Podcamp Perth 07

Podcamp Perth 07 was Oct 27-28 2007 and a resounding success. Thanks heaps to the organisers.

It’s Thursday already and am still trying to get off my butt and write something. If I wait long enough there won’t be anything more to say. It’s all there on the Perth Podcamp Wiki and related blogs already.

For those who don't know, PodCamp Perth is a newmedia community UnConference that helps connect people interested in blogging, podcasting, social media and networks, video on the net, and newmedia together to learn, share, and grow their newmedia skills.

Simone's Blog post has many of the links

Kathryn Greenhill's Blog Fodder was well done and fodder for thought.

Stilgherrian’s presentation Social Media and the 2007 Australian Federal Election gave some insights into politicians and how they use of Web 2.0. How will this change the nature of our democracy?

If the Net Gen are getting their political input from Rove and The Chaser, and from satirical YouTube rather than Howard’s YouTube what does that mean and where is this headed? So I went in search of some satirical YouTube myself and found this hilarious video which has had 37,000 viewings.

Darwin ALIA Top End Symposium

The ALIA Top End Symposium is the premier library event in the Northern Territory and attracts library participants across the NT from a range of libraries. This year the Symposium theme was "e-volving education" focussing on how the library industry maintains its own education in order to stay on top of information trends.

Our symposium paper, Evolving and Changing with Workplace ELearning: 23 ways your staff can grow, was well received and elicited lots of questions from the audience.

Roxanne Missingham ALIA President gave an interesting paper keynote and spoke of library workforce trends. Later she mentioned to us that she planning to do 23 Things with her Federal Parliamentary Library staff.

The other keynote, Dr Gillian Hallam, presented the results of her research into Australian library workforce planning drawing out the NT component of findings.

Two Charles Darwin University librarians gave a very good session on podcasting You can access their CDU library podcasts here

The papers were all recorded as a podcast. All the printed papers will be placed on the ALIA website in due course.

Crocodiles on the Mary River NT

After the Top End Symposium we did find time to venture out into the outback and experience the wonderful bird and wildlife around the Fogg Dam and Mary River Park region.
We saw crocodiles, both freshies and salties. This video is a saltie swimming in front of our boat on the Mary River. I tried to stand up in the boat to get a better shot but was yelled at by the captain…. “sit down there’s only 2 feet of water here” …hence the wonky picture!

How to make a Flickr badge with your photos

You will see I have placed a Flickr badge in my Jay Gee blog down the right hand side. I’ve set it up to do a running display of my photos tagged with the tag “Western Australian Wildflowers”

If you want to do this it’s dead easy if you already have a group of your photos in Flickr.

Click on the bottom of my badge where it says “what is this?” and then click “make your own badge”. This it links you straight thru to the 5 step process in Flickr. There are two types of badge to choose from: HTML or Flash. Mine is a Flash badge. What you finally end up with is some HTML coding which you can add as an extra element to your blog. You just cut and paste this into the blog element template that allows HTML coding.

Some libraries are using this to advertise new books or databases.

Adding humour to your blog

As the build up to the 2007 Federal Election unfolds, the daily newspaper cartoons hit the funny bone.

Did you know the Nicholson Cartoons
can be added to your blog?

The nicholsoncartoons website states

“These cartoons are copyright, but you are welcome to put them on your website or reproduce them for non-commercial purposes, with certain conditions...”

Graduation

After two years we finally made it! Yesterday Lyn and I graduated with a Graduation Certificate in Tertiary Teaching from ECU. As staff members we got to sit on the stage with the PHDs and all the ECU senior academics which was rather special. Later we celebrated with our lecturers, Heather and Alison at the Old Brewery restaurant and watched a dolphin cavorting on the Swan River.

Starting Learning 2.0 with the ECU Library staff was our action research project for the Grad Cert, so I feel we have come full circle.

Dealing with Spam on your blog

Who’d have thought you’d need to deal with Spam on your blog. But somehow those pesky spammers can get through the sign in and leave an unwanted message. I’ve had this happen twice recently. Blogger Help has the solution, but it is a pain to have to go in and do this:

You can delete any comments (registered or anonymous) that are left on your own blog, or on another blog for which you have admin privileges.
To delete a comment, first make sure that you are logged in to the correct Blogger account. Then go to the blog and find the page where the comment is listed. Next to the comment, you should see a trash can icon
Click on the comment tdrag it into the trash can icon.
If you can't see the trash can icon, then that is probably because of a caching issue with your browser. Blogger Help has instructions on this also.