 2.0 Expo in here New York. The first session I attended was Customer Service is the New Marketing given by Lane Becker. (Again, this is just my subjected summary and should not be taken as a literal or accurate transcription of Lane Becker's words, although the picture above is him.)

He reiterated what's been said many times in reference to Web 2.0: it's all about customer service. And he should know: he's set up the website http://getsatisfaction.com where anyone can talk about any company or any product (their motto: "People-Powered Customer Service For Absolutely Anything!").

He then proceeded to an example: the online shoe store zappos.com. From its outset this store has focused all its efforts on customer service. This is apparent at every level of the organization. At its core, it is focused on customer service. Most companies can't afford to throw everything into customer service. But at Zappos, new employees must have FOUR WEEKS of customer service training, and must spend one week in the "call center" helping customers. It doesn't matter what level of the organization you are: all employees, from bottom to the top, must have at least one week of customer service. This training when you are hired, and for at least one week every year.

Becker then brought up Maslow's Hierarchy of Customer Service:
The bottom line of this hierarchy is that one creates evangelism through meeting unrecognized needs. In other words, customer service = growth; customer loyalty = profits.

So - what kind of company are you?

• Customer focused (like Zappos, Four Seasons, or Craigslist)?
• Product-focused (e.g. Apple, Google, etc.)?
• Infrastructure-focused (most telecommunications companies)?

What about the rest of us - what can we do? Becker's solution: Learn to be like a hotel concierge. Here are some of their secrets:

1. Put conversations at the center of your business
2. Reduce your sphere of control to increase sphere of influence
3. Smash the silos that exist between your business and the world around it

No. 1: "Markets are conversations." This is the philosophy of the Cluetrain Manifesto. But normally we keep the customers out of the organizational conversation. There are limited channels for conversing with the public, because we've not developed effective ways to have conversations with them. In most companies, when you think of customers, you think of customer avoidance. Examples of how to kill conversations: outsourcing your call center (especially overseas or to a country whose first language is not English), FAQs (are they really designed to help people, or just relieve staff of answering questions), ticket systems (when someone has encountered trouble - most systems are aimed at getting rid of tickets, rather than genuinely helping people). Even on help desk phones: the aim is to reduce staff time on phone, not to really help people.

Rather, friction-free communication is the new norm. There are many venues of communications. It's easy to talk to friends, but it's hard to talk to companies.

Examples of the reversed trend: the company Timbuk2 - a San Francisco-based company that makes bags. They embraced the web and had one person charged with figuring out ways to talk to customers. That's what her job is entirely about. She set out to discover where are customers talking. She found a Flickr group called What's In Your Bag? It was a fad that caught on in Flickr where people emptied out their bags, arranged its contents on a table, photographed it, and uploaded it to Flickr. So the Timbuk2 staff member noticed a large number of bags were from her company! Thus she identified a valuable thing for her company. In fact, they no longer focus on professional photography but use examples from Flickr to show their products.

Becker had a cute story about a potential Timbuk2 customer wanting a diaper bag (appropriate for a nursing mother). They don't make such bags, but based on what other people had done, the customer service rep was able to advise the customer on how to accessorize her bag so that it would function for a a mother nursing a baby.

These stories exemplify reaching out and talking to customers. Understand the language used by the customers - the way they see it - and translate it. This avoids pushing business jargon on them.

No. 2: "Reduce sphere of control." Engage your evangelists. Reduce your sphere of control to increase your sphere of influence. The example of Comcast was cited, particularly the culture around the website and phrase of Comcast Sucks (http://www.comcastsucks.org/). At one time they were avoiding conversations with customers.

Comcast thought: what if we took 5 people and charged them with customer engagement (giving them a name and a Twitter site: Comcast Cares). This is the work of Frank Eliason, to reach out and engage customers. He functions like the concierge. Frank can identify where traditional customer support channels are not working or where they are breaking down.

It's an opportunity to reach into the business and manage the social mood of Comcast. But it also changes ideas about the way Comcast views itself. These conversations have the potential to change the company - don't underestimate the internal impact.

No. 3: "Smash the silos." Example of a silo: the internal company response: "It's not our problem." Becker brought the example of the day on Twitter that Nokia wasn't working. An incompatibility existed between Nokia and T-Mobile, resulting in a lost of connectivity. Nokia didn't diagnose it -- it was the customers who figured out what was wrong. They flooded T-Mobile and forced them to address the problem. On its own, Twitter would not have been able to diagnose and fix the problem as fast.

