jdupuis | July 8, 2011I chose this one more for the humourous title of the post since the content itself is very seriously intentioned.
I almost see this as a double sequel to both the social media evilness post and to some of my recent ramblings on thought leadership.
The post in question is We Don't Need No Steenkin' Social Media Gurus by York prof Robert Kozinets.
After I had left the stage and assumed a position within the audience, beer in hand, a woman began talking to me in the crowd. Let's call her "Jennifer." Jennifer told me that she knew nothing about social media even a few weeks ago, but that her…
jdupuis | July 5, 2011Yet another science blogging community. The more the merrier.
We've had another quiet period in the science blogging universe these last couple of months. It seems that the rapid evolution that kicked off with the founding of Scientopia in the wake of Pepsigate is continuing.
And this is the big one: Scientific American Blogs. This is easily the biggest and most important science blogging community launch since ScienceBlogs itself launched back in 2006.
Of course, it was engineered by the master of us all, Bora Zivkovic.
Here's what he has to say about the makeup of the network:
Diversity…
jdupuis | July 2, 2011Libraryland is sometimes plagued with a civility problem.
We disagree but we want to be nice about it. But sometimes, being nice isn't a great way to express disagreement. Life and the world is messy and unkind and difficult. And sometimes our commitment to our ideas and passionate disagreements need to reflect that.
But the temptation for those in power -- those at whom the anger is often directed -- need to keep a lid on the very human anger and resentments that often boil over in what might seem like minor disagreements. It's hard to control those kinds of deep feelings and the best…
jdupuis | July 2, 2011You would think what with me being Canadian and all and this being the day after Canada Day, I'd somehow try and find the energy to hunt up a nice piece of Canadian humour to highlight in my weekly Friday Fun feature.
We Canadians are pretty funny, after all.
I guess it's even more Canadian not to bother highlighting or promoting other Canadians. Tall poppy syndrome, eh?
Anyways, this one from The Cronk of Higher Ed is pretty funny: Summer Conference Director Suspended for Damning Youth Group to Hell.
Dr. Charlotte Digges, president of Lottie University, issued a statement today condemning…
jdupuis | June 30, 2011Sometimes two posts just collide in my brain.
I thought I'd share a recent case of this phenomenon.
First up, marketing/PR/social media Rock Star Mitch Joel on taking the best advantage of the inherent evilness of social networks like Twitter in The New Media Pecking Order.
Newsflash: the world is one big pecking order.
My friend - the rock star - travels infrequently by plane. I'm a loyal customer of the airline. It doesn't seem fair and it doesn't make sense. C'est la vie. Klout, PeerIndex, Twitter Grader and others simply bring to light something we've all known for a very long time: it's…
jdupuis | June 25, 2011As you read this, I'll be at TEDxLibrariansTO helping out with registration. And having a great time talking about librarians as thought leaders!
As I've done for the last few days, here is my answer for yesterday's TEDxLibrariansTO Countdown Question:
Question 1: What means should librarians choose to encourage their institutions to embrace change?
I'm not sure I know how to approach even beginning to answer this question other than to just say 42!
However, I was lucky enough to attend Drew Dudley's amazing keynote address at yesterday's York IT Day conference. He really talked about…
jdupuis | June 24, 2011This one's pretty funny, but in a painful way.
I'm sure this one rings true for a lot of people out there.
I like Number 8:
8.) Self-Entitled Social-Media HotShots
Who You Are: Your license plate reads "SCLEXPT". You spend all day teaching computer illiterate people how to create a facebook pages and twitter logins and you mock anyone who doesn't spend three hours a day updating their FB status or tweeting photos of their lunch. You have about as much "expertise" as 24-hour online certified priests, but tout your "knowledge" like a peacock on parade.
What's the Remedy: Make somebody money…
jdupuis | June 23, 2011Following on from the last three days, here are my answers for today's TEDxLibrariansTO Countdown Questions:
Question 1: What are the similarities or characteristics of thought leaders that you know? Tell us about the attributes that your ideal thought leader would have.
I don't think any one person could actually have all the qualities of the idea thought leader but there are some commonalities across the ones I've encountered.
Originality. A thought leader needs to bring something new to the public sphere, or at very least take an established idea and present it in a fresh, original…
jdupuis | June 23, 2011The Library Chapter of the York University Faculty Association has released the following unanimously approved letter:
York University Faculty Association, Library Chapter
240 York Lanes, York University
4700 Keele St.
Toronto, ON
M3J 1P3
June 2, 2011
Dr. Patrick Deane, President and Vice-Chancellor
238 Gilmour Hall, McMaster University
1280 Main St. West
Hamilton, ON
L8S 4L8
Dear President Deane,
We write in support of the librarians and archivists at McMaster University. In particular we express our grave concern over the recent downsizing of professional staff, the casualization of labour…
jdupuis | June 22, 2011Following on from the last two days, here are my answers for today's TEDxLibrariansTO Coundown Questions:
Question 1: How can experience of failure contribute to making an effective thought leader?
Failure is useful for a thought leader in the same way that it's useful for everyone. We can learn a lot from our failures: how to dust ourselves off and start over, how to rethink what we've done before and learn from our mistakes, how to put what we do in a larger interpersonal, organizational and social context. After all, just as we rarely succeed alone, we also rarely fail alone. Sure, the…
jdupuis | June 21, 2011A couple of odd ones from last week's Inside Higher Ed, both related to the way scholarship, higher education and the intelligent design/creationism movement intersect.
First up, Blasphemy of a Different Kind, involving people possibly being fired for teaching evolution at an Adventist school. Although the university involved claims that the firings weren't related to the teaching of evolution, it's hard to imagine that there wasn't some connection.
The president of La Sierra's board of trustees on Friday asked for the resignations of Jeff Kaatz, the vice president for university…
jdupuis | June 21, 2011Following on from yesterday, here are my answers for today's TEDxLibrariansTO Coundown Questions:
Question 1: What should we expect/demand of our thought leaders?
I'm not sure I like the way this question is phrased, preferring something like, "What do thought leaders actually do?" We certainly shouldn't demand anything of our thought leaders, it's not like we're paying them to do their jobs. Even "expectations" seems like a strong word.
To a large extent, thought leaders just are. I'm not sure we can speak of "followers" having "expectations" of leaders in the same way we could in a…
jdupuis | June 20, 2011The very fine TEDxLibrariansTO team is counting down to this Saturday's big event with some daily questions for us all to consider.
The topic, of course, is Librarians as Thought Leaders!
These are the questions for Day 5. I'll attempt to answer them and every day's questions very briefly. I figure if I go for extremely brief answers, there's actually a chance I'll get to them every day!
Question 1: Name one thing we could do right now in order to be perceived as thought leaders outside the profession.
My Answer: Predictably, perhaps, I'll answer that we should mostly (but not completely)…
jdupuis | June 19, 2011I have a whole pile of science-y book reviews on two of my older blogs, here and here. Both of those blogs have now been largely superseded by or merged into this one. So I'm going to be slowly moving the relevant reviews over here. I'll mostly be doing the posts one or two per weekend and I'll occasionally be merging two or more shorter reviews into one post here.
This one, of Follies of Science: 20th Century Visions of Our Fantastic Future, is from April 26, 2007.
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I don't have to much to say of a deep or profound nature to say about this book. It's one of those "Whatever…
jdupuis | June 17, 2011I like the subtitle of this Onion article too: "'Mature Adults Could Be Gone Within 50 Years,' Experts Say"
In the wake of this week's rioting in Vancouver over the loss of a game, it seems particularly appropriate: Nation Down To Last Hundred Grown-Ups.
Of all the many Onion articles I've linked to over the years, this one has to be one of the best:
The endangered demographic, which is projected to die out completely by 2060, is reportedly distinguished from other groups by numerous unique traits, including foresight, rationality, understanding of how to obtain and pay for a mortgage,…
jdupuis | June 14, 2011
Facebook's face recognition strategy may be just the ticket
Is e-learning the food-bank of education?
My "must have" apps after 1 academic year on the iPad
Teaching Them How to Think
The (Revised) Case Study
Why I Decided to Start a Blog
When Social Networks Become Tools of Oppression: Jillian C. York
Tinkering with technology education
Zuckerberg and Schmidt warn on over-regulation of web
The Value of a Humanities Degree: Six Students' Views
Entrepreneurship vs. Scholarship?
The Facebook Mirror
Roads Taken and Not Taken
Hard work and success and the difference between the two
with great…
jdupuis | June 13, 2011I'll be at the 2011 ACM/IEEE Joint Conference on Digital Libraries at the University of Ottawa for the next few days. I plan on doing a bit of tweeting while I'm there but probably no live blogging.
I hope to have a summary post up here sometime after the conference with my impressions. Taking advantage of the relative proximity of Ottawa, this will be my first time at JCDL and I'm really looking forward to it. It's probably a bit more technical than I've been getting into recently but stretching the mind is always a good thing.
I hope to see some of you there. Definitely if you're…
jdupuis | June 13, 2011Here's a list worth giving a listen to: 10 Scientist Rock Stars. Let's take a look, starting with by far the most famous:
Brian May. Brian May is the guitarist for a little band called Queen. He is consistently ranked as one of the greatest guitarists of all time. And he has a Ph.D. in astrophysics. May studied physics and mathematics at Imperial College London and was in the process of getting his Ph.D. when Queen hit it big. Thirty years later, in 2007, he completed his dissertation. Yes, the man who wrote "We Will Rock You" also wrote A Survey of Radial Velocities in the Zodiacal Dust…
jdupuis | June 10, 2011I've watched a lot of bad science fiction movies over the years, but somehow have management to avoid 4 out of the 5 mentioned in Technology Review's list The Five Worst (Hard) Science Fiction Movies Ever!
2012 (2009)
Lawnmower Man (1992): Trying to capitalize on the then-current zeitgeist of virtual reality, this movie is basically Flowers For Algernon, except that the mentally disabled human guinea pig ends up getting angry rather than reverting to their original condition. Like many similar cyberspace movies, Lawnmower Man uses the eye-rolling idea that the virtual reality interface also…
jdupuis | June 10, 2011From the BBC:
Facebook founder Mark Zuckerberg and Google boss Eric Schmidt have warned governments worldwide not to over-regulate the internet.
Mr Zuckerberg said governments cannot cherry pick which aspects of the web to control and which not to.
*snip*
"People tell me on the one hand 'It's great you played such a big role in the Arab spring [uprisings], but it's also kind of scary because you enable all this sharing and collect information on people'," said Facebook's founder.
"But it's hard to have one without the other. You can't isolate some things you like about the internet and…