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Here’s the full speakers list and here’s my session! So many virtual friends to finally meet in person. So fun!

It was also my first official time presenting at a major conference, which was very exciting!

On Wednesday, Kathryn Klages, Klara Maidenberg, and I presented a half-day preconference on “The 23 Skills and Habits of Great Virtual Reference Staff”. Sections consisted of: VR History Overview; askON Operations Overview; askON CALL Pilot Project Overview; RUSA; Inappropriate Behaviour; 23 Behaviours  which were interspersed with four interactive exercises.

On Thursday, Tim Ireland and I presented “Virtual Reference Voice…The Next Frontier” where I was able to report on some initial findings from our ongoing askON CALL pilot project.

The askON CALL pilot will continue through April where I’ll present final results at Computers in Libraries conference in Arlington Virginia on April 13, 2010. I’m SO excited about this because I’ve never been to CiL before and I will be able to “meat” the rest of my personal learning network of librarian rock stars who have been incredible supporters, mentors, and amazing virtual friends!

In this time of economic restraint, Knowledge Ontario must ensure that it can demonstrate the strongest possible case to potential funders of the value of its work. We can make the case that through its provincial partnerships and collaborations, KO services generate significant cost savings. Now we are documenting the value of the services to Ontarians.

While we have a compelling story to tell, the most powerful part of that story is you. That’s what gives us the ability to describe the hundreds of “on the ground” experiences that provide real and lasting impacts in the lives of people in communities across Ontario. We ask your help in telling the stories that demonstrate the value of our work and make it tangible to funders.

Thank you for taking the time to fill out the KO postcard now.

Been busy at MPOW preparing to add voice to our chat reference service as a pilot. We want to see if this will enhance the reference experience within the chat interaction. It’s also another method of access for those with limited typing ability or text-based learning challenges such as dyslexia or illiteracy.

The chat client currently used has the capability for VoIP on its US server, but not on our UK server, which is the one we use in order to protect the privacy of our visitors. So we’ve decided to utilize Skype for the purposes of our pilot. Every interaction will begin as usual by initiating a chat, and should the librarian decide to initiate Skype, they will still use simultaneous chat to send links, etc. which ensures a valuable chat transcript for the visitor’s future reference. Data will be collected by a mandatory “operator” (librarian) survey and the visitor exit survey, should they choose to complete it.

Many individual libraries have experimented with or incorporated Skype into reference services, but to the best of my knowledge, this will be the first collaborative of over 50 libraries that will be testing it out.

Char Booth has published a few articles about Skype in libraries. For the purposes of our pilot, we are not interested in piloting Skype’s video feature, but here is a slide show from Booth on voice and video.

Stay tuned and wish us luck for our launch on Monday! I’ll tell ya how it goes

After seeing only a handful of people at CLA’s 2009 conference session 511E “Net Neutrality and What it means for Libraries”, I realised that we (librarians) have a challenge on our hands: not enough people know/care about net neutrality. Danielle Dennie and Alex Guindon of Concordia University Libraries delivered excellent, current information during their session. The following are some key points from the session:

• Network neutrality was first defined by Tim Wu. The idea is that communication and transport networks should be neutral is based on the idea of common carriers.
• Legal benefits: liability protection—not responsible for illegal content transmitted; and public right of way to provide their service.
• Obligations: that they must carry all people or content indiscriminately, also interconnection and reasonable price for access.
• Canada’s telecommunications act.
  • CRTC has decided to intervene as little as possible in the area of retail internet services.
  • Public hearings will be held in July.
• Brand X decision: in 2005, US Supreme Court confirmed that cable companies are info services and not telecommunication services.
• Technological aspects:
  • Info on the net is transmitted in data packets.
  • Original design was TCP/IP, a “dumb” network. Essentially was only meant to route data packs. Nodes make no judgment on the data.
  • Packets are transmitted:
    • FIFO: first in first out
    • Best effort: no guarantee that data is delivered.  Some packets are dropped. Speed depends on network traffic.
• Several authors claim that the internet has not been neutral for a long time.
• Graham Longford presents 2 types of discrimination
  • Content discrimination:
    • Preferred content arrangements: some content only accessible via specific ISPs.
    • Access tiering and transmission tariffs: ISPs want to apply additional charges to content providers and users for faster lanes.
    • Content blocking, filtering and deep packet inspection (DPI): blocking by address or by looking at actual contents. Famous case where TELUS blocked their workers union’s website during a strike. Clear case of censorship and discrimination.
    • Distributed computing: distributed network of local servers to cache high-demand pages.
  • Protocol and application discrimination (network management):
    • Port blocking.
    • Traffic shaping/traffic prioritization.
    • Quality of service enhancements (QoS).
• Net neutrality debate
  • For net neutrality:
    • Is broadband an essential utility? If you answer yes, it has to be protected.
    • Innovation was made possible because it was a neutral medium. More likely to come from small businesses or individuals than from large firms.
    • Traffic management is not efficient and ends up being more costly than the investment in infrastructure.
    • Incumbent can artificially slow down traffic to convince nonusers to pay more for a quality of service enhancements.
  • Against net neutrality:
    • Content providers (like Google and other biggies) have a free ride. They benefit from the existing networks without having to pay.
    • Network innovation is best served by market solutions.
    • Legislation is inefficient and costly.
    • New income sources are needed for network upgrade (investment in the last-mile).
    • The end of guaranteed access to incumbent infrastructure is strong incentive for innovation in last-minute access.
  • A third position:
    • Internet is not neutral now and hasn’t been.
    • It would be hard to go back to purely neutral.
    • Not all discrimination is bad.
    • There is a need for network management.
• Prior to 2008, not a lot of media or attention was devoted to net neutrality in Canada
  • 2005 Shaw communication instituted a $10 QoS charge for using third party VoIP.
  • 2005 TELUS cuts subscriber access to pro-union website “voices for change”.
  • 2005 Rogers admits to traffic shaping—throttling peer to peer traffic on its network (slowing it down).
• Bell Canada throttled their retail service and third party ISPs.
• In November 2008, CAIPs application against throttling was denied by CRTC. CRTC said that no one was able to prove that Bell was doing anything with their customer information. On the same day, CRTC said that they were sensitive to the arguments. They called a review of the internet traffic management practices of internet service providers. Two weeks ago CAIP asked the CRTC to rescind their decision.
• Charlie Timmons tabled a net neutrality bill last Friday.
• In the US…
  • Net neutrality garners a lot more media and political attention in Canada.
  • 2005 FCC released net neutrality principles.
  • Oct 2007, Comcast was throttling peer to peer communications.
  • In winter of 2008, FCC held two public hearings. In August of 2008, FCC found Comcast guilty of violating principals.
• In the US, throttling is discriminatory. This is NOT the case in Canada.
• It is possible to treat congestion on networks without throttling.
• Hearings in July will be interesting. Over 11, 000 people filed a comment to the CRTC.
• Net neutrality in libraries
  • Intellectual freedom and access to information
    • Most libraries have a statement for this.
    • Without net neutralities, ISPs could give preference to its own info, etc. there would be two tiers: fast and easy, vs. slow.
    • Teaching critical thinking skills becomes difficult without net neutrality
    • Universities straight out block peer to peer applications–they don’t even throttle. Examples of blocked applications are Skype and Facebook, but also some blogs are blocked as well!
    • UofT applies download caps: 2 gigs of data per week. Research in the social sciences can use this very quickly. Also, what if Fine Arts students need access to big images, video, etc.?
  • Protecting cultural diversity
    • Without net neutrality, it’s very difficult to disseminate.
    • Globe and mail had series called the download decade. Peer to peer applications.
    • If libraries can’t give access to Canadian cultural content, this is problematic.
  • Privacy protection
    • DPI technology has the capability to look into the content of messages sent over internet.
    • Most libraries have a statement on info privacy.
    • If ISPs have ability to track user searches, viewed websites, etc., libraries would not be able to provide privacy to patrons.
• Is the net an essential public utility?
• It has to remain under public control.
• Network operators cannot discriminate as they wish because:
  • They are themselves content providers. They are content owners (vertical integration).
  • There is a lack of competition, especially in North America.
  • They are not transparent about their traffic management practices.
• There is a need for some form of regulation. It would be unpractical to have a purely neutral net. Legislation should be flexible and adapted to the current technological environment. The legislation should be based on a normative framework that specifies what public duties the net should serve.
• ISPs should be transparent and accountable to public bodies.
• Investment in last-mile architecture is needed and should be facilitated by governments. New forms of last-mile management should be explored.

Further reading on net neutrality:

• Net neutrality proponents target national broadband debate By Dan O’Shea
• Net neutrality in Seattle Times Letters to the editor
• a blog entitled Net neutrality in Europe
• Canadian ISPs need you to tell the regulator to force Bell to stop screwing them — and the Canadian public by Cory Doctorow on Boing Boing
• Net neutrality doesn’t exist, CRTC told in CBC news
• Broadband stimulus guidelines call for net neutrality on FierceWireless
• Net neutrality advocates score big win with broadband stimulus rules on Network World
• Net neutrality gets a boost from the feds on Cnet

• Here is The Agenda “Ontario’s Innovation Economy” from the Center for International Governance Innovation in Waterloo with John Wilkinson, Richard Florida, Sheila Block, and Jim Balsillie. Here are some ideas that are resonating with me:

• At 5:25: We are shifting from the industrial economy to the innovation economy (Florida)

• At 8:30: Serial entrepreneurialism (Wilkinson)

• At 12:32: now we’re moving to an economy powered by innovation, entrepreneurship, the human mind (Florida)

• At 13:20: we’ve got to make it work for everyone—not just an innovative elite (Florida)

• At 13:33: RIM’s success story (the Blackberry peops) (Balsillie)

• At 15:30: Creation of Ministry of Research and innovation was created four years ago for the future. (Wilkinson)

• At 12:30: Obama is trying to figure this out too: how do you create a social safety net for the creative age? (Florida)

• At 29:06: the skills to be successful yesterday are changing right now (Balsillie)

• At 29:30: in the 21stC, we have to understand the global world and have the global world understand us (Wilkinson)

• At 30:20: Innovation is just about taking great ideas and turning them into great jobs (Wilkinson)

• At 35:38: Florida talks about manufacturing.

• At 37:00: Factory jobs pay well, but aren’t necessarily great work (Florida)

• At 41:10: Question from the audience about innovation in a broader social sense

• At 41:37: Transforming ourselves to this green economy so that we can live sustainably on our planet. This brings job opportunities. (Wilkinson)

• At 43:00: We have to starting “doing” a little earlier. The smartest, most innovative kids were the kids I grew up with (Florida). They had that squelched out of them by school systems that couldn’t understand their creativity. (Florida)

• Here is the report on “Ontario’s Opportunities in the Creative Age” By Roger Martin and Richard Florida

• It used to be that we were what we owned or thought. Today, we are what we share! I leave you with this video entitled “we think“

What do YOU think? (This blog post was originally written on Knowledge Ontario Ideas Ning. Feel free to join the conversation and contribute to Knowledge Ontario’s (and your own institution’s) future)

Kevin Kelly’s TED Talk on the next 5,000 days of the web is worth taking 19:34 of your time to watch. Here’s a summary of a few resonating ideas in my mind:

• 10 years ago, we thought the web was going to be TV or better
• First lesson we’ve learned: believe in the impossible
• We’re creating ONE MACHINE
• 100 billion clicks per day, 55 trillion links between webpages in the world.
• The web is a black hole, sucking everything into it
• The new economy is the marriage of embedding the digital into the material world
• All media becomes one media platform
• Attention is a currency
• McLuhan reversal: humans are extended senses of the machine! (McLuhan said machines are the extensions of the human senses)
• We’re in the third stage of linking data (see Tim Burners-Lee TED talk on “The next web of open/linked data”) Linking ideas to ideas: a level beyond pages and into items.
• You should be able to carry all your relationships around via social networking sites. This is where we’re heading. You have to be OPEN to having your data shared which is a bigger step than sharing your webpage.
• We’re heading toward the internet of things. Total personalization requires total transparency.
• Our dependency is nothing to be afraid of. Look at our dependency on the alphabet and writing—a technology that changed our lives
• WE are the web and it’s getting smarter, more personalized, ubiquitous
• This machine/large organism is more reliable than its parts
• One machine. The web is its OS. All screens look inside the ONE. Let the one read it. The one is us. We are in the one.

I’m a Shover and a Maker!

Inspired by the Library Society of the World, Shovers and Makers is a thoughtful tip of the hat to those who work in the LIS world:

“…at the Library Society of the World, we can’t help but wonder about everyone else in libraryland. While the Movers and Shakers are moving and shaking, what are the rest of us doing? Standing still? Surely not.”

I’m observing the usual resistance with regards to the latest Facebook changes. The usual Facebook groups are circulating such as “Against Facebook’s New Layout and Terms of Agreement” and “Petition Against the “New Facebook”", etc. When Facebook makes changes, the reaction from its users is always worthy of observing for those of us interested in usability and best web practices.

This time around, I’ve started talking to my Facebook friends to get to the bottom of what bothers them the most when their Facebook world gets turned upside down and their reactions have inspired this blog post. One friend in particular has relayed that he hasn’t “recovered” since the “first time”. (Most of my friends and I have been on Facebook for long enough to see at least two major layout changes). This particular friend has revealed that since the first major change, he hasn’t developed his profile or spent a lot of time “living” in Facebook. Instead, he mainly uses it as a vehicle for communication–in particular the messaging feature has supplemented (and almost surpassed) his email communication with his friends.

So are we seeing Facebook users profile themselves less, but communicate with eachother more? or is has my friend just morphed into an archetype* that just communicates?

*such as the lurker, the troll, the voyeur, the exhibitionist, etc.