Friday, April 13, 2012

Spreading the Word--Inviting People to Our Event

I was surprised that I didn't have to look far to find people to invite. I went back to my blog post I wrote for the bibliography/social graph for the Inquiry chapter in the eBook. Since most of my research and social graphing has revolved around libraries, most of these people have something to do with libraries and how the digital world is integrating with them. Here is a list of the people I invited, and why:


  1. Jason Griffey:  He was named a "mover and shaker" of the library world by Library Journal in 2009. He gave a presentation at the VALA (Victorian Association for Library Automation) 2012 conference entitled "Libraries and the Post-PC Era", which just took place this February. I watched an encore of this presentation that was embedded into his blog, given at Perth, Australia. He is very interested in the integration of technology into the library world.
  2. Brian Kelly: I read his blog post entitled, "Is Web Interoperable Being Led By Global Social Media Services?", and I thought he might be interested in our event. He talks about social media being used in conferences and, I mentioned that we are using Twitter for our question and answer session. I also noticed that he wrote a paper called Implementing a Holistic Approach to E-Learning Accessibility. Our whole course has been dedicated to studying the issues that have come up in our world society due to digital technology, and this paper covers the limitations E-learning has for those with disabilities.
  3. Brad Matthies: he is the Head of Access Services at Butler University, and he did a presentation entitled: "The Academic Library's Role in Fostering Digital Citizenship", which is right up our ally. He also had a list of authored articles and presentations that have to do with integrating the digital into the library.
  4. Simon Barron: he is the E-resources Coordinator at Durham University. On his Linkedin Profile, it listed his "Specialties" as follows: "Digital asset management, use of technology in libraries, digital libraries, Web 2.0, the Semantic Web, library advocacy."
  5. Johann Van Wyk: he is an academic librarian at the University of Pretoria, South Africa. On his professional home page, he listed his "Interests" as being Library 2.0/Web 2.0, E-Research, and Social Media Tools, among others.
  6. Tim O'Reilly he is the inventor of the term Web 2.0. He is the founder and CEO of O'Reilly Media, Inc., which host several technology conferences on various topics. He is a supporter of open source and free software movements, and is the author of a number of books and articles about Web 2.0
  7. Julie Still: She posted on Google+ about a conference called Library 2.0 (TEDx for Librarians), and she gave a presentation at this conference called, Librarians Use of Social Media Profile Photos. She is a reference librarian at Rutgers University.
  8. Jessamyn West: She is the founder of librarian.net, a website in favor of getting a better image for the librarian profession. She was named a "mover and shaker" of the library world by Library Journal in 2002. Her presentation entitled Web 2.0, Library 2.0, Librarian 2.0, and why it's no big deal, seriously has some great examples of how libraries have implemented Web 2.0 technologies into their services.
  9. Steve Hargadon: He is very involved in Classroom 2.0 and Library 2.0. He is the author of "Educational Networking: The Important Role Web 2.0 Will Play in Education". His blog is entitled : "Educational Technology: Web 2.0, Educational Social Networking, Free and Open Source Software, and the Future of Education." (I was thinking, "Jackpot" as I read this.) He also has a website called "Web 2.0 Labs", which shows all the projects he has consulted.
  10. Karen Coombs: She is the product manager for the OCLC (Online Computer Library Center) Developer Network. She was named a "mover and shaker" of the library world, and was instrumental in developing "Five Weeks to a Social Library", which is a free online course about implementing social software in libraries.
  11. Tyler Mix: My husband, who is a Chemistry major at BYU, working on his Masters' degree. I invited him because I thought he would have some useful feedback, especially about the science presentation.
In addition to this, I went and made an announcement about the event to Dr. Adams' Communications 101 Mass Communication and Society class. I told them that we were presenting a TEDx-style event about how we can become better digital citizens in the digital world. There are about 100 students in that class.

I was joyfully surprised that I received responses from four people plus my husband. The four said that they were unable to attend live, but that they would be sure to watch the recording. I found out that Steve Hargadon has two daughters who go to BYU, and he was very interested in learning more about our class, so I sent him the link for the description of it. My husband came, in person, to our event.

It was a learning experience to write to these people, and it was an example in social proofing itself. I received emails from two of the people before I finished inviting the rest, and they were confused about what I was asking them to do. They didn't know what I wanted feedback on exactly, the format of the presentation, or the content. I was able to tweak my email invitation to be more clear, thanks to the feedback I received from them.

Overall, it was a great experience to invite these people, and I was surprised again by how easy it is to get in contact with people interested in the same topics.

2 comments:

  1. Hi Tiffani

    Many thanks for the invitation. Like some of the others, it wasn't quite clear what you wanted. In addition there was a time zone difficulty, as I am based in the UK.

    Brian Kelly
    (PS You've spelt my surname wrong in your post!)

    ReplyDelete