More Things- Nbr 47 Evaluation -Final Post

Consider my daily activities on More Things finished.

My season at Split Rock began on Tuesday, May 19, so I enforced my own original deadline for the More Things Program. Besides working three days a week as a historic site interpreter, this coming Friday I resume last summer's activity as a barrista at a Little Marais coffee shop, gift shop B&B. In short, summer on the North Shore has everyone occupied.

I registered on Minnesota Web Junction this morning, and completed a profile. Obviously intended for professional library staff, it does have enough flexibility to allow me to fill in the blanks. Some items were a bit odd, such as the extremely small size profile photo, not easily done in Photoshop Elements. The profile entry balked at my attempts to fill in professional interests. The category selection button stalled my pc, even with true high speed broadband.

What I suggested in my evaluation is to expand on the Web Junction as a core feature of a next More Things program. Invite participants, such as myself, from a wide range of like-minded professional and volunteer interests. Focus on the library as a center for community development, as has been done with electronic classroom. I can see the Things program itself as a community ed offering by paid library professionals or volunteers.

Besides exploring all the tools, the best result of the program for me was improvement in blog writing skills. That should be a core feature of a next program. Create new attractive blogs. Practice writing. Get more followers. Respond to posts.

Some early favorites from the More Things tasks have already faded from my daily use. I will reduce substantially the number of "people" I follow on Twitter. Some of the commercial tweets were fun for awhile, but became annoying. The contacts I've made with More Things participants are close to being authentic friends that I will continue to follow.

Most important to me on Twitter has been Congressman Oberstar, who obviously has someone on staff tweeting for him. It's a great way for him to initiate a request for input or support. His website now includes a secure email address for constituents, validated to the 9-digit zip code address. He responds to those emails.

G.ho.st Cloud Computing has gone untouched on my menu bar for weeks. I've lost interest in Blip.fm as a music source and social network.

I never touched the subject of creating my own podcasts or YouTube clips. I will. My son-in-law spurred my interest in the Microsoft Zune as device to carry a complete library of my digital collections.

I looked at the details of the new Amazon Kindle DX, and decided that is not the way I will read books. Bricks and mortar libraries are safe. As are publishers of the look, feel, and smell of a real book, when I decide to buy one. Online book clubs with blogs can work hand-in-hand with the traditional, live social network found at the library.

A professional librarian can't be beat as a resource, who not only knows the electronic reference materials, but where to get supportive human resources from the community, online and offline.

More Things Nbr 26 - Ning

I joined Ning, filled out a unique profile (compared to my other profiles), and made a link to Facebook. I didn't know how to get a "page" on facebook otherwise.

Ning looks really promising. One spin-off I'm considering with various website and blog possibilities is a marketable Weather Service for the North Shore of Lake Superior. Ning looks to be an easy way to get started and practice with tools.

This morning I got one of those annoying notifications from PBwiki that More Things Nbr 29 had been updated. Kathy Lasley made an interesting comment, and I wanted to reply. I couldn't find her anywhere as a participant in More Things. The search functions on PBwiki and Ning don't find her by name. The only clue was her email address is on a Nett Lake school account. I replied to that address.

A few minutes later I came back to my own blog and saw that I have a sixth follower, Kathy. Her blog is "Sticking 23 Things". I like it.

Do we have a directory of users, blog names, and email addresses?

More Things - Nbr 25 - Plug-ins

"Twenty Usability Tips for Your Blog" I will keep at hand. Along with Mindmapping, to speed up the writing process.

I haven't yet seen how to get plug-ins into Blogger posts. I added an invitation and rss button to the top of the gadgets on the sidebar. I'll try some other plug-ins on my WordPress blog.

One supervisor at 3M advised regarding management by objectives not to list more than nine things, and then narrow that down to four things. When I see Twenty Tips, that's exhausting. There are at least four tips to spend more time doing. Another supervisor made things simpler. Decide what you are going to do and what you are not going to do.

I see a few more More Things followers on Twitter. No more on this blog yet.

More Things - Nbr 34 - Invited authors

Jumping ahead.

I invited my daughter, and a friend who maintains a professional blog, to publish on my WordPress blog. No takers yet.

Moments ago, I invited two library professionals to collaborate with me on this blog. One is Amy in Gilbert, the other, Cheryl at Hibbing. Not many participants in More Things are providing direct email addresses, which is the only way I can see to invite authors to post on Blogger.

Has this kind of collaboration been done already in the first 23 Things?

Cheryl's post on Number 34 struck a chord with me. My response needs more than a comment. It goes way back to 1964 when I was a Student Aide at Hayden Heights Branch Library in St. Paul. One day, a very experienced reference librarian sitting in the back office, overheard me answer a customer's question directly. I knew the answer, and where to find it. Mrs. Powderly was very upset with me for not letting her do her job, but thankfully her wrath was not heard by the public.