Take an open approach to customers - there are more of them than you. Let them harness applications to get a sense of what works and what doesn't work.

Customer service in the form of ongoing conversations is the way the world is going. Companies have to get on board. A good example: Apple, and its stores' "Genius Bar."

And always ask yourself: What would a concierge do?

Web 2.0 Expo: what's a librarian doing there?

If I may interrupt summaries of the Web 2.0 Expo briefly:

Regular readers (and colleagues) may wonder - what does all this have to do with librarianship? In my opinion this is all directly related to librarianship. We are a business like any other (the differences between non-profit and profit are disappearing fast). Everything at the Expo can be applied to us, to the way we work and relate to the people around us. Especially because I feel my employer could use more information on marketing, I chose to go to many of those sessions. Hopefully my reports will be influential to other librarians (as well as anyone browsing the web for the subjects or people I've covered).

Web 2.0 Expo: Communities That Connect and Thrive

The first session I attended at the Web 2.0 Expo was Online Customer Communities that Connect and Thrive: Creating the Right Mix of Purpose, Passion, People, and Platforms presented by Lois Kelly (above right) and François Gossieaux (above left) of Beeline Labs. They promised to post their Powerpoint presentation to Slideshare.net under: http://www.slideshare.net/fgossieaux. The following is my summary of the session - any mistakes are my own and should not be assumed to be that of the lecturers without verification.

Three hours in length, their session had a mix of interactive break-out sessions and lecture sessions. After a brief intro, we broke up into groups - their method was to divide attendees by month of birth, so it was a good way to get to know people and break the ice. My group was the October, from which we informally selected Chrissie Brodigan (formerly of the Huffington Post) to faciliate and be our spokesperson. We brainstormed for characteristics of (online) social communities and came up with: sharing stories, having (social) purpose, community causes, support, dependency, community interests, effecting change, shared history, open communities, outlet, safety, belonging, collaboration, personal relationships. In the pic below, Chrissie reports on our brainstorming to the rest of those assembled. (Interestingly, not all groups identified the same characteristics; some were more aggressive in their attitude towards others.)

In learning to work with each other, Kelly & Gossieaux reminded us of Clay Shirky's comment to the effect of: "A group is its own worst enemy."

Each one of the groups summarized their characterizations of social communities. It was interesting to point out that not all saw perfect harmony among participants, and that some communities were based on an ongoing debate.) They referred us to Beeline Lab's Tribalization Report (one has to register on their website to see it).

They characterized the subject as "tribalization" and quoted Wikipedia: "Tribalism is the very first social sysmte that human beings ever lived in..." They characterized the motivations for socialization as:

• People want to connect with people
• People want to help and be helped
• People operate in either a social framework, or market framework.

Further, they see 4 building blocks as part of the social network: content, members, member profiles, and transactions, and posited this interrelated axiom:

• The more content you have, the more members you will get;
• The more members you have, the more content you will get;
• The better you match content and members to member profiles the more members and content you will get; and
• The easier it is to do transactions the more members you will attract.

Among their top usage scenarios were "canary in a coal mine" and long-tail sales - kind of extremities of the market.

Who's in charge? was one of their questions. Most communities wind up reporting to the head of marketing. So they discussed several takeaway points:

Takeaway #1: The community delivers game changing results (example: Ebay's support communities resulted in their bringing in 50% more customers). It's getting the community involved in the processes. A community can amplify, increase effectiveness and decrease costs.

Takeaway #2: The changing role of the Chief Marketing Officer (CMO). As example they cited Ducati which eliminated their CMO and left all marketing to be done by their online community.

Takeaway #3: The need for new management thinking. If there's a mismatch between community goals and what management invests in, things won't work. So management has to really understand what to measure. This goes against the dictum "Build it and they will come." They reject that, and suggest to start small and limited, to see how the community receives it.

The provided some case studies: first, Walmart Moms - how Walmart selected 11 mothers who epitomized use of their product. But then they spoke about Fiskars's Fisk-A-Teers - 3 "ambassadors" who serve as the generators and conduit to the rest of the community.

