NHEMA talks 2006

gave two talks at the NHEMA conference this past week. I think they went well, other people tell me they went very well.

The first started out to be an overview of the concept of library/web2.0. I wanted to put '2.0' in the title, but the conference organizers had no idea what that concept was, and said the attendees wouldn't, either. So the talk evolved into a brief overview of social software that will be impacting education soon, if it hasn't already, and a more in depth introduction to rss feeds and aggregators as a way to explore 2.oish concepts in more detail than we had time for. My boss attended the talk, and she seems to be still reeling. All the attendees said they learned a lot, but they looked kind of stunned. My boss said I pushed them, and that was good. Not sure, though. At least they are now familiar with a couple concepts they weren't. But it still weirds me out that things I take for granted are totally new to them, especially in light of the fact that there is so much out there, so many people, who are way more cutting edge are way more knowledgable than I. I was sort of hoping by the end of this talk to get some people excited about maybe making a NHEMA blog. Maybe next year.

The other talk was on digital audiobooks, focusing on our own very successful program, but giving a lot of background information, links to research, and lots and lots of nuts&bolts. It was the kind of talk where I got to say two sentences, then there was a question. Good for audience interactivity, bad for trying to keep up with my own slides. Good for keeping me on my feet.