Spent today in a workshop on cultural awareness.

Having had the privilege of travelling fairly widely I was curious to see what I could learn that might have helped. Not that I get to travel so much these days. I was somewhat surprised to find that I was still the most travelled and the most language articulate. [1]

But it wasn't so much about other cultures as getting us to look at our national "culture" for want of a better word. Especially its idiosyncracies.

And getting us to look at ourselves as alien, will hopefully make us better able to help international students struggling to be strangers in a strange land.

Useful.

[1] Not that I claim fluency in anything (including English on a bad day) but I scored well for smatterings of all sorts. Hausa, Finnish, bits of written Chinese. The more esoteric the better in my book.

Any levity in my being this week is probably entirely down to the fact that I've reduced my email inbox to one screen (just 12 emails in fact!) - first time in months. The weight that feels lifted is astonishing. Partly down to hard work, partly down to a quiet Easter and partly down to my office colleague being off on leave for a bit! (So many fewer interruptions and no blow-by-blow recounting of last night's tv, her latest genealogical research, or how she's been partying with the stars!)

Now if only I could do the same with my drawer in the physical world. And my shelf.

And then all my 'reading'.

Out at lunchtime today doing more metaverse evangelism. The same academics from the computing department as last time round. (The third is in China lucky thing!) Once again I took a projector with me so as well as the main screen we had a side screen showing my viewpoint of the mini-tour. Worked well - though I wish I could get my laptop to display both on its screen and the projector screen simultaneously - there must be something I need to tweak.

Anyway this time it was to the IT crowd. Bit scary. Aren't they supposed to 'know' about these things? I was expecting to be somewhat out of my depth with technical questions and the like but it turns out I wasn't. In fact, somewhat surprisingly/depressingly/pleasingly I was able to contribute and respond and sound as if I knew what I was talking about. Indeed the scariness didn't come from the difficulty of the questions, it came more from the left field nature of the questions. Aren't these people supposed to be responsible for our IT systems and have a bit of computing knowledge if not actual geekiness? One of the questions, for example, was why students might want to use SL instead of Facebook. Then again I managed to get words like 'asynchronous' into the answer which is always going to sound good.

Gary
Metaverse Evangelist

http://www.criticsrant.com/bb/reading_level.aspx
Reveals that this blog has a Junior High School reading level.

I'm not sure if that's a good thing. I'd hate to be difficult to read, but does it mean that I'm dumbing down or not utilizing the English language in an interesting way?

Meeting this morning with a new(ish) member of staff who has been employed specifically to look at the statistics we can get from, for example, database providers. Hopefully this will give us a much better idea of usage (or more worryingly lack of usage) to inform buying and promotional decisions. Be interesting to see what comes of it.

And with that rather dull and worthy post, this blog is shutting down for four days for the Easter break. Have a good one and see you next Tuesday.

Definitely a winding down for Easter sort of feeling around the Library at the moment. Some disappearing on leave already, those of us left actually able to get on with some work for a change. Still, I don't appear to have made much of a dent on the in tray or email. Just debating whether to take some of the reading I need to do away with me as we travel to visit parents-in-law for a couple of days. Nah, maybe not.

Getting a handful of enquiries about the Library via our Facebook page these days. Not so many from the blog...

Off to see the University Librarian today in fall out from my faculties library committee meeting last week. All the things I told them he reinforced and I was right in my surmise that they're operating at the wrong level.

Still, it sounds as if he's up for coming to respond to them in person next time so maybe for a change it won't be me getting it in the neck!

Day off in lieu of being at the conference last weekend. So not posting today.

Oh wait, I just did. Bother.

I was supposed to be doing a coffee morning on mind mapping this morning, but my boss asked me if I could, instead, do a report on the conference in Second Life which I attended last weekend.

Without a lot of time to prepare I managed to cobble something together which seemed to go down ok. Very glad now I took lots of snapshots which helped. Majored on how it was to attend such a virtual conference and also on the session presented by former colleagues from TheOldPlace. (Well done S and Z).

Unfortunately I didn't time myself very carefully and had too much to fit into the time alloted (well, actually I was allotted an hour but out of habit everyone turned up at the usual time which only left me 40 minutes), so I didn't manage to leave time for questions or discussion which was a shame. But although I feel somewhat ambivalent about Second Life still, apparently I came across as something of an enthusiast. Not sure where that came from.

Great lunchtime presentation from someone I saw at the Creativity conference I attended a couple of years back.

He's an academic who decided he needed a change and branched out into stand up comedy.