They spoke about the Tivo community which is entirely separate from the product Tivo, but that the product people were still listening and taking suggestings from the community about improving the product. Even Lilly in dealing (delicately) with their community chose not to refer to their drug as a cure for the disease, but rather portrayed it as a way to restore regular patterns of life while coping with the disease.

To get started use the SAM formula:

Strategize, Activate, Manage to scale

We then broke into our "monthly" groups again for about 25 minutes and each was given one of 3 projects to work on - an aerospace firm, a theater company, and a toy company. Our October group came up with the title Fundawhere - a fictional community where 8-12 year olds could share knowledge, reviews and other stuff concerning the toys their owned. It was a good exercises in trying to actualize what we just heard.

Once the lecture resumed, Lois and François discused obstacles. (I'm not sure I them but they'll be on their Powerpoint presentation on Slideshare.net.) Some additional notes are these: One should have "more McKinsey, less McCann" (referring to market specialists' philosophies). Be simple: show the data, the trends, and examples. Be frank about the challenges and readiness. Frame the values to business function of goals and aspirations.

Lois was particularly influenced by Rob Kozinets's article E-Tribalized Marketing. The five common obstacles marketers face:

1. What's the business value? Lack of a strategy roadmap
2. Appealing to all of our customers and prospects
   
3. Fear of failure
4. Who's job is it anyhow?
5. What if you build it and no one comes? and (extra):
   
6. What is the right tech platform?
   

They made an interesting point, that companies that seek to create social communities of their workforce are doomed to fail because: the workers are being paid to work; their not being paid to form social communities. (They referred to Dan Ariely's book Predictably Irrational.)


But they summed up by saying that the social and tribal behavioral movement is part of business strategy. Content matters more than technology (well, in this context). They predicted that most companies will have community groups associated with them in just a few years.

Thereafter people asked questions for nearly 30 minues. Some of them:

Q. How to deal with trolls in the community?
A. Either a strong moderator/facilitator, or let the community cleanse itself of these disruptive people.

Q. Speak more about tribalization.
A. A focus on technology will not guide your community to success (they showed examples of communities that did not "take").

I found it a valuable session. A person I chatted with found it limited, as the speakers were speaking theoretically. She wanted to see the succcess they had with clients. Indeed, they did not mention any that they had.

IgniteNYC: intro to the Web 2.0 Expo

On Monday evening, Sept. 15, the reception IgniteNYC served as the kick-off for the Web 2.0 Expo. Never having been to one of these things, I wasted my time coming early and having no one to talk to. I couldn't even figure out who to talk to, because most attendees were attending the New York TV Festival -- NYTVF (you can tell from all the media sponsors's logos seen in the picture above). Part of the "social" aspect of the event was a cupcake decorating contest (you can see the "winners" in the lower left corner of the picture above).

This IgniteNYC post describes who gave talks in pecha kucha style: each person could have a maximum of 20 slides, running at 15 seconds each. Some seemed barely relevant to the theme of the expo, such as those dealing with cupcakes (come on, who can eat them, with such an overload of sugar?), magic at the Democratic National Convention (whatever my political leanings, what did this have to do with Web 2.0?).

But some of the talks were interesting. Raffi Krikorian's holmz.com facilitates self-monitoring of energy consumption, Sam Lessin gave a wake up call to how we view our privacy in today's world, and Don Carli spoke about the carbon footprint of all our computer issues (making one realize that anyone who espouses "green" attitudes and uses a computer is a hypocrite). Some were amusing: Deb Schultz's "Alley vs. Valley" was a spot-on comparison of working in New York City versus working in San Francisco, Andrew Schneider's experimental devices for performance might really have a chance - maybe not the projection of lips on someone else (it reminded me of the 1960s cartoon Space Angel), but the sneaker devices that generated rhythm, not to mention the wrist things that could produce a variety of sound effects. (Broadway: watch out! Or maybe Fringe festivals...)

I found the most interesting talks coming from Audacia Ray and Jennifer Pahlka. Ray spoke about the relationship of pornography to innovation. She pointed out that porn was in part responsible for the adoption of VCR (over Betamax), since there was more porn available in that medium (despite Betamax's better quality). Ray characterized the porn industry as one that was run by the stakeholders, but that recent developments on the Internet - namely a more socialized world - had challenged that. Now there are a number of sites where users can upload their own porn stills and videos -- so who needs the companies that produce the stuff? In fact, she said, many people prefer to watch, comment, and interact with each other's porn through these websites than the impersonal ones of big companies. In this way, they are fulfilling the web 2.0 dictum of interrelating with one another. Watch for ongoing changes in this industry.

