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!
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.
Earlier this week, I spoke at the New Berlin Public Library in Wisconsin for the Waukesha County Federated Library System – Wisconsin has some great librarians for sure!
This was a well-attended talk, and there was some really good discussion afterwards. They are definitely thinking about and planning for the future.
And – just for the attendees – I warned you guys! I said I would post this pic to Flickr, and I did. It also makes a great addition to this post. Text is often much better with visuals…
Anyway – here’s the Slideshare version of my Wisconsin talk. This was a longer presentation (3 hours), and I combined some thoughts from my usual Freak Out presentation and my newer Creating Customer Experience presentations. The content blends together pretty nicely.
While in beautiful Australia, I met lots of cool librarians … and gave a couple of presentations, too. Here are the Slideshare versions of the presentations – you had to be there to get the full effect, but still – it gives a glimpse.
Freak Out , Geek Out, Seek Out – I found a couple of Australia examples for this presentation, which was fun.
Modern LibGeek Landscape – some Provocative Questions. A bit of explanation on this one. It was meant to start discussions, and be a bit “out there.” Hence the odd questions!
I recently gave this presentation at ALA11 and at the Virtual ALA11 conference, along with Kolene Allen who focused on Twitter. Both sessions went well … and someone has been asking me to post my slides! So here they are:
In my part of the presentation, I talked about what libraries can do with Facebook Pages, and why they might want to use Facebook Pages to reach out to customers.
If you’re interested, this fall (November 2) I’ll be doing a 90-minute version of this, through the great ALA Techsource webinars – stay tuned for that later on this year!
A couple of weeks ago, I gave a presentation using my iPad, and it worked out pretty well! I used the iPad version of Keynote (Apple’s Powerpoint-like presentation software). Keynote has a handy-dandy presenter notes feature that is really easy to use, so your notes are on your screen, and your slides still appear on the LCD projector – in a much easier and user-friendly way than Powerpoint.
Guess what? The iPad version of Keynote does the same thing. The screengrab above shows the presenter notes view on the iPad. If there’s more text than shows on the screen, just use your finger to scroll down to the rest of the text.
You also use your finger to advance slides – just swipe the screen, and slides advance. Swipe the other way to go back a slide. Pretty simple to use!
Now – how did it work?
It was really easy to set up and use – I just needed to get the iPad VGA adapter, and plug that into our LCD projector. Then the iPad magically did everything else, so I didn’t have to mess with screen resolution compatibility, etc.
I was able to stand up in front of the room (I was presenting for the library’s Board of Trustees, who sit at a long table) with no podium – I just held the iPad, and finger-swiped away.
There were a couple of oddities, too:
If you stand with the iPad, you need to hold onto the VGA cable. Otherwise, the weight of the cable will pull iPad VGA adapter out of your iPad. Not good.
Finger swiping the slides felt a bit odd to me – I’m used to clicking a hand-held thingie to advance slides.
Most important – the on-screen slide appeared first, followed by the presenter notes, so there was a bit of lag time. It looked weird for a bit, so I was swiping back and forth, looking for the correct notes, until I figured out the 1 second lag. Once I figured that out, I was ok.
So – looking to do a presentation without having to lug around a laptop? You might consider using an iPad/Keynote setup – easy stuff!
I just finished giving a presentation via Skype to a thankfully patient group of Australians! So … I decided to get fancy, and attempt sharing my slides via Skype. That didn’t work so well. I think the folks in Australia saw a couple of the slides, then I spent a few wild minutes trying to make it work, all the while asking “what do you see now?”
Well. The microphone worked! And here are my slides (that you mostly didn’t see if you were actually at the conference):
Here’s my newest presentation, given today at INCOL (Inland Northwest Council of Libraries). It was a fun day – and I was able to hang out at Coeur d’Alene Public Library in Coeur d’Alene, ID.
Here’s the Slideshare version of the presentation!
I just finished giving a presentation on Podcasting basics to the local chapter of the American Women in Communication. It was fun – lots of good questions and comments.
I promised them I’d upload my slides, so … here you go!
I gave a couple of presentations at last week’s Computers in Libraries conference (ok – 5, to be exact). I just uploaded them to Slideshare – here they are:
