Week 3 Online Meetings

This week in our 23 Things Kansas class we were to watch a webinar and blog about it.

I listened to Tom Peters, Opal Coordinator, interview Michelle Boule, librarian and blogger extraordinaire. It was billed as a casual conversation. That it was. I enjoyed it a lot. It was a great activity for a cold, wintery Friday afternoon in Kansas. They had this interview back in Feb. 2008 when Tom had a noticable head cold and Michelle was very close to leaving her job at the Univ. of Houston and very pregnant.

Since I watched this on a Friday I knew that where my mind went concerning the webinar during the weekend was what the important parts of the webinar were. The jest of the webinar was that Michelle knows a lot about libraries and technology. There was a lot of chat about dream jobs, finishing jobs, writing projects, virtual participation, moving on etc. Information wants to be free was one of the main things I got. There was interesting talk about how libraries can make more non-tradional jobs. And how technology can change the way we work. Michelle is evidently a person that likes to think outside of the box.

Michelle talked about how one librarian at a conference she was at talked about how she had a facebook page and was so surprised when people at her new job went and looked at the facebook page. We should not be surprised. That is going to happen. So beware of what you put on that facebook page. Good advice!

The webinar definitely picked up as the interview went on. I thought Tom was a great interviewer and asked very interesting questions. Michelle talked about how she learns about new technologies were basically from other people. Other people will blog about it and send her information. She said that something new must be integrated with other things she is using, meet a need of hers, and be able to access it from anywhere.

Michelle Boule has several blogs but her main one is one that she has had for about five years. It is A Wandering Eyre, traversing life with words http://wanderingeyre.com/. Check it out! I know I will.

On the whole webinar experience- I still think conferences, in-person meetings, etc. are the very best thing. But I think in these times, webinars are great. We can definitely learn from them and that is what we want. I felt that on the format of the webinar I would miss words and then they were just lost to me. What are mebos, millenials? See? I don't even know how to spell them! I really did like this assignment. And there are a lot more webinars we can still watch.
I am really liking 23 Things Kansas and think this is just a great opportunity.