Jennifer Pahlka's talk was humorous and more. Entitled Technology Anxiety: Jello and Web 3.0, she used the metaphor of cooking for showing the development of technology. She compared utilitarian cookbooks of the post-World War II era to beginnings in technology. She showed advertisements that tried to portray stoves and ovens as new devices where one just pushed a single button that would create a finished meal - just like promises of technology. Continuing in this vein, she showed that a little bit of cooking knowledge could create some really awful confections from those who didn't know how to cook, just as it had in the technology world among those less creative or innovative. In speaking of the threat or fear that some have of web 3.0 (which was characterized as a world that would leave us out), she made a funny metaphor to Jello sculptures, where one could put in all sorts of food within the Jello and have it magically "work" simply because of the medium of Jello. She warned us about having such illusions in the Web 2.0 world. Very nice.

It would have been nicer if the presentations were vetted a bit more and were a bit more releavant, but I guess the mood was to party with beer (served on the house) and cupcakes.

Wikipedia and the community

Most people I know (including librarians) don't like Wikipedia.  Some people complain about the uneven quality of articles, while others even more vociferously object to policies which they perceive as bordering on facism.  There is a great deal of truth in both of these criticisms, and yet, loads of people use Wikipedia.  I use it as part of work sometimes, because it's a fast and easy way to find information which I know I can supplement with more authoritative sources.  (I also find there is lots not to like.)

Information Today has an article on the phenomenon, Putting the Library in Wikipedia by Lauren Pressley and Carolyn J. McCallum.  The authors go further than other writings I've seen.  They say we've got to embrace Wikipedia, because library websites are losing hits since no one suspects there to be much content on them.  Thus we should put our content on Wikipedia - and goes on to describe an abortive attempt with a lesson.

I've been a strong voice of the same feeling, not because I feel our websites are under-visited (although I'm sure they are), but because by getting ourselves entrenched in Wikipedia, we can better direct information about our unique holdings.  I've systematically put in entries for our many archival collections in the appropriate articles, and on a few occasions, have created articles so I can include mention of an important collection.  (While the individuals may not necessarily be important, what is important are the links to and from other articles.  That is what raises the significants of topics - just ask Google.)  Some of the information I've put there are the products of research done in response to reference questions.

Oddly, when I've tried to suggest engaging Wikipedia on e-mail lists of musicologists and music theorists I get either no comment, or agreement without any follow-up.  One anonymous Wikipedian began a WikiProject devoted to music theory.  Even though I announced it on the list of the Society for Music Theory, SMT-TALK, which has over 1,000 people interested in music theory (including many students), not a single one of them signed up.

Why the lack of interest?  I think it has less to do with the idiosyncracies of the Wikipedian community and more to do with the vacuum in which certain types of professions operate.  If I may resort to armchair psychology:  music people need to spend a lot of time just listening and thinking about music (not to mention practicing instruments).  It is not a profession that easily welcomes external forces.  So I suspect the lack of Wikipedia engagement reflects a more troubling aspect of the practitioners of the music profession.

I don't have enough experience serving the (non-music) academic population at large, but I suspect that this isolationist behavior is typical of many academic fields of study.  It's easy not bothering to look up additional sources or citations.   As librarians, it's in our interest to counteract this apathy and closemindedness by reaching out and populating places like Wikipedia.

RBMS and the Future: Quo Vadis

Although I don't have any more detailed notes on sessions of the RBMS pre-conference, the issue of capturing the information has turned up on RBMS's email list (I've been a participant in the discussion). There are competing issues:

1. RBMS should use new technologies to extend the reach of the sessions, especially for those who can not afford to attend, and those who are not physically able to attend (e.g. web casts, pod casts, posting of slides, etc.)

However,

2. If new technologies are used, will that reduce the number of attendees at RBMS (and reduce the value of getting vendors)?