Fast forward to the 1980's, and I had developed about 200 programs to analyze 3M International customer service performance to over 50 of its subsidiaries. It was a complicated reference tool that only I could run. I designed the database, and collaborated with IT professionals to do it. I was crossing professional boundaries to provide a valuable service. By 1990, we had developed an online menu-driven application, where anyone could gather their own statistics, or use my canned reports. I'm enjoying many of those experiences for my own purposes on the web.

So, where is the boundary between professionals here? I'm the invited participant, but until this post, you had no idea that I have reference skills and experience.

More Things on a Stick - Nbr 24

Ready to move forward with new Things, I have accomplished already the tasks for Number 24.
In the past ten days, I've done several variations on the appearance of both of my blogs, Dave's Taurus ID, and PartlyDave-More Things.

Avatars I like, and have updated my profile for this blog, Facebook, and Twitter, getting rid of the Florida palm trees and Venus beach blanket after returning to Minnesota.

The most useful change came from Thing Number 13, as I replaced my long-term My Yahoo! home page with a new design from iGoogle. The big time saver comes by displaying three boxes along the top, so Google Reader, Yahoo mail, and gmail are always open, and displaying the top five or so new items. I already had worked for a couple of months with Google Reader in tandem with Taurus ID dashboard, managing the blogs and rss feeds so the latest updates go to the top.

Minor Things

Finally got to read my gmail inbox. Password remained as I had set it, but wasn't accepted for several days. Funny, since I could get right into Blogger with the same gmail account settings. Same thing on Twitter. Couldn't see Cheryl Kay's Twitter gadget until this morning.
Anyway, I found several useful email messages from active Things participants.

One new item on this Taurus ID sidebar is a link to Minnesota.com. They are looking for participants, and promotion on our blogs. Think about it. At least the concept of library professionals committed to learning useful web tools would be helpful to conflicted managers in the public service arena.

I have been applying minor changes to both of my blogs, based on experiences posted by others. I'm not seeing an increase in followers on either blog.

Tinyurl is the most promising of the new tools. I used it to redirect and shorten some url's of interest. The links I show on my sidebars under Blogs and More now have meaningful titles, giving the name of the blogger, suggesting what the content is.

Organizing and Following More Things

I'm impressed! It took me an hour to click on each NCLC blog, and list myself as a follower of anyone who had posted on More Things in the past month. Some bloggers are really active. Everyone but me is a librarian; I'm married to one.

I had more password problems. I failed to write new ones down, am using my wife's laptop pc while we're in Florida, so the passwords Firefox saved are on my pc at home.

One mystery to me is the time delay in activating and updating gadgets. I put a slideshow link on my sidebars to Flickr yesterday in blogspot and WordPress, and only 3 of 14 slides appeared. This morning all 14 of them appeared. I changed nothing.

Dave's 23 Things preview - new to me

Flickr, and Del.icio.us, I've hardly touched since I signed up. I use a Firefox add-on called Cooliris to send up Facebook photo albums to look like a slide show. It will be interesting to try the blogger sidebar gadget to bring my photos in with and without Flickr.

Podcasts I have not tried.

wiki is completely new to me.

partlydave.wordpress.com is my other blogsite. More substantial posts go there. One thing I like about blogger is the flexibility of fonts. I can't figure out how to do that with HTML code on wordpress. On WordPress I like the categorization of posts.

Dave's 23 Things preview

I registered "Dave's Taurus ID" as my blog for More Things on a Stick before I read the instructions. My blog name does not say Things. Look around my preexisting blog posts to find the astrological meaning, and more things about me than the About Me button can hold. I will follow the instruction not to register more than one blog for More Things.

Quickly browsing 23 Things was not quick. ABC Evening News in the background was too interesting to concentrate. Among the many tasks mentioned was Productivity Tools, which I have used in the context of blogs and other social networking applications. Most important was the Power Writing newsletter by Daphne Gray-Grant. See http://www.publicationcoach.com
Staying focused and keeping my posts brief can be a challenge.

Concurrent with the invitation to Join Many Things, the Minnesota History Center Volunteer staff sent an email meant for museum professionals. It would be a stretch to include myself in such a group, so I did not contribute to the discussion about Social Networking as part of the job. Managers and supervisors remain conflicted about the time spent at work doing what we are doing in this learning program.

The concern is valid. My part of tax preparation has to be finished tomorrow, so I can hand the package off to our accountant on Friday. Also a priority tomorrow is my fourth of four classes teaching 5th graders as a volunteer for the Masterpiece Arts Program in Silver Bay.

Writing blogs deserves priority. Learning about new tools is exactly what I had in mind when I started. I said that in my list of priorities for 2009, another blog post. Years ago I took classes offered at 3M from Franklin-Covey, and I still use those productivity tools, beginning with daily prioritizing and putting my personal growth at the top of the list.

More Things on a Stick

More Things on a Stick began a second round of a popular learning program on January 20, promoted by Minnesota Multicounty Multitype Library Systems. My wife, who chairs the Silver Bay Library Board, brought home a flier about it today. I have two days to register.

