The Synthetic Librarian

Last Saturday (April 28, 2007) I gave a presentation at the Alberta Library Conference (ALC 2007) titled, “How to Get the Technical Support You Need.” I think many, if not most, people have had negative experiences trying to obtain technical support. Contacting a helpdesk leaves people feeling frustrated, ignored, or like they are getting the run-around. After dealing with tech support, people often feel as if they are expected to learn new technical skills or adopt a new language of three letter acronyms just to get a little help.

My presentation rejects the idea that people need to learn technical skills just to get a techie to help them. Instead I introduce management and communication skills that can be used to obtain better tech support.

The presentation is divided into three sections. First, I explain how helpdesks generally work following the Limoncelli (1999) 9-step/4-phase model. Second, I explain how to write a great support request that has enough information that tech support won’t need to ask a lot of question and give you the run-around. Last, I present some rules-of-thumb for effectively managing communication with tech support for those worst-case scenario problems.

All of the ideas are based on my nearly 15 years of experience in giving and getting support. The rules and advice are inspired by some of my worst-cases in getting support and I show how my advanced technical skills are not enough to allow me to get tech support: Managing communication is the key to getting good support.

The slides for my presentation can be downloaded and they contain commentary in the “notes” field that can be viewed or printed if you open the file in Powerpoint or OpenOffice. The presentation is covered by a Creative Commons license and can be redistributed and remixed as long as attribution is provided and you share-alike.

Last weekend I attended the Alberta Library Conference 2007 (ALC 2007) at Jasper Park Lodge in Jasper National Park, Alberta, Canada. It was my first time at ALC and it was as much fun as everyone said it would be. For those that have not attended: the ALC does NOT stand for Alberta Library Conference… ALC refers to Free ALCohol. Starting each afternoon there are many social events with free drinks: the two opening receptions, the vendor receptions with open bar, the private cabin parties, the UofA/EPL cabin party, the BIG systems cabin party, and probably a few that I am forgetting.

I stayed in Point Cabin with my friends. It was a great cabin and a wonderful time. I regret that I was sick for a whole day and missed some of the big parties. Saturday night while others were at the dance we had margaritas, whiskey, and wine, and good company. Anne sent out an invite for drinks in our cabin to everyone in her facebook network and all the cool kids showed up. Interestingly, of all the guests that showed up, it was only keynote speaker Tod Maffin that got the invite via facebook. Hmmm, are librarians as wired as they say they are? Our guests we great no matter how they got the invite!

I made margaritas with fresh squeeze lime juice (we spent about a half an hour squeezing 15 limes to make a dozen margaritas). Damn they were strong. While Tod spoke passionately and intelligently about the nature and importance of story telling while we listened to ABBA pumping out of Misping’s laptop and I looked up Tequila is wikipedia over our self-administered wireless network. Tequila’s made from blue agave… a kind of lily, in case your wondering. We also learned that if you mix a margarita strong enough, when all the ice melts your are pretty left with a tequila shooter.

Photos are ALC 2007 available in flickr

Also try searching for the tagged alc2007jpl

The Alberta Library Conference is later this week in Jasper, and I will be there.

The weird thing about attending library conferences for me is that I know a LOT of the people that attend, but I do not recognize many of them because I only deal with them via email. There are many people with whom I have a working relationship for years, but whose face I do not recognize. Last fall at Netspeed 2006, I wanted to talk to a lot of the librarians and library techies that I have worked with, but I hardly got to meet anyone.

I have come up with a way to overcome that this time… sort of. I have a way for people to recognize me easily. I could show you a picture of me, but would you really remember my face from a photo? I wouldn’t. Instead I am posting this photo of my (very remarkable) shoes: A pair of green suede Redd shoes from Fluevog with orange laces.

If you see the guy with green suede shoes with orange laces at ALC… that’s me!