Being a relatively new member (only about 3 years, although this was my first pre-conference) while I'm concerned about attendance, the librarian in me wants to share information with everyone. There are numerous people in the world (not just librarians) who could benefit from at least seeing the PowerPoint presentations (I already argued that all of them should be made available on Slideshare). It is my belief that RBMS (and the field) will grow if the group expands its reach.

Of course, a main problem is the attitude "we've never done this before." And "we have to ask ALA for permission to change anything." (Those of you who are avid readers of Michael Stephens' Tame The Web blog will recognize the problems with these attitudes.)

Although others on the RBMS e-mail list have formulated the second issue, I think it's more complex. For the last 2 years, RBMS has capped their attendance at about 300 people. Fortunately this year they expanded to 350. Next year they plan on 400. It sounds good, yet they are worried about losing people. What they have not addressed is that when you have more people in attendance, you need bigger spaces which cost more. So as the pre-conference grows, it's still going to wind up costing more (which potentially will alienate the "younger" people, or those with out money or subventions).

But my feeling is that the RBMS pre-conference has to evolve. So many of the presentations are "unnecessary" in the sense that they are "stand-and-deliver" papers. Why not foster more interactivity, more exchange? If it's just a one-way flow of information, isn't such information more appropriate to a publication or blog? (And it's sad that the group's publication, RBM, is issued on a yearly basis. We'll be seeing these June 2008 presentations in published form around May 2009 - an unbelievably long time.)

The Ephemeral Archives blog (to which I'm an infrequent contributor) has already taken notice in a post, Old School, New School? which characterizes the conflicting forces - those who wants a more open and transparent organization, and those who feel obliged to ask permission of the parent organization, ALA, before taken one step.

Fortunately, some of the presenters have posted their PowerPoint presentation to Slideshare:

Karen Calhoun (OCLC): Metadata 2.0, Glocalization, and Being Where Their Eyes Are: What's So Special About Special Collections?

Barbara Taranto (NYPL): Selection: It's Not Just About Curators Anymore

Kathleen Burns (Yale University): Blog Boot Camp: A Primer in Blogging for Special Collections Staff


So - three small steps at opening up the RBMS pre-conference and reaching a larger audience.

RBMS Plenary Session 6: Into The Future

[Although I had my computer with me, it was extremely difficult taking notes on the first talk by Peter B. Kaufman, because he spoke like a television montage: tons of references cascading in a montage of things and ideas that get you all excited and make you forget the issue at hand. Nevertheless, what follows is what I could transcribe - it reads more like notes or a bullet list rather than prose.]

These words should not to be taken as an exact transcriptions of what was said. I take responsibility for any errors of transmission.

Friday, June 27

1. Peter B. Kaufman, president and CEO of Intelligent Television.
[See also his article Video, education, and open content: Notes toward a new research and action agenda which includes many of the points mentioned in his talk below.]

Libraries are critical to the health of the country as a liberal democracy.
The fourth estate [i.e. journalism and the commercial press] is bankrupt; [commercial] media has succumbed to trends that imperil freedom and democracy.

But public media is online and truth is available. While everything you do is based on a variety of decisions, ultimately what you do is based on your own freedom and that of our society. In this context, digitization is a moral imperative.

Libraries are producers. See Archibald MacLeish article from 1939, on libraries and culture. [probably: Libraries in the Contemporary Crisis, 1939]

Libraries are becoming involved with their communities. Columbia University is getting involved with its community, witness its interest in the Apollo Theater. [? I couldn't find any connection between Columbia and the Apollo. Maybe Kaufman just meant part of Harlem, which is a faulty point since Columbia is claiming eminent domain because it wants to build in that area; many residents are antagonistic to the idea.]

Libraries are spending more money than television on making their video available.

See The New Metrics of Scholarly Authority by Michael Jenson (Chronicle of Higher Education, June 15, 2008) for a list of new trends.

Growth of mobile devices: mobile phone are poised to replace the computer as main route to get online.

I encourage you to engage video. Video is where the action is. Growth of video recording occurs across the board. There is growing online demand for moving images. Cisco Systems predicts growth of 30% of downloads in 2008 to 50% by 2010.

Video is the new vernacular. See: On Bullshit by Harry Frankfurt.

When you make your videos, engage a tv and film production crew, because they have the know-how of video techniques - they know what works.

Librarians are needed because they have to explain how to render material searchable.