The first round encouraged library staff to learn about and experiment with Web 2.0 tools. The second round opens the experience to others.

My first test encountered a possible hijack of my registration form by SurveyMonkey.com. At least the registration instructions, FAQ, and generous getting started information did not mention SurveyMonkey as a step in the registration process. Another step requires access to an account on wiki.com. Again, there was no indication that wiki got through to my gmail account. Maybe this is an intelligence test, like being dropped in Midtown Manhattan without a clue about expectations. Just see what comes next always spurs me onward.

One thing I learned from the registration process itself is my Silver Bay Public Library belongs to the NCLC Multitype region.

25 things about me

If you think too much has been posted on this theme, skip the instructions.

Once you've been tagged, you are supposed to write a note with 25 random things, facts, habits, or goals about you. At the end, choose 25 people to be tagged.

1. Our move to Little Marais in April 2001 was the best move we ever made.

2. The first photo of me on the North Shore of Lake Superior was August 1946 in a fishing boat with my dad.

3. My second favorite home was in the village of Praia da Vitorria, Terceira, Azores, Portugal.

4. "I could live in France for a month without worrying about money" (what movie did that quote come from?), I would do that every fall. Tough choice between Cannes and Avignon.

5. One of the toughest choices on becoming a Baha'i in 1973 was complying with the law requiring total abstinence from alcohol, while living on an island in the Azores where some of the best wine in the world cost ten cents per liter, from a farmer who lived just up the block.

6. The next hardest thing to learn as a Baha'i is has been to comply with "avoid partisanship like the plague", and engage the process for effective political action.

7. I started smoking a pipe while in the Azores, because the grizzled old Portuguese weathermen working with me looked too cool. One of the men carved a pipe for me out of a whale tooth.

8. I started oil painting while in the Azores. My transformation to "serious" artist resulted from a "Visual Journaling" workshop at the Grand Portage, Minnesota Trail Center, led by Hazel Belvo.

9. I played cornet from fourth grade through high school. I hardly touched the instrument after that, and finally donated it to a New Orleans relief effort supporting fine arts for youth, after Hurricane Katrina. I couldn't get a buzz out of it anyway.

10. My appreciation for a wide variety of good music dates from those early years in school band. I listened to rock, classical, and jazz on the radio as a preteen. I began collecting LP's in the 50's, and continued collecting every format change since; reel-to-reel, 8 track, cassettes, CD's, and iTunes downloads.

11. My dad had a good Firestone multi-band radio, including shortwave. My earliest obsession was listening late at night to clear channel AM stations and international shortwave broadcasts. I logged hundreds of call letters. I've never been without a good radio.

12. When I visit a new place, I drive around the city, walk the downtown streets, and explore the natural surroundings. If public transportation is available, I ride the El, the Tube, or the buses to see where they go.

13. I prefer the wilderness, but I get along in the big cities too. I could live in Chicago, certain LA neighborhoods, Pasadena, Santa Monica, Santa Barbara, but I would have to get out of town frequently.

14. As a weatherman, I quickly learn how to analyze and forecast the weather where I live. 90 percent accuracy was expected in Wichita Falls. 70 percent was the best we could do in the Azores, because satellite and digital forecasting was primitive in ,the middle of the Atlantic in the 70's. On the North Shore of Lake Superior it's a joke to say you can forecast, but I try.

15. Self-reliance always has been a priority. Today it means I wish I had solar power and some other alternative to the Cooperative power grid. Today, because we are faced with a serious two-day ice storm (Feb 9-10, 2009).

16. My dad was a master gardener. I have failed at every attempt at gardening in Little Marais, but practice Finnish sisu. ( I am Finnish only in my imagined common heritage).

17. I won't sing solo or duet, because my first experience was with my sister and I standing in front of Santa Claus, and making a ridiculous recording of Silent Night. I enjoyed singing in a choir.

18. Social networking is much more than a passing fad. I must be an active part of this rapid, massive, global change.

19. Social networking and blogging are the next phase in developing myself as a user of computer-related technology. The first phase started in 1965. The shock and awe phase was on a tour of 3M computer facilities in 1963, ten years before I knew I could work there.

20. My spiritual awakening as a child was while lying on bedrock crisscrossed with veins of quartzite, a star-filled night, feeling the music of the spheres, somewhere near where I live now.

21. I have experienced ongoing spiritual and personal transformations. Two were of the born-again kind. Common to all transformations was the sense that I must.

22. I wonder about the "I must". I view my self as a created natural and spiritual being. The only limitations imposed by "I must" are physical, or self-imposed.

23. Aurora borealis has been a symbolic blessing meant for me (with Denise sometimes). The appearance of a bald eagle along the shore does the same. A pure white snow goose swam by the morning after my father died.

24. I adopted one practice from the Celestine Prophecy. Watch for someone every day who has something for me, and I in turn have something for them. Watch for opportunities.

25. "Be anxiously concerned with the needs of the age you live in", is a Baha'i practice I encourage everyone to follow.