Now he speaks about the connections between standup and seminars and how similar they are and how academics can/need to change. Particularly as students pay fees and become ever more demanding about what they get.

Funny - but also very thought provoking.

Got into a minor fracas at the ferry yesterday. I dared to stand up to some bullying and obnoxious behaviour. But a cop arrived and gave me my first ever Miranda warning. Bit daunting that.

Needless to say I'm now cross and upset with myself, fearing it might go to court (but it will be 6 months before I know for sure it's not), and not sleeping/concentrating well. Stupid, stupid, stupid. 'nuff said.

Over the weekend I attended a virtual conference in Second Life. Which was fine. Only cost work $30 for the attendance fee.
http://www.alliancelibraries.info/virtualworlds/

Fascinating time although sometimes as surreal as ever. Not sure what I learned but here are some memorable moments:

- discovered I was in a tiny minority not using voice and thus some sessions I was effectively 'deaf' as I couldn't tell what was happening unless someone bothered to type what was said. Kudos to those presenters who bothered to arrange for voice and text.

- went to a session on how stuff to do with Abraham Lincoln was being simulated. At the end of the talk Lincoln himself arrived.

- sound sculpture in the exhibition area was curiously fun

- picked up just as much 'stuff' at the exhibition as I might have done in real life. And it's about as organized

- missed both the keynote presentations thanks to technical issues :-(

Another disappointment today as I sat through a presentation on Web 2.0 by an external speaker. Given that I have to do my own training on this, I thought I might pick up some useful pointers. Unfortunately, it was more about a particular implementation of a virtual learning environment at another university - so not that helpful. Though I quite enjoyed Googling the presenter's powerpoint slides as she spoke and nicking an idea regarding the ipod scroll wheel as an image.

Thursday morning training session this morning. Supposed to be on science databases as we start a series on each subject area to get a bet idea of what's available. (I struggle to keep up with just the Tech ones, never mind the other 300 odd).

Disappointly the session spent more time covering what databases are in general than it did the three examples it provided at the end. I'd hoped for more of an overview of what science databases there were, how they related to each other and what might be used when. Ah well.

It will be my turn in a few weeks and I doubt I'll do better.

Hmmm, finance are struggling with paying for my attendance at the virtual conference on Saturday. Perhaps I shouldn't be surprised. Though I feigned it well. Surely this is their problem not mine - I'm not short of things to do.

In any case I can't see an invoice getting sent from the organizers and then processed and sent back in time for the weekend, so I guess I'd better explore alternative options for paying. Maybe the computing academic leading the Second Life project I'm connected with has some spare Linden Dollars kicking around. It's only 8000 of things.

(That's $30 for those who don't know the Linden is about as valuable as a B-ark leaf. Don't ask.)

Well, that's a bit scary. Serves me right for finally updating this blog. And for writing it at work.

One of my present rather than former colleagues, R, wandered into the office while I was putting the finishing touches to yesterday's entry and spotted the name of it before I removed it from the screen. (Drat this fishbowl of an office!)

It probably wouldn't have mattered except she knew I wrote a blog that wasn't public and had apparently spent some time a while back looking for it. Armed with the title it wasn't such a hard job to find it apparently.

So welcome (sort of) to a new reader. I can't help but feel you'll be very disappointed.

Everyone else: please let me know if you think I'm now self-censoring, or changing how I write...

The chaplaincy run an occasional event on Mondays which featured myself and two of the computing academics today. A demonstration and tour of Second Life which was fun. It was fairly general although we did have a particular section where we looked at some of the religious possibilities. From the chaplaincy's own SL area to mosques, temples and churches.

One of the academics was projecting her view onto the wall, I had another projector putting my view onto the wall (slightly smaller) beside her, and the third member of the gang travelled around with us from his laptop.

Scarily the University Librarian decided to attend (so I wonder if I really should have told my story about my brief visit to a pole dancing club??!) but with a range of knowledge on the subject in the audience it seemed to go down well and provoked lots of questions and interest. And I realized I was back being a metaverse evangelist once again. Perhaps I should get a card printed up.

Usual fortnightly Friday afternoon meeting today. A bit more irksome than usual however as I was off on a course Friday night/Saturday and could have used stepping out of work rather more promptly. At 4.05 I thought we were set for another hour of meeting, but in fact it did manage to wrap itself up in fifteen minutes and I just managed to leave by 4.30. (Which *just* gave me time to swim at the lovely hotel pool when I arrived.)

Unfortunately, however, I managed to break my toe turning round awkwardly. Great. What a pain, what a hassle, what a clumsy oaf. I shouldn't be allowed out.