In this context I recommend you re-read Walter Benjamin's The Work of Art in the Age of Mechanical Reproduction.


2. Jackie Dooley, Head of Special Collections and University Archives, University of California-Irvine.

Is there a moral imperative to digitize? Focus on value of the objects. Here is a list of 10 things to consider in digitization.

The Ten Commandments of Digitization:

1. Embrace the technological continuum of the book
2. Find yourself - why you love your work and what you bring to do it, and how it translates into the digital world
3. Digitize with abandon. Think wholesale vs. retail - not digitizing pages from a book, but the entire book. We need to stop doing the scholars' work
4. Educate yourself about the born digital
5. Make your work economically sustainable. (Forget item level description)
6. Follow the archivists' lead: Are there rare book parallels to "more product, less process?"
7. Make your data promiscuous: expose metadata and digital content
8. Collaborate, collaborate, collaborate
9. Revere the knowledge and opinions of the young
10. Pro-actively define our collective future

It's our [special collections libraries] time to join the centrality of the digital experience.
Should we think about shared rare book collections? You need to give priority to preserving some things, and not others.

Digital will not go away; on the contrary it will become central to what we do.

Think of Star Trek metaphor: the computer that told them whatever they want. That's what we want, the full knowledge of human experience.

Among the respondents of Merrilee Proffitt of OCLC (RLG Programs) who encouraged everyone to "digitize wildly and beat out Maury Povich and junk tv."

RBMS Plenary Session 5: If We Build It, Will They Come?

Before the fifth plenary session, there were some words concerning next year's RBMS pre-conference: It'll be a RBMS 50th anniversary conference celebration with a program devoted to nostalgia: "Seas of change: navigating cultural and institutional contexts of special collections." It'll be a critical look at where we have been, where we are, and where we are going, combined with self-examination. RBMS hopes to have new and emerging voices at the pre-conference, including new librarians, those with career changes, and underrepresented librarians.

As in my previous posts, the words following are not to be taken as an exact transcription of the speakers' presentations. There's no guarantee that I captured their words and at times, I was only able to get notes. I take responsibility for any errors.

RBMS Plenary Session 5: If We Build It, Will They Come?
Friday, June 27

Before proceeding with the 2 speakers, the session began with an introductory quote from Albert Manguel's A History of Reading:

It is the reader who grants or recognizes in an object, place or event a certain possible readability; it is the reader who must attribute meaning to a system of signs, and then decipher it. We all read ourselves and the world around us in order to glimpse what and where we are. We read to understand, or to begin to understand. We cannot do but read. Reading, almost as much as breathing, is out essential function...reading is at the beginning of the social contract.

1. Medieval Manuscripts and Digital Approaches - Matthew Fisher, Department of English, UCLA.
Let's take a trip down digital memory lane. In the early history of the web, medieval stuff was more elusive. An example of one page left from early digitization efforts in 1993: A brief description, and an isolated image - that's it.

The idea of a library exhibition is very interesting, but requires lots of time and resources, but presents a disconnect.

Catalogs are by no means are complete; they're not crowd pleasers. Medieval manuscripts are also elusive in catalogs, which often depend on titles, dates, and authors -- exactly those identifying traits that many medieval manuscripts lack. In the British Library catalog not all manuscripts come up when one knows that institution has them (e.g. BL and Piers Ploughman). Also consider the difficulty of locating them in a catalog because earlier English has letters that are not translatable to today's language. (He showed examples.)

Today we have things such as the Digital Scriptorum (a consortium project), an image database of images of medieval manuscripts. In a questionnaire showing user needs, the results showed that people seek specific manuscripts, and are looking for information in the script, although the site is for images. In the digital environment, text = digital text, i.e. that which can be searched. We're accepting the limitation of OCR of early medieval prints (which look like handwriting). The expectations of what can be done limits what scholars can do with them.

But most digital projects involving medieval manuscripts are like tearing leaves from books: the text is struck through and you're left with a catchword (which admittedly can be a fascinating study). But what about scholars whose interest is in alterations of the text? How does one encode such emendations and corrections in the digital environment? It leads to the question: What is the subject: the text, or the corrections?

As a pedagogical resource, these digital images are a godsend. The access they give is also a good thing. Is digital access to selections of a manuscript just a precursor to physical object? If so, why are we engaging in these objects?

