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How are mobile phones changing social media?

Daniel — Wed, 31 Mar 2010 13:58:38 +0000

The intelligent enterprise: Creating a culture of speedy and efficient decision-making

Daniel — Tue, 12 Jan 2010 03:37:07 +0000

A report out in December from the Economist Intelligence Unit says, “Only 3% of [C-suite executives] describe their companies as ‘experts’ in using business data to drive better decisions, and only 27% agree that their company makes better, faster business decisions than their main competitors.”

According to The intelligent enterprise: Creating a culture of speedy and efficient decision-making:

Decision-making is accelerating, and becoming centralised in the C-suite, rather than being pushed
out to regions or business units.
Despite the wide recognition that accurate and timely decision-making is crucial, most firms’ ability to
make good decisions needs improvement.
Customer service is a significant trouble spot. Information from customer service and support is ranked
among the most critical to a company’s business strategy, yet it ranks poorly as a source of good
business insight.
Although data-driven decision-making is espoused by the C-suite, formal governance policies
or procedures to ensure the consistency, integrity and accuracy of the data are rare. Even fewer
companies dedicate resources to information governance, which is key to ensuring that information is
properly analysed and transformed into actionable intelligence.

Fascinating that only 3% of executives would describe their own companies as being the best at using timely, relevant and accurate information for descision-making.

There’s one graph, in particular, that should grab the attention of any savvy knowledge and information professional out there. It speaks to many potential opportunities out there for you.

About the survey
This survey included 208 respondents, 21% of whom were CEOs, presidents or managing directors, 45% held other C-level titles, and 23% were senior vicepresidents, vice-presidents or directors. Thirty-eight percent of respondents were located in North America, 27% in Western Europe and 23% in Asia-Pacifi c, while 29% worked at companies with annual revenue of US$10bn or more and 31% of respondents worked at companies with annual revenue of US$500m or less.

#slaname Social Network Graph

Daniel — Tue, 15 Dec 2009 16:44:24 +0000

Social network graph of #slaname tweet replies October 14, 2009 to December 11, 2009.

The more lines you have, the more @replies to different people you sent. If you don’t appear on the graph, but know that you sent out @replies, it’s because the person you sent your @reply to never sent out an @reply and so that person won’t appear on the graph and unfortunately, you can’t either!

For a more detailed explanation of how this was done, see #sla2009 Social Network Graph.

Based on the code of eskimoblood.

Created using Processing with data from the #slaname Twapper Keeper archive setup by iBraryGuy.

For larger sizes, see the original on flickr.

My Signature Themes

Daniel — Mon, 22 Jun 2009 20:35:49 +0000

This is fascinating and, I think, very accurate. For those of you who know me well – What do you think?

From Strengthsfinder.com via “Now, discover your strengths” by Marcus Buckingham and Donald O. Clifton.

“Many years of research conducted by The Gallup Organization suggest that the most effective people are those who understand their strengths and behaviors. These people are best able to develop strategies to meet and exceed the demands of their daily lives, their careers, and their families.

A review of the knowledge and skills you have acquired can provide a basic sense of your abilities, but an awareness and understanding of your natural talents will provide true insight into the core reasons behind your consistent successes.

Your Signature Themes report presents your five most dominant themes of talent, in the rank order revealed by your responses to StrengthsFinder. Of the 34 themes measured, these are your “top five.”

Your Signature Themes are very important in maximizing the talents that lead to your successes. By focusing on your Signature Themes, separately and in combination, you can identify your talents, build them into strengths, and enjoy personal and career success through consistent, near-perfect performance.”

My Signature Themes are:

Responsibility

Your Responsibility theme forces you to take psychological ownership for anything you commit to, and whether large or small, you feel emotionally bound to follow it through to completion. Your good name depends on it. If for some reason you cannot deliver, you automatically start to look for ways to make it up to the other person. Apologies are not enough. Excuses and rationalizations are totally unacceptable. You will not quite be able to live with yourself until you have made restitution. This conscientiousness, this near obsession for doing things right, and your impeccable ethics, combine to create your reputation: utterly dependable. When assigning new responsibilities, people will look to you first because they know it will get done. When people come to you for help—and they soon will—you must be selective. Your willingness to volunteer may sometimes lead you to take on more than you should.

