December 2011

Editing Myself – a new song from me

by David Lee King on December 31, 2011

As long-time readers of my blog know, I like to write and share music every once in a blue moon. I don’t know when the next blue moon might be, but it’s the end of the year, so here’s a song!

I’ve been working on a book for much of 2011, and will be doing more writing in 2012 … and I’ve been editing myself a lot … so I thought I’d write a song about editing myself.

Feel free to take a listen (song is embedded above)! I’m playing with Bandcamp too – here’s my Bandcamp page. If you REALLY enjoy the song, feel free to buy it for a whopping $.99 (plus tax, I think). Bandcamp is cool!

OK – the song…

Editing Myself (by David Lee King)

Drinkin lots of coffee, got my writer’s hat on
inkin lines on my laptop, typin into dawn
if it doesn’t measure up, if my copy don’t fly
I’m gonna click and drag it right into my trashcan pile

I am editing myself
I am editing myself
pullin my thesaurus off the shelf
cause I am editing myself

I don’t always scribble everything exactly right
all my words don’t rhyme and my letters seem to fight
I can highlight copy paste to my heart’s content
rewrite what i don’t like until my brain is spent

now i got a rhyming dictionary and I’m lookin up a word
I need three syllables that rhyme with bird
not sure how it’ll fit, it is probably absurd
but if you’ve listened this far, well, you might have overheard

Enjoy, and here’s for a wonderful 2012!

Tagged as: editing, editing myself, music, proof, proofreading, song, songwriting

Be the first to comment

Most Popular Posts and Videos of 2011

by David Lee King on December 30, 2011

Here’s a list of some of my most popular content from 2011, including blog posts, videos, photos, and presentations. I hope you enjoy poking through this list, and more importantly, following along – reading, watching, viewing, etc – in 2012!

Most Popular Blog Posts of 2011:

Most Popular Videos of 2011:

i-microphone for the iphone – the Edutige EIM-001 (embedded below) – me testing out an iPhone microphone. Viewed 5574 times and counting, mainly because the US distributor put a link to my video on their website.
Testing out my RØDE VideoMic Pro – me testing out another microphone. Viewed 2617 times – proper use of keywords put my video in the first page of hits for “RØDE VideoMic Pro.”
Morphwiz – an iPad Music Creation App – me playing with an iPad synthesizer. Viewed 2134 times. Proper use of keywords and tags is the culprit again – this video appears in the first page of hits for “Morphwiz.”
OK, and my most popular video ever – Learning Blues Harp – viewed 63,469 times since 2007. Embarrassingly enough, I’m pretty certain it gets hit so much (and then gets some nasty comments) is because of my poor use of keywords! When I titled the video “Learning Blues harp,” I really meant “I’m just starting to learn blues harp.” Everyone else apparently clicks on the video, thinking “I’m going to learn HOW TO PLAY blues harp from an expert!” Oops.

Most Popular Presentation of 2011:

Seriously Social – Leveraging Social Media: Focus on Facebook – viewed 4686 times on Slideshare (and well attended a couple of times, too).

Most popular photos of 2011:

From Flickr: viewed 289 times…

… and my personal favorite from 2011 in Flickr – my family. Viewed only 16 times, which is actually sorta amazing:

And my most popular pic in Instagram from 2011 (I’m davidleeking on instagram – Instagram is VERY COOL):

Here’s to a great 2011, and to an even better 2012!

Tagged as: 2011, annual, blogs, photographs, photos, popular, Presentations, recap, videos

Be the first to comment

Five P’s of Preparation

by David Lee King on December 22, 2011

I’m reading The Secrets of Facilitation: The S.M.A.R.T. Guide to Getting Results with Groups by Michael Wilkinson (all us managers at the library are reading it right now).

I just read about the 5 P’s of Preparation – talking about planning for a meeting (on page 53). But I realized as I was reading the 5 P’s that they also work pretty well for planning and discussing a technology project.

So – here are my modified 5 P’s of Techie Project Planning:

Purpose – what are the key objectives, why are we building/redesigning this?
Product – what’s the goal? What’s the end result? How will we know we were successful?
Participants – who needs to be involved? Who are we building this for?
Probable issues – are there any concerns? Any roadblocks or challenges in our way? How can we prevent those?
Process – What steps do we need to take to meet our goals?

What steps do you use when planning a technology or web project? Do they look similar to this? Let us know in the comments!

Photo by Bigstock

Tagged as: planning, project management, project plan, technology planning

1 comment

Writing for American Libraries

by David Lee King on December 20, 2011

Head’s up – remember that Public Libraries Magazine column that I have been writing with Michael Porter for about five years (wow – 5 years. Really?)?

Well – starting in January, Michael Porter and I will have a new column … and we have moved from Public Libraries Magazine to American Libraries.

Our new column is called Outside/In, and here’s what we plan to write about:

“The Outside/In column will bring information about what’s happening in the larger world of tech trends (outside) to see how they apply to libraries (in). Readers can expect practical information, news and tips about emerging Web and technology trends” (from American Libraries’ press release).

We plan to stuff those columns with great, useful content … and stuff even more into the online version of those columns! So – read it in the magazine, but make sure to visit the online version too. There, you’ll find links and extra online-only content. And you’ll also be able to leave comments there (which we’d really appreciate!).

Here’s the online version of our first article - Calls to action online.

Enjoy!

Photo by way cool cindiann

Tagged as: ALA, almag, American Libraries, american library association, column, david lee king, magazine, michael porter

3 comments

Content Creation, Media Labs, and Hackerspaces

by David Lee King on December 15, 2011

Skokie Public Library's Digital Media Lab

I’ve been thinking about content creation and libraries lately. Right now, we collect content – hence our shelves of stuff. Yes, we do many other things too. But if you look at our buildings, they have been, by and large, designed for collections of stuff – for collecting content.

Some libraries are changing that focus (or at least adding on to it) by enabling customers to create their own content in a variety of ways … and it’s pretty interesting stuff!

I’ll lump what I’m seeing into three loose categories:

Digital Media Labs
Hackerspaces
Coworking spaces

Digital Media Labs: These spaces have content creation tools that allow customers to create and share video, music, photography, and design projects. Customers have access to computers with editing software, cameras, camcorders, microphones, and musical keyboards.

The best examples I’ve seen of this so far are Skokie Public Library’s Digital Media Lab and Chicago Public Library’s YouMedia project. Skokie’s lab has a greenscreen wall for video projects; Youmedia includes a small recording studio space.

Hackerspaces: ”A hackerspace … is a location where people with common interests, often in computers, technology, science, or digital or electronic art (but also in many other realms) can meet, socialise and/or collaborate … hackers can come together to share resources and knowledge to build and make things” (from Wikipedia).

Basically, hackerspaces tend to be public spaces with tools – 3D printers, drill presses, etc. And people make stuff there. Who’s doing this? Well, Allen County Public Library and Fayetteville Free Library are, for starters.

Coworking Spaces: Coworking is a pretty simple concept. Independent workers, freelancers, small business owners, etc. gather in a shared space to share ideas, team up on projects, and get some work done in a more social setting. It’s an alternative to meeting at home or a local coffee shop.

Libraries have unofficially done this for years (how many of you have heard of a patron who runs his/her business from the library? I’ll bet some of you have). But some libraries are going a step or two further by embedding librarians in these spaces, or even offering coworking spaces as part of their services. Meg Knodl, a librarian at Hennepin County Library, is doing this – here’s an article on what Meg is doing. Helsinki City Library has created some coworking spaces – read more about it here.

For more info, check out these articles:

Question – is your library doing something like this? If so, let me know in the comments!

Photo by Skokie Public Library

Tagged as: change, co-working, content, content creation, coworking, creative space, digital media lab, fab lab, hackerspace, hacklab, innovation, libraries, Library, makerspace, media lab, music

6 comments

Embeddable Tweets – What do they do?

by David Lee King on December 9, 2011

Just testing out Twitter’s new “Embed this Tweet” feature. It lets me embed a tweet within my blog post. Here’s my example:

Just testing out embeddable tweets – this will be posted to my blog tomorrow. Let’s see what happens with it!

— David Lee King (@davidleeking) December8, 2011

Interesting. It lets you:

See my Tweet in a more “twitter-like” format
follow me
reply, retweet, favorite

It’s sorta like you are on Twitter … outside of Twitter. Even cooler is this: since it’s not a screenshot, viewers/readers can actually click and follow/respond. It’s a simple way to prompt Twitter users to do that next step. Nice!

So – what do you think of Twitter’s new Embed this Tweet feature? Will you find ways to use it?

Tagged as: call to action, embed, next step, social media, tweet, twitter

9 comments

Focus on Youtube – Summary and Why?

by David Lee King on December 8, 2011

If you haven’t noticed, I’ve been writing and thinking about Youtube for awhile. Here’s a list of my recent Youtube posts:

Why have I been focused on Youtube? Well, a couple of reasons. One, I really needed to re-focus on Youtube a bit at work. Writing and thinking about this stuff really helps me figure out what I need to do next for my library’s Youtube account.

One more reason – Youtube is a social network, with subscribers, friends, content creators, comments, likes, and favorites. If you want friends, subscribers, comments … and more importantly, video viewers, you need to be there. You need to watch videos, leave comments, likes, favorites, share videos, etc. That gets you noticed by others in the Youtube community (and your local customers who use Youtube).

Try out some of my suggestions, and see if you can increase engagement in Youtube in 2012!

Community pic by Bigstock

Tagged as: community, social media, social network, video, youtube

3 comments

I was on the Bibliotech Podcast

by David Lee King on December 1, 2011

Remember that Library Podcasts you Might Find Useful post of mine from a few weeks back? Well … I was just interviewed on one of them!

The Bibliotech podcast, one of the five podcasts from Dquarium, interviewed me. I chatted with Kayhan B., Erin Anderson, and Doug Mirams, and we had a fun, interesting chat about the social web, new media, and the importance of well-designed library websites and digital branches.

Here’s the embed of the show (or better yet, just go subscribe via iTunes):

Bibliotech 10: Digitized and Virtualized by dquarium

Not familiar with Bibliotech? Here’s what they say about their show: “Libraries have always been the backbone of any information society. Bibliotech is an audio podcast that discusses all things digital technology at our libraries. Hosted by Kayhan B., Erin Anderson and Doug Mirams (with occasional guests).”

So far, they’ve interviewed me, Michael Stephens, Sarah Houghton, Jan Dawson, and have talked about a variety of technology and web-related topics. Check it out!

Tagged as: bibliotech, david lee king, dquarium, interview, podcast

1 comment

davidleeking: Hey – what a great idea. Thanks for sharing!
bkbelton: Try putting your phone in “airplane mode” to reduce interference, if you haven’t tried...
Bethanyjolee: awesome idea! I wonder if I could get something together like this (not via a library, but something...
davidleeking: Not churlish – thanks for the addition!
davidleeking: Here’s a template letter from the New Jersey Library Association to publishers...