A Wandering Eyre

Last week, at Computers in Libraries, I