Michael E. Casey's Blog, page 4
October 23, 2011
Interview with Lee Rainie and John Seely Brown
October 20, 2011
Revisiting Participatory Service in Trying Times
Please take a look at the guest post about participatory service that I wrote for Michael Stephens and the Salzburg Global Seminar week.
Revisiting Participatory Service in Trying Times
October 6, 2011
My Personal Debt to Steve Jobs
I was writing a post about the iPhone when the news of the death of Steve Jobs came across my Google+ stream. Only a minute later my phone started humming with the plethora of texts that are still coming in as I write this.
Jobs touched so many people. In the coming days and weeks, as we watch and read the flood of stories that will be authored, we'll see many people telling us just how deeply they admired and loved Steve Jobs. He was brilliant, daring, and truly visionary. But I want to share one story of why I came to feel that I owed Steve Jobs a very personal debt of thanks.
I've used an Apple iPhone ever since, in early 2008, I was given one by a dear friend after my father died. It didn't take me long to realize the power of that device. One year later my mother would be diagnosed with cancer and she would begin a long and desperate battle. She chose to take treatment several hundred miles away from home because she wanted her to have the best care that she could get.
It was a lonely battle. She had only two family members close to her on a day-to-day basis, and most of her family, including her grandchildren and me, were far away. We talked to her as often as we could, but she was often too weak to talk to all the people who were calling. In the years leading up to her cancer, my mother had cultivated a rather lengthy list of email friends, many going back to her high school days from the 1950s. So, when she found herself far from her computer and trapped in bed because of the debilitating chemotherapy treatments, she quickly lapsed into a depression caused, in no small part, by her isolation.
Then, on January 27, 2010, Steve Jobs stepped onto a stage in San Francisco and announced the iPad. Critics called it an over-sized iPod Touch, but they were so mistaken. I immediately saw the potential, and placed my order.
We flew my mother home during a break between different courses of treatment. It was May, and her grand-kids and I had a special mother's day present waiting for her — an iPad 3G. At first, she did not really know what it was other than a very small computer. But it only took five minutes for her to discover how to use her fingers to swipe between the email app that would connect her to family and friends, the Kindle app that would allow her to continue reading, and the web browser that would connect her to the outside world.
My mother would die six months later. It is not an overstatement to say that the iPad liberated her. The iPad allowed her to rejoin her world of friends, family, reading, and so much more. She even watched religious services on that iPad. She took it with her to her chemo treatments, and it kept her company on the long car rides and airplane rides she would endure over those last few months.
So that is why I will forever feel a debt of gratitude to Steve Jobs. His vision, and the reality of his iPad, freed my mother from solitude and, in her darkest hours, gave her the means to connect with family and friends, and so much more.
October 5, 2011
My Personal Debt to Steve Jobs
Guy Kawasaki on Triangulation
"Facebook is a family reunion and Google+ is a party."
Interesting interview with former Apple evangelist Guy Kawasaki. He's also the author of Enchantment. Guy has an interesting take on the sense of entitlement some people feel towards internet giants like Facebook and Google. His ideas and opinions are always intelligent, unique, and often quite accurate.
Guy Kawasaki on Triangulation
October 4, 2011
Using Google+ Hangouts
I knew it was expecting a lot from a free service. With ten people on a Google+ Hangout, all at the same time, I anticipated there would be problems. And there was one, but only one.
My library's Emerging Technologies Team meets monthly, with every-other month's meeting being remote. They've tried many remote meeting solutions, both paid and free. The pricey professional services work well but are too expensive to purchase the number of licenses we require.
In late June I received an invitation to try Google+. Immediately I began seeing Google+ users like Trey Ratcliff holding informative Hangouts with up to nine of his friends. Others, too, were using Hangouts to bring together groups of people for very fun and lively discussions. The possibilities were obvious.
So, the team set out to hold its next remote meeting via Google+ Hangouts. Everyone who didn't have an account was sent an invitation, and IT made certain that everyone had a device equipped with a web-cam. The Google voice and video plug-in was installed on all the computers. Some early testing was done with small groups of two and three, but the day of the meeting was the first time all ten team members would log on at the same time.
When the time finally came to log on, everything went rather smoothly. Network speeds were rather good, and everyone's video feed was clear. It only took a few minutes for everyone to adapt to the modified speaking style needed for remote video meetings.
All of our problems were related to sound. People relying on their desktop or laptop's built-in microphone were sending out noisy audio — background noise, weak volume, and feedback were all problems. Also, two people were situated in the same room but were using different laptops, each relying on their built-in mic. That was a recipe for feedback hell. One team member briefly tried to use their iPhone, but the audio quality was terrible.
The other audio problem was related to having ten people in the meeting without anyone's mic being muted — everyone was transmitting background noise. While this isn't a problem when one or two people have their mics on, having ten mics on was creating a very high noise to signal situation.
Fortunately, the solutions are rather simple:
Equip everyone with a headphone/microphone. This can be something as cheap as a $5 iMicro device, but a unit that employs noise cancellation works better. I used a Plantronics headset and was very happy with the quality.
Make sure everyone understands to mute their mic when they are not speaking. The moderator can do this, but it's easier if everyone simply does it themselves.
Google Hangouts offer a lot of productivity potential to teams and others wanting to collaborate remotely. New features announced in late September offer the ability to view Google Docs, screenshare, and use a sketchpad. You can even broadcast your Hangout so anyone can watch — you could interview a group of authors and invite everyone in your library system to watch.
We're going to continue exploring the potential of Google Hangouts. With library budgets tight and IT departments looking for more and more ways to find efficiencies, Google Hangouts offers a very appealing set of features at a great price (free). Give it a try and let me know how it works for you.
More info: Google: About Hangouts
You can find me on Google+.
March 31, 2011
Presentation at PLA's Virtual Spring Symposium
Today I had the opportunity to co-present, with Christopher Baker, at the PLA Virtual Spring Symposium. We addressed several of the issues surrounding mobile access, and how libraries are facing these challenges, with special emphasis on the trials and tribulations we see locally at our library. A few small technical glitches aside, I think it went reasonably well. We made an effort to keep the talk grounded in real-world experiences and discuss realistic options given finite staff and resources.
We mentioned several surveys and tools, and I want to list them here.
"Cisco Visual Networking Index: Global Mobile Data" by Cisco. 1 February 2011. 23 March 2011 (PDF)
"The 2010 U.S. Digital Year in Review" by Comscore. 7 February 2011. 23 March 2011
One-Pager website template, which we found on Aaron Schmidt's Walking Paper
Drupal open-source website content management system
Hidden Peanuts Mobile Site Generator
Library Anywhere mobile catalog
LibGuides and LibAnswers
Slides:
A Mobile Feast: Reaching Library Customers via Mobile Technology
View more presentations from michaelecasey
March 30, 2011
Presentation at PLA’s Virtual Spring Symposium
Today I had the opportunity to co-present, with Christopher Baker, at the PLA Virtual Spring Symposium. We addressed several of the issues surrounding mobile access, and how libraries are facing these challenges, with special emphasis on the trials and tribulations we see locally at our library. A few small technical glitches aside, I think it went reasonably well. We made an effort to keep the talk grounded in real-world experiences and discuss realistic options given finite staff and resources.
We mentioned several surveys and tools, and I want to list them here.
"Cisco Visual Networking Index: Global Mobile Data" by Cisco. 1 February 2011. 23 March 2011 (PDF)
“The 2010 U.S. Digital Year in Review” by Comscore. 7 February 2011. 23 March 2011
One-Pager website template, which we found on Aaron Schmidt's Walking Paper
Drupal open-source website content management system
Hidden Peanuts Mobile Site Generator
Library Anywhere mobile catalog
LibGuides and LibAnswers
Slides:
A Mobile Feast: Reaching Library Customers via Mobile Technology
View more presentations from michaelecasey
