Learning from 2.0

Yesterday my colleague and I completed our 3rd (and final) introductory session into Library 2.0 summer extravaganza. Out of 27 people on staff 11 attended including two members of the management group (2 that didn't come one is on a "special project" and rarely in the building and the other is a special status PT person.) The purpose of these sessions was to introduce Library 2.0/Web 2.0 to our colleagues and how the summer program would work. Or as my colleague liked to say "get their buy in."

And I think we did get their "buy in" support from them. Everyone that showed seemed to be interested in learning and those that didn't come well their loss. They asked good questions and let us know what we could do to make the next sessions even better. Everyone that attended I told them that what they learned in these sessions they could take back and show off to their colleagues that didn't come and then train them on the new tools. Hopefully building a continuing cycle.

Due to far too many projects being due at one time, my colleague and I didn't really get a chance to practice our session. Everything we did we built through Google Documents, IM, e-mail, and the short conversations we were able to grab during the day. And for us it was a big learning process. We had about two weeks to put all of the details together and get people interested and I think we did a pretty good job. We've learned things as we've gone along and we've listened to the feedback given to us by our users.

Now comes the more challenging part of the project, 4 one week sessions, each session devoted to a different topic. We let the staff vote and pick their top 4 topics and we're analyzing the results now. A couple things are tied so I'm thinking we may play to our strengths and show off some of the tools that could really be used in the library. The first session starts next week and we've got to pick a day to have the "petting zoo" porition (showing off the technology) and to be honest I'm a bit nervous, but I think we'll do okay.

What have I learned thus far? Well one is having more time to plan. I feel like my colleague and I started early enough in presenting the idea, but we forgot to take into account the slow moving wheels at MPOW into getting it started. It may have been better if we waited until next summer or fall to start this, but my colleague and I both were excited about getting it going and we had the support of managment so we went with it. The other thing that we've learned is to have handouts of some sort. We've started work on a wiki so staff can refer back to some of the key points of the intro presentation, such as how the program will work, what is library 2.0, and some examples of the tools and how they can be used in the library.

Overall it's been a great project thus far and we're excited about where it will go.