The [name of unidentified project] is a catalog of digitized medieval manuscripts, a project of UCLA and Fisher. [See UCLA's Center For Medieval and Rennaissance Studies project page for more projects.]

Who knows what scholar is doing at any time? This is important information to find out, and scholars can't find it out. Just trying to provide access points to medieval manuscripts out there is a problem in itself (official library access points versus the access point needed and desired by the scholarly community). On this [unnamed project] there is no federated search, because Fisher prefers not.

CERL Portal - contains manuscripts and dearly printed material, but has logged in only 2,000 visitors. It requires catalogs to be in an OAI format (to communicate with other websites and portals).

What about research using digital collections? People can do what they want with them, despite what metadata a library provides. There's an issue of imposing limitations on what can be done. Why not have manuscripts in OAI? Why not allow users to provide links, tags, search on their own [user-generated] terms. Why not allow mash-ups, e.g. as the way people use Google maps [i.e. combining Google maps with other applications]. He wants to see mashups of medieval manuscripts. It's a way to foster dialog between patrons and keepers.

2. Strategies for teaching and research - Stephen Davison (Head, UCLA Digital Program):
He spoke about the Digital Library Program at UCLA. Their aims include:

• creating digital collections
• looking for synergies with research, teaching, ahd learning
• digital preservation
• development of access and use tools standards
  
• fostering cooperative projects: campus, statewide, national, international

What are we building within digital projects? Some? All? The "important" parts? Should we digitize complete objects or logical groupings? Should we produce a mirror of a physical collection or some other artificial grouping?

Whatever they may be, digital objects (whether items or fragments) are an important aspect of collection development.

What about the finding aid - should we tie to it, or provide another means of access? Some examples are: OAC (Online Archive of California), and CALISPHERE
(These sites provide different windows for different audiences of a single digital collection.)

Who are the collections for? The saying goes "will they come?" But who are they? (Concerning the Sheet Music Consortium, we've made assumptions of who uses it, but we're not sure; we are trying to design methods to discover who is using it.

There are methods where we can obtain feedback on our digital collections:

• digitization requests
• offers of metadata
• personal communications
• legal communications
• statistics

Digitization vs. digital projects. Providing access vs. providing service layers. [The new standard for OAI - protocol for digital exchange).

Currently we offer conventional access to digital files, usually through library catalogs. But we need to start thinking about web 2.0 features - using users to provide more information, more features, e.g. making guides more wiki-like, ability to tag, annotate, recombine, and do mash-ups. This upload of digital content by users will lead to the creation of new knowledge and understanding.

Popular culture is now a big focus of web 2.0 ideas - e.g. Frontera Collection of Mexican-American music (sound recordings).
(Topics related to American Orientalism - i.e. diverse populations in the US - are also popular.)

What about mass digitization of special collections? Some issues:

• a matter of time and money
• there should be careful digitization on a grand scale
• there are parallels to microfilm; but
  
• digitization is for broad access; it's not yet considered a mode of preservation

Aspects of digital library services:

• digitization occurs on demand
• provides access to details available in the master image not available to unaided eye
  
• feature web 2.0 attributes
• makes metadata harvestable
• encourages the "resue and exchange" of information
  

Proactive digitization (UCLA plans)

Digitization can foster scholarly collaborations. Some examples:

• Cuneiform Digital Library Initiative
• Hypercities
  
• Encyclopedia of Egyptology

There are some digitization issues here. A good example: Cuneiform tablets are not just text, but are three dimensional objects, making their digitization problematic. It's an issue that's being wrestled in the digital worlds of libraries versus museums.

With the Hypercities project (and others), Stephen foresees the growth of cooperative digitization and metadata harvesting among various institutions.

Elements of the virtual research environment:

• web 2.0 tools
• collaboration, or not, as needed (small working groups classes, open to public)
• gathering and sharing of metadata and/or digital objects
• publishing

In the question and answer period following the talks, Terry Belanger spoke briefly, and reminded all of the hullabaloo that greeted microfilming. In refererence to microfilm's passing, he said: "Digitization is the next thing; it too shall pass." Of course he got a big laugh, but many erupted into applause.

Another person's question was left unanswered: whether the scholarly use of digitized information has the same status as the actual study of objects.