In further preparation for my talk at Netspeed 2007 titled, “Widets, Gadgets, and Badges”, I have created another web badge. This one counts down the days until the Alberta Library Conference (ALC 2008). The ALC mini-badge will display the conference date (April 24) until it is 99 days away. When it is just 99 days away from the conference, it will begin to display a countdown. When it is just one day away, it will display the word “tomorrow” and when the conference is actually on, it will display “ON NOW”.

If you are attending ALC 2008 and have a blog, why not promote the event with this badge?


<a href="http://albertalibraryconference.com/2008/">
<img src="http://winterstorm.ca/alcminibadge.png" title="Countdown to ALC 2008" />
</a>


Netspeed 2007 is just 40 days away. Netspeed is a library technology conference hosted by The Alberta Library. This year it will be held at the Carriage House Inn in Calgary, Alberta. I will be giving a presentation titled, “Web Widgets, Gadgets, and Badges.”

For the occaision, I have created a special badge to countdown the days until the conference. You can add the following HTML to any webpage to display this badge. The image will update itself automatically. Today it displays that there are 40 days left. Tomorrow it will say, “39″ days left.

If you are attending Netspeed 2007 and have a blog, why not promote the event with this badge?


<a href="http://paranoidagnostic.net/category/netspeed2007">
<img src="http://winterstorm.ca/netspeedbadge.png" title="Countdown to Netspeed 2007" />
</a>


I am currently having a surreal system administration experience: I am the sysadmin for a Wiki project in Chinese. I do not read, write, or speak Chinese and the Wiki is intended for use by the local Chinese community and is thus localized in Chinese. This has been the strangest thing for me. When I login to the software, I cannot even read the menus, and there are so many decisions that would normally be trivial that are now strange and difficult.

The project is to catalogue my local public library’s collection of Chinese books in a wiki. The library doesn’t catalogue the foreign language books (probably because it cannot). I am using MediaWiki (same software used for Wikipedia) which already has localization for many languages including at least 5 Chinese options.

One significant problem is trying to choose the right localization. So far, no one I know who actually speaks Mandarin Chinese can tell me what pros and cons there might be to picking one over the other. As a sysadmin, normally it would be my job to tell people what the pros and cons of one technical choice over another are. In this case I feel like I’m in an alternate reality. I am the right person for this job, but also completely unqualified!

MediaWiki seems to be the right choice for this project, not only because of its open editing, version tracking, and simple-but-effective content markup system, but also because it natively understands what an ISBN is. MediaWiki scans any text entered for strings that start with “ISBN” and end with a number and some dashes. If it sees such a string, it turns that into a link to its own internal system for linking to places that can give you more information about an ISBN. This is really good for a book-based library project.

I intend to write another component to magically identify book’s barcodes in the same way it does ISBN numbers, so that we can automatically link to the library’s catalogue. Thus someone can have one click access to putting a hold on an item.

Stranger than all of these other things, is that is a project I created. Normally, I would be writing up all kinds of “about” pages and help for the users. I suppose I will do that in English, but I always hesitate because it is, after all, supposed to be in Chinese. I just hope my translator is good!

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