Notes from the 6/18/2004 Conference Call

We talked about the format of the talk and how to handle questions from the audience. It sounds like we're considering doing three separate presentations, perhaps with some kind of interaction between the four of us. We're considering ways to interact with the audience and how much audience interaction we want. We predict there will be many questions. Should we take questions at the beginning to try to address them during our presentations? Christina suggested asking people what they expect to learn from the session. j will post a note on j's scratchpad asking for ideas from her blog readers. That worked well to get BloggerCon topics. j posted the list of topics to this blog already.

Kris gave a profile of the potential audience. Academic and corporate librarians, information science people, and other technical people from the business world might be there. It sounds like there won't be too many audience members who have never heard of a weblog, so it may not be too critical to cover the basics.

Christina said she might begin with a summary of what each of us will cover and give a brief introduction to blogs and blogging.

Kris thinks more audience members will be interested in the bigger things, not the basics.

Kris said we wouldn't have the "naming" or commercial issues there were at BloggerCon. ASIST should let us name what systems we're using and those kinds of details.

Kris suggested that j talk about blogs in the news world and among news librarians. j said if people thought that was too boring, she could talk about many other things related to blogging.

Kris would like someone to talk about marketing their blog to management. j suggested Garrett might be good at that. Garrett agreed.

j also suggested that Christina talk about her lab's experience of selecting a blog.

Christina mentioned the communities of practice and collaborative weblogs. j and Garrett both blog on group blogs and could say something about that experience.

Kris suggested that it's better for us to talk big and not focus on the nitty-gritty details. If people want to know more about certain specific things, they can ask us later.

Christina mentioned a list of articles she has in a ProCite database that she would like to share with us somehow. She also mentioned that people like to have something to take away from the program, so we should consider having handouts, even if it's just a list of URLs.

Kris will check on whether we will have Internet access for our presentation.

Kris suggested trying to get some of the groupies from Harvard's Thursday night blog group to come down to Providence for the session and perhaps getting some involved in ASIST. j volunteered to plug it with the group.

j's notes are kinda bare-bones. Feel free to add to them or make corrections or clarifications.