Our Head retires this summer, or sooner really.

So we had an interesting meeting this afternoon with his boss. Picking all our collective brains on what we'd like to see in the way of job spec for his successor.

Some feared the worst - the possibility of being converged with IT, or perhaps losing a Head altogether as some other reorganization happened, or perhaps getting a 'manager' replacement rather than a librarian.

But actually the meeting was strangely reassuring in that it sounded (no promises of course) as though they were looking for a professional librarian, thinking about whether he/she should gain small related areas such as study skills, or learning & teaching departments etc, and not planning on any major structural changes.

Of course, you could also interpret it as being a desire for 'more of the same' rather than looking for any radical or dynamic visionary thinking. I think that's one difference with TheOldPlace which was more willing to take a chance and be more innovative it seemed.

Drinks or no, I didn't manage to find out last night what decision had been made.

But I did hear mid-morning that they had appointed @.

I am pleased for her. I know her current job was possibly going to be done away with and if they'd kept her it would have been with a pay cut and to a deadend job, so I'm glad it's worked out. And can only hope the job is one she loves. I know I'd hate it.

It was weird enough seeing her yesterday though. Going to be very weird having her on the other side of the enclosed garden my fishbowl is beside.

I don't know about the candidates but I'm worn out just listening to five of them. Mainly because they were at 1 hour intervals and with that and desk duties and lunch to fit round them, I barely feel as if I've stopped all day.

And I didn't have to do the interviewing bit between times. The panel must be exhausted. I shall have to buy them a drink this evening... two of them are coming the senior staff meal out that's been long arranged, and maybe I can extract from them any decision they've made.

@'s presentation went well though. Definitely one of the best in my opinion. One of only two that didn't have a typo in it - which you'd have thought was a bit critical for a tech services kind of job! And she kept to time, included humor and wasn't too note dependent.

Glad I don't to choose though - the prospect of such lifechanging decisions is daunting.

Looking forward tomorrow to sitting on the presentations that will be given for those applying for our technical services job. No, it's not that I've got a particular fetish for that sort of ordeal or that I have a huge burden to know what the top three issues facing such a department are.

The excitement stems from one of the candidates being someone I used to work with and car share with. I've let work know that I know her so they know whether to have me comment or not, but it's still going to be weird seeing her as one of the presenters amongst four others I'll have never encountered before.

I wish her all the best.

I know, I know. I've been really bad at keeping my posting regular rather than done in batches. Will try to do better.

The 'retreat' continues today.... highlight being a small invention of mine. TwitterSim.

One of the hopes of the Web 2.0 workshop was to get people familiar with things like Twitter so that there could be a kind of 'back channel' of chat about the retreat using the technology. It's kind of working, there's a few of us 'playing'.

One of the sessions this morning though involved discussion at four tables which the guy running the session wanted 'twittered'. Last night he asked if I could tweet, I think is the word, from one table but this morning told me he was going to forget the idea because there weren't enough people.

I suggested that we didn't give up the idea we just do it in paper based form. Perhaps inspired by the paper blogging training session I've run, it was simple enough. We ripped up lots of inch wide strips of paper; I instructed everyone to use these to comment on anything they wanted - from the environment and process to the content and complex issues; they had to come up with a nickname or id tag for each strip they wrote on; they couldn't use more than 25 words which I worked out was about 140 characters; and they were to pin up their twitters on four boards/panels we had round the room. (one for each question we were considering).

I worried that people would think it was a bit silly and not bother, but in fact it was just the opposite. Perhaps because Twitter had been mentioned several times in the retreat by then so people were curious, perhaps because even a 'post-it' type session seems quite formal, perhaps because it simply was fun (!), people seemed to really engage with it.

Perhaps not quite as simple as just Twittering in the first place, it did mean everyone could participate and you avoided lots of login/registration problems and the like. It also meant that you felt you weren't missing out on what other tables were doing, found that you could reflect on the process more (which was useful as the subject of the discussion was on student reflection - or lack of it), and it was, well... fun.

I even got inspired half way through to start typing up the comments so that I could produce a Wordle of the event for when the guy running it was wrapping up which was both interesting and encouraged people to explore another tool.

Anyway, it turned a worthy but perhaps slightly dull session into one that was worthy and most enjoyable. (Even my curmudgeonly colleague in attendance had to grudgingly admit through gritted teeth he'd been impressed).

I had signed up for a different workshop (on webquests) but actually went to the guy's session on that back in November. As I was usefully contributing to the web 2.0 workshop, I'm now doing that one again.

It's odd considering how difficult it seems to 'keep up' that in this kind of environment I'm nigh on an expert. (Or at least full of anecdotes which I appreciate isn't the same thing at all).

Good wireless connection here at our retreat. We've had a 'trial' of higher education stifling innovation this morning (the defenders of HE won - just), great lunch, now in a session on Web 2.0 so it seems appropriate to blog (and Twitter).

The virtual world conference I went to a the end of last year which included a fair bit of Twitter as a 'back channel' for delegates to communicate, was the final push I needed to give Twitter a go.

So from the beginning of the year I've been trying it out. Not for work purposes so I can't imagine why anyone would want to follow it. But if you should be so minded, email me and I'll tell you how to look me up.

I'm not *entirely* sure I get the point of it yet. So far it just seems like very self-centered and very short blogging. But I've chosen three people to follow and have found it worth bothering with. I think.

Away to a work organised 'retreat' tomorrow and Friday (more a mini-conference really). I think the hotel will be really nice (!), but a computing academic and I might try recreating the Twitter back channel experience again.

Afternoon was spent with our jamboree for library liaison officers, learning and teaching coordinators and anyone else we could think to invite. (About 20 came in the end plus 8 or 9 library staff).

The idea was to get them to think about issues we face such as print vs electronic, book delivery times, journal costs and so on. We set up an interactive PowerPoint and gave them voting handsets to do a multiple choice quiz with 10 questions allowing each to generate whatever discussion seemed desirable.

It went very well which was good. Even my bit about how long it takes a book to get to the shelves. I decided to dispense with any PowerPoint slides and use a box of breakfast cereal as a show-and-tell item. That seemed to go down well as well - no pun intended. Thanks to R who lent me the cereal.

Presentation over in chaplaincy today about the theory of panspermia given my one of my mathematics academics (who actually did his degree in astrobiology).

Very interesting - if pretty inconclusive. (The practical upshot being that there's no evidence either way really, just possibilities.) I think he was hoping it would be more controversial with at least some saying 'no, it couldn't possibly be that life was seeded from elsewhere in the solar system, galaxy, universe'. Evidently we all watch too much Star Trek these days.

Was supposed to give blood last night when I got home.

But I was feeling so tired and jaded that I didn't think they'd want what passes for blood in my Cherry Coke stream.

But I dutifully pitched up at the community center only to find they had no record of me. An over an hour's wait.

Forgive my lack of social commitment and altruism but supper was calling and I decided to call it a night.

Meeting the author went well. We managed not to be too rude about her book even though everyone else in the book had 'issues' with it. (I'd enjoyed it [1] in a sort of worthy academic way).

Of course, I had to ask for an autograph at the end which might have been embarrassing except that it released everyone else to do the same!

My only mistake was in taking my mindmap as the author now wants a copy which will take some work as my colored pencils probably won't photocopy. Sigh.


[1] Which of course amused my out of work social book group who know me for invariably hating the (sad/depressing/evil/all three) books we normally read and everyone else enjoys.

Took part in some research today. I was hooked up an eye tracking machine (sort of headset with a chunky cable coming out the top which is connected to a computer and follows your pupils to see what part of a screen you're looking at. Spent an hour playing at spotting oil fields on representations of geological information. The researcher is attempting to work out if he can improve geologist's ability to find the particular patterns they need in the midst of lots of noise.

Apparently, I was told, I'd missed my vocation as I was quite good at doing it under time pressure. Perhaps it's too much time spent playing Kennedy Approach, an old Commodore 64 game which someone has kindly converted to work on a PC. (http://www.kennedyapproach.com/home.php)

It was also very strange looking into my own eyes blown up large on the screen as the eye-tracker was set up!

Finished the book I'm reading for the work book group today. If I've not mentioned it, it's about the internationalisation of Higher Education. We meet the author next week before she gives a presentation to any staff who are interested. I must finish my mindmap which outlines the book.

Back to work! That's the only snag with a couple of weeks off, it seems much harder to get back into it come the Monday. Still, a 4-day week this week as I'm taking Wednesday off to check out a conference center where I've been asked to run the audio visual side of things come May. Very senior military types from around the world. Scary.

Anyway, happy New Year.