Two interesting meetings today. I think.

One real about the virtual.

One virtual (and real) about the real (and virtual).

The first was this morning when the Head of Library had invited my boss and myself to come and talk about Second Life (and Twitter). He was concerned about the resource implications for our Second Life presence. How we manage virtual enquiries from it, how (if) we develop it, what we'll do with it. I think he's mostly worried that were I run over by a bus we'd not be able to do anything with it.

I assured him that it wasn't that dependent on me (in fact I don't think it's at all dependent on me) and that the Masters' student doing the work would be submitting both her project and her documentation so we'd have resources to handle management and/or development. He was also concerned about Twitter and how we decide what we Twitter and who actually does it.

I guess he's right to be cautious but it's difficult to fit the cautious approach often taken by a university with a 'jump in and try' approach of much of Web 2.0 (or virtual world) type applications. It was interesting having my boss (soon to be Head) in there as referee.


The second meeting was a librarian professional body meeting in the real world while those of who couldn't/wouldn't attend joined in virtually via Twitter.

So I was introduced to the delights of Twitterfall which worked brilliantly and (just) made it possible to keep up with all that was being said. (There was a blog being updated live from within the room as well). The subject this time was about how the professional body can engage more widely (or at all in some people's view) with its membership (and non-members). But it also covered subjects such as how Twitter could or should be used for work purposes.

I'm sure I learned things from the content - but my two biggest learning points were from the process.
1. I really really need two monitors - which I've argued before.
(I might have tried using my laptop as a second screen but Twitterfall didn't seem to work on the uni's install of Internet Explorer so I had to resort to Firefox which is still newish to me and I can't get to work on my uni installed laptop).

2. I really need some means of telling students and also my office colleague that, yes, actually I am busy now and involved in a meeting even if it just looks like I'm sitting at my desk on my own. I'd have gone elsewhere with my laptop except for the IE issues mentioned above.