Pecha Kucha – Conversation Face-off

Pecha Kucha – Conversation Face-Off!
Greg Schwartz, Library Systems Manager, Louisville Free Public Library
Rebecca Jones, Dysart & Jones Associates
Stephen Abram, VP, Innovation, SirsiDynix & President, SLA
Nancy Dowd, Director of Marketing, New Jersey State Library
David Lee King – substitute speaker

This session was well-attended by a crowd and set of presenters in high spirits, or so it was my impression sitting in the front. Maybe it is just the focused stress to get your ideas across in a short amount of time and under 20 slides. Look up Pecha Kucha on youtube for more on this idea.

Rebecca Jones: Planning is all about knowing. What are the frameworks for creating 2.0 experiences?
Planning is all about knowing where you are, where you want to be, and then closing the gap between the two. Why do plans get derailed? Get the barriers out of the way.

Stephen Abram:
Trendspotting. Some examples: Youtube is more influential than tv ads in this election. This is a visual population. During the Olympics, more people watched the Olympics on computers than tv. video stores are going out of business in preference to netflix. most of the people who are in distance higher ed are single moms. geocatching increases usage as a way of finding places, portability – we are changing to a mainly mobil focus. In colleges, Stephen notices these days that students use mobile phones instead of laptops for taking notes in class.

David Lee King: (substituting for another speaker)
the librarian is the product. Libraries have lots of products: books, magazines, databases, information. We have websites, subject guides, and reference services in im, at the desk, on the phone, or through blog posts. What product should we be selling? Books? – others do this. Search results and info? google already does this. But David says we should promote our stuff more than we do. How? Google answers, but we improve the question. We provide experience, by making the books fun and easy to access, providing an experience for a question. We hold the library together. We (librarians) are the product, we invite people in.

Nancy Dowd, A Marketing Manifesto
we don’t know what to call people who come in the library – she is going to call them by their names
she is going to be transparent; listen and respond
she will no longer support the silence of silos. everyone will communicate among systems that are divided
she will support innovation, try again when there are failures
she will make demands to her vendors.
she will honor all choices of communication tools to connect with people
she will embrace diversity
she will act green, not just think green
she will find the “me” in her library
she will measure the right stuff
she will market to voters.
she will tell stories – takes facts and figures to create stories about the library that matter to people
[a great powerpoint video followed at the end of her slides about the value of libraries]

A vote at the end for the best by cheers and claps – with Nancy Dowd the winner.