Input

You are inquisitive. You collect things. You might collect information—words, facts, books, and quotations—or you might collect tangible objects such as butterflies, baseball cards, porcelain dolls, or sepia photographs. Whatever you collect, you collect it because it interests you. And yours is the kind of mind that finds so many things interesting. The world is exciting precisely because of its infinite variety and complexity. If you read a great deal, it is not necessarily to refine your theories but, rather, to add more information to your archives. If you like to travel, it is because each new location offers novel artifacts and facts. These can be acquired and then stored away. Why are they worth storing? At the time of storing it is often hard to say exactly when or why you might need them, but who knows when they might become useful? With all those possible uses in mind, you really don’t feel comfortable throwing anything away. So you keep acquiring and compiling and filing stuff away. It’s interesting. It keeps your mind fresh. And perhaps one day some of it will prove valuable.

Learner

You love to learn. The subject matter that interests you most will be determined by your other themes and experiences, but whatever the subject, you will always be drawn to the process of learning. The process, more than the content or the result, is especially exciting for you. You are energized by the steady and deliberate journey from ignorance to competence. The thrill of the first few facts, the early efforts to recite or practice what you have learned, the growing confidence of a skill mastered—this is the process that entices you. Your excitement leads you to engage in adult learning experiences—yoga or piano lessons or graduate classes. It enables you to thrive in dynamic work environments where you are asked to take on short project assignments and are expected to learn a lot about the new subject matter in a short period of time and then move on to the next one. This Learner theme does not necessarily mean that you seek to become the subject matter expert, or that you are striving for the respect that accompanies a professional or academic credential. The outcome of the learning is less significant than the “getting there.”

Relator

Relator describes your attitude toward your relationships. In simple terms, the Relator theme pulls you toward people you already know. You do not necessarily shy away from meeting new people—in fact, you may have other themes that cause you to enjoy the thrill of turning strangers into friends—but you do derive a great deal of pleasure and strength from being around your close friends. You are comfortable with intimacy. Once the initial connection has been made, you deliberately encourage a deepening of the relationship. You want to understand their feelings, their goals, their fears, and their dreams; and you want them to understand yours. You know that this kind of closeness implies a certain amount of risk—you might be taken advantage of—but you are willing to accept that risk. For you a relationship has value only if it is genuine. And the only way to know that is to entrust yourself to the other person. The more you share with each other, the more you risk together. The more you risk together, the more each of you proves your caring is genuine. These are your steps toward real friendship, and you take them willingly.

Arranger

You are a conductor. When faced with a complex situation involving many factors, you enjoy managing all of the variables, aligning and realigning them until you are sure you have arranged them in the most productive configuration possible. In your mind there is nothing special about what you are doing. You are simply trying to figure out the best way to get things done. But others, lacking this theme, will be in awe of your ability. “How can you keep so many things in your head at once?” they will ask. “How can you stay so flexible, so willing to shelve well-laid plans in favor of some brand-new configuration that has just occurred to you?” But you cannot imagine behaving in any other way. You are a shining example of effective flexibility, whether you are changing travel schedules at the last minute because a better fare has popped up or mulling over just the right combination of people and resources to accomplish a new project. From the mundane to the complex, you are always looking for the perfect configuration. Of course, you are at your best in dynamic situations. Confronted with the unexpected, some complain that plans devised with such care cannot be changed, while others take refuge in the existing rules or procedures. You don’t do either. Instead, you jump into the confusion, devising new options, hunting for new paths of least resistance, and figuring out new partnerships—because, after all, there might just be a better way.

Why Web 2.0 is more than a buzzword

Daniel — Mon, 27 Nov 2006 15:14:55 +0000

There is a very interesting discussion going on over at Creating Passionate Users that’s related to the Library 2.0 event held recently here in Toronto. The bit that pulled me in is thus:

But to say [Web 2.0] means nothing (or WORSE–to say it’s just a marketing label) is to mistake jargon (good) for buzzwords (bad). Where buzzwords are used to impress or mislead, jargon is used to communicate more efficiently and interestingly with others who share a similar level of knowledge and skills in a specific area.

