Sylvia Currie, the fabulous coordinator of SCoPE sent me a well timed email asking me how it went, and so instead of blithely saying “fine”! I gave some thought to my objectives, the outcomes and the stuff in between.

 

1. I packed a suitcase: with a few changes of clothes, my toothbrush, a towel and a roll of toilet paper (the toilet paper is particularly important!). Things I needed for the first couple of days.

2. I rented boxes. I cannot say enough good things about renting boxes (I got mine from Frogbox). They were plastic, big enough for pots and such from the kitchen, and stackable when full or empty (seriously, this has saved SO much room as I unpacked). They dropped them off for me, and they’ll pick them up for me. A huge task off my plate.

3. I wish I had gotten  more boxes than I thought I’d need. I had to pack a few cardboard boxes (one of which fell apart, scattering CDs all over the floor, just reinforcing my belief in my rented boxes).

4. I should have packed some snacks and easily cooked food in an accessible box so that you don’t have to subsist on pizza. When I started unpacking food, the first box had wild rice, cans of artichoke hearts and some chocolate, for example. The chocolate was useful, but I wan’t able to make a meal with the rest.

5. I accepted dinner invitations: Tell your friends to invite you over for dinner in the days before and after moving: it’s a relief to get away from all the boxes, and your kitchen isn’t unpacked anyway, and you still need to eat well.

6. I hired movers! Money well, well, spent. Mine were efficient, and knew what they were doing.

7. I got access to the new place early. I was able to go over and figure out where everything would go in the new place, so that when the  movers were there, I knew exactly where the couch should go. I had also gone over early and set up bookshelves, so that I didn’t have to move boxes from the wall in order to start unpacking them (I have a lot of books).

8. I labeled your boxes with what room they’re going to. I didn’t have to move a single box and I was able to unpack each one in the appropriate room. This saved my back some aches and pains.

9. I purged LOTS of stuff before I moved, and I have a cardboard box in the new place into which I’m throwing more stuff to donate. I’m maintaining my momentum, getting rid of stuff before it finds a home.

10. I should have relaxed more. The move went just fine. On the other hand, the worrying and over-thinking about it all meant that I’d planned well: I had purged, packed wisely, and planned my furniture placement. I think the balance worked out well.

I don’t want to move again anytime soon, but it wasn’t nearly as bad as I thought it would be!

Rule #1: Only use one type of technology.
I think that using online audio visual conferencing technology is a great way of combining voice and visuals. The session I went to this week however, citing “audio difficulties”, elected to use the whiteboard, but not the audio portion of an audio conferencing system! We had to phone in separately to a 1-800 number for the audio part of the presentation. I spent much of the two hours alternately putting the phone down and typing or holding the phone and passively watching the screen.

Rule #2: Schedule break times
We are missing many visual cues when using audio conferencing technologies. The teleconference I attended today gave us a heads up on when questions would be accepted, so we knew when we would get our chance to stretch and ask questions. Knowing the structure

Rule #3: Determine who your audience is
Teleconference number two polled the attendees at the beginning, to determine the types of people attending and what their level of skill was. Unfortunately for me, that meant that the presentation was targeted at a lower level than I would have liked, but the presenter did (I suspect), change the level of detail according to the audience.

Rule #4: Engage your audience
People will complain that this is more difficult, but the lack of visual cues makes it imperative to incorporate plans to engage the audience. It’s far to easy to get distracted by email or other things in your immediate surroundings. You can plan for engagement by posting discussion questions, asking participants to add to a diagram, chart or image on a whiteboard, or polling participants if there a polling tool. The importance is to plan for it, and take the time to wait for and encourage your participants to engage.

Rule #5: Animate your voice
The last, but one of the most important rules. Any presentation requires an animated voice, where the tone and expression gives life to the words spoke. This is even more important in an audio conference where you cannot see the presenters or the audiences body language. I often have a photo of a loved one near my computer, so that I can at least talk to them. It makes putting energy into my voice far easier.

There are many other considerations when putting on an audio conference, but those are the four that struck me this week.

First of all we looked up what the term Bounce Rate means. Generally speaking is means the number of people who landed on a specific page, and then left the site entirely, without having visited any other pages on the site. In the Google documentation, a high bounce rate is described as undesirable, and if people are landing on the main page and then immediately leaving again, I’d mostly agree. If, however, people are using effective use of keywords to land on a page on our site with more specialized content, then I”m okay with a high bounce rate – that route means the keywords are efficient. We also determined that the bounce rate for our online registration page is low. We’d been having some difficulties with the online registration system, and so this seems like validation that it’s working for plenty of people.

Traffic Sources was an unexpected sources of information. People are getting to our site mostly though google searches, and uses variations on the name of our organization. A healthy percentage come through direct links or our email newsletter. So people know how to search for us, and they read our newsletter, which is good news! We can also see which websites are linking to our site. We can see where on the government website we’re linked, that the BC Teachers Federation uploads information that we send out, and that we’re getting increasing traffic from our facebook site. So these outreach programs are working out for us.

My other preferred section of google analytics was the Top Content section. I can see which pages get the most hits. There are initially no surprises there, but digging deeper there are some interesting details. I can see how long people spend on each page (do they find what they are looking for quickly on the main page? Do spend time on the content heavy pages?), and I can see on which page they exit the site and extrapolate where they found the information they were seeking.

I’m looking forward to comparing last months statistics to this months statistics. We’re implementing changes, such as an online registration system and an online community, and tracking statistics over several months will tell us if our changes are taking hold and changing how are users interact with our site.

There is still lots of room for experts in recording and editing, but the point is that it’s easy for a confident novice to do a basic job.

The advantages to providing online video are tempting. The videos are accessible to a distributed population. This is particularly tempting in a country with vast spaces between urban centres and long winters that make travel expensive, dangerous or at least uncomfortable. They’re accessible to people who have difficulty getting child care (this is particularly important to my users, many of whom have children with autism), or people for whom English is not their first language. The ability to stop, rewind and watch again is invaluable to any one who gets interrupted on an ongoing basis, or needs to review to make sure they understand.

Easy, right?

I have just a few questions, however. I want the videos to be useful and engaging. I want our viewers to learn from the videos, to recommend them to their friends, to provoke new ideas and actions. And my job, in part is to ask questions:

• What can I add to a recording to make it more engaging?
• How do we measure success? How do we know it’s helpful for users?
• How long should the blocks of video be?
• What do we cut, and what do we keep in the editing stage?
• How do we frame the shot? How many different views or angles to we need?
• What are the potential technological limitations of our users that we have to account for?
• How do we prevent people from downloading and sharing the videos?

How much will all this cost?

These are questions that won’t have a definitive answer and so I’ve volunteered to host a discussion about these questions and more in an online community. I was honest with the organizer, and told her that I was volunteering so that *I* could learn (grin).

And I’m learning what that all means in a BIG way. There are a million* little strands that require my attention. Some today, some yesterday and some on an ongoing basis. And oh, boy, do I get overwhelmed. (Should I admit this online? where current or future employers might see it? Ah well). I can easily get trapped in the putting out fires circle, spending all my time answering questions and running around giving pep talks and troubleshooting every little thing. I can also easily lose track the parts where I’m waiting for feedback, updates or resources from colleagues. It’s not very productive and then I keep picking up and dropping things according to other people’s immediate needs.

So I have a new plan (I love plans. And lists. And colour-coding both).

To prepare, I got a legal sized file folder and some sticky notes. I wrote each major part of the project on a separate sticky note: upgrade software (find virtual server); write handout (review draft #1); finish instructional design for module x. And this is the secret and the brilliance; I put all the sticky notes inside the file folder.  This morning I got to work, looked in side, and chose to focus on ONE task. I pulled out the associated folder (I’m writing an evaluation report on a grant), and have worked on that this morning. It works, it really works!

This is working for me for a few reasons.

1. I can brainstorm and let my mind find and elaborate on the tasks better with pen and paper.
2. The individual tasks are hidden in a closed file folder. If they were on the wall of my cubicle, I’d freak out about all the tasks I have to do, and think about each one for 15 seconds on an endless loop. Not productive.
3. I can move the sticky notes around (like near like) to see which ones feed off each other (very efficient).
4. I can see the whole project at once to more easily decide what my priority is each day.
5. It’s beyond easy to update the notes, or throw them out and write new ones as that part of the project advances. It’s also low stakes to update and scribble on the sticky notes.

Do some people keep this all in their head? I can’t believe that. One former colleague has the most elaborate excel spreadsheet that works for her. I tried it for a while, but I got lost updating the spreadsheet instead of work (when it takes two minutes to find, open and update the spreadsheet for a 30 second task, that’s not productive). Another former colleague would write everything in a beautiful notebook (she said, but not in so many words, that beauty begets a peaceful mind). I tried that, but as soon as I turned the page, I forgot about the notes and lists that I’d make. One current colleague has a stack of loose papers on her desk, but that just fills me with anxiety. What if I LOST something? I’m pretty happy with my technique – what’s yours?

* I admit, a slight exaggeration. What about it?! (grin).

So yes, I agree with Sara Barbour in her June 17th opinion piece. It’s an emotional kick for me, my attachment to books.

However.

I remember first year university: the massive biology textbook, the stack of books for my women in literature course, the mammoth introduction to English text that had poetry by Eliot, prose by Chaucer and short stories by… several authors. It’s a doorstopper that you see in many second-hand bookstores or parental basements. In addition to the sheer weight of these books, there is a culture of lineups at the bookstore, lugging heavy backpacks of books for your reference paper, selling the books at the end of the semester, and deciding how much to mark up the text books (highlighting can help you study, but diminishes the re-sale value). eReaders and eBooks could revolutionize academic textbooks.

Electronic textbooks could be cheaper, cutting out printing and shipping costs to start. Errors or updates could be easily implemented, downloaded from the Internet. The electronic textbooks could be more interactive, with quizzes at the end of chapters, or the ability to share notes or questions as a class. They could include multimedia. For the sciences, this could be a 3D image of DNA, a video of cell division, or an animation to demonstrate the physics of acceleration. For the arts, it could be a video of a First Nations potlach, and audio recording of a poem, or and animation of sequencing of behaviours. Perhaps it could make texts more accessible for students for whom English is not their first language (with links to dictionary definitions), for those with visual impairments (screen readers or bigger fonts), or for those with mobility challenges (less to carry, easier to navigate).

I say “could” alot. It depends on publishers being willing to change their practices, re-evaluation of digital rights management. It depends on accessibility and technical support for students and faculty members. Lots of maybes and questions that are still unanswered, but there are opportunities here.

But I’m still buying paperbacks for myself and others. That won’t stop.

This week I’m thinking about who our users are (personas), privacy issues, and writing community guidelines.

I’m a generally positive person, and I like to believe that all will be sunshine and butterflies. And it won’t, but I don’t want the fear or worry to prevents us from building the community, or worse (?) creating one that is so rigid and fierce with rules that it sucks all the fun out of it. Since you know, the goal is a community, not enforced participation like in the prison yard at lunch (er, for example).

Question #1: is it pessimistic that I’m thinking about this before someone even posts?
Question #2: I’d love to have the community collaborate on these guidelines, but the members will come and go, and besides, as above, it’s not open yet!

So do some research
I’ve started by looking at some examples. One was short and sweet:
“We love hearing from ya. We try to keep it light & fun (it’s only decorating), so we’ll nix comments that are snarky/spammy (our moms are reading). If you don’t see your comment it’s because they’re manually approved (it should pop up soon-ish). Occasionally our spam filter eats one. Boo spam filter.” from <a href="www.younghouselove.com"Young House Love, a recommendation from a colleague.

Another colleague suggested that I look at the Guardian Newspapers standards and participation guidelines. I particularly love the last entry, that reminds us that the conversation belongs to everyone (I may steal this for mine). Overall however, it was a bit strident perhaps (and given that their commenters by nature have strong opinions about divisive topics such as politics, perhaps necessary). Do like their inclusion of a section on Moderator Approach (will steal this, too), and their final summary “In Short:”

Then I asked Twitter, and boom, received two suggestions to look at Flickrs Community Guidelines. And I like these ones. They start with the Do’s, not the Don’ts, and they’re knowing in their admonitions: “Don’t be creepy. You know that guy. Don’t be that guy.”

So after this day, my conclusions are:
I’m going to have a Please Do, Please Don’t and Moderator responsibility sections. Start with the good! Tell people where to do with concerns! I’m going to talk about copyright and linking (don’t cut and paste), and I’ll have to bring up how to disagree responsibly. I hadn’t considered that people may try to sell or solicit on the forums. I’ll have to consider how people looking for contractors or people looking for contracts might be able to connect. It’s not our responsibility, and we can’t vet contractors, but….

I think that this is a good thing to do. What I learned in post-secondary was that it was when you didn’t have the classroom guidelines that things went bad. It gives other community members something to point to (“hey, read this”), and shows the community members that we are committed to respectful and productive conversation.

So now I guess it’s time to start drafting something up.

Which sent me on a whirlwind through what’s in a profile anyway? There is a good chapter in the book Information Architecture: Blueprints for the Web, raising additional questions of community reputation.

So what kind of information are people willing or able to share. The purpose of these field is what?
- to help people find others they’d be connected with
- to encourage people to share what they think is important, resulting in a better sense of community (?)
- to describe to the user the purpose or focus of the community

This is the beginning of quite a bit of thinking and decision making for me. What fields matter and add meaning?