I have to admit that prior to the SLA Toronto event, I was skeptical about the Library 2.0 term…that it was just another buzzword. But the recent discussion on Library Crunch about deleting Library 2.0 from Wikipedia, which got my hackles up (Wait just a second here, they can’t take this away from us!) and CPUs enlightening piece about the difference between jargon and buzzwords has changed me. I now look forward to continuing this discussion about how Library 2.0 is here to stay and how as information professionals we have to continue to define what Library 2.0 means and developing our own jargon – as CUP points out – not to be elitist but efficient in our discussions with each other. How exciting!

Library 2.0 in Action: How Special Librarians are actually using the latest tech tools

Daniel — Fri, 24 Nov 2006 10:30:15 +0000

SLA Toronto put on a tremendous program last night. Amanda Etches-Johnson, Carolyne Sidey, Connie Crosby, and Dave Hook spoke to nearly 50 members of the Chapter on the latest tech tools they are using to deliver products and services to their clients. Following the four presentations, the group broke into six (at times very lively and loud) round-table discussions. Each table was asked to consider the following two questions:

What are you doing in your library with these tech tools?
If you aren’t using these tech tools now, what tools do you plan to start using and why?

From the discussion at my table, web 2.0 (and by extension library 2.0) is a very new concept for a lot of special librarians. Interestingly, most of the folks at my table had already begun to experiment with social bookmarking, flickr, commenting on blog posts and news articles, etc. but hadn’t realized this was part of the 2.0 concept.

By far, RSS feeds, wikis and blogs were the tools mostly likely to be used in the workplace for delivering information and collaboration (when technology barriers are overcome). Social bookmarking via furl or del.icio.us won out, however, as the "low hanging fruit" of the bunch, i.e. the easiest and quickest of the 2.0 tools to start using.

To prepare for their presentation, the speakers started a wiki. In the spirit of 2.0 the wiki was opened to all participants to be used as the group sees fit, e.g. for posting further resources, discussion, as a sandbox to figure out how wiki’s work, etc. I’m particularly interested in seeing if the group assembled last night will actually use the wiki – even if it’s only for a brief time. Talk about being given the chance to get your feet wet! Is anyone going to dip a toe in?

Young Newspaper Readers

Daniel — Mon, 29 May 2006 17:09:57 +0000

Young Canadians who are frequent readers of newspapers are also more likely to vote in elections, volunteer time in community service, and be more socially active than less frequent readers, according to a national survey released this week by the Canadian Newspaper Association (CNA).

Reading Between the Lines: Debunking Common Myths about Young Newspaper Readers (Full report – PDF)
Canadian Newspaper Association
- Ultimate Online Guide to Canadian Newspapers
- Media Links in Canada and Abroad
- Newspaper Resources (circulation, market research, workshops and seminars)
D-Code

From the release:

"Young newspaper readers are involved in the world around them. As a result, there are strong social benefits correlated with newspaper readership among youth. These include: increased participation in the political process and increased involvement in community activities.
Young newspaper readers readily form opinions and seek out opportunities to express them so as to influence others.
Young newspaper readers are socially active and outgoing. They are more likely to visit shopping malls, restaurants, bars or night clubs than infrequent readers.
Young readers depend more on conventional sources than on new media for information on issues of importance to them. They rate newspapers highly for credibility, but prefer online sources for world news, entertainment and weather.
Young readers participate in new media and embrace new technologies more than less frequent readers.
They are plugged-in, but not tuned out. The news-heavy front sections and local news are the top two content areas read by young readers.
If young people have not become newspaper readers by age 24 they are unlikely to become readers later in life. Exposure to newspapers in schools as well as in the home has a significant impact on future readership.
Newspapers should not take their younger readers for granted. Young readers actively seek out news and information and have embraced all the technologies that deliver it. They will go elsewhere if they cannot find what they are looking for in the pages of a daily newspaper."

1,500 young people aged 14-34 participated in the study, conducted online across Canada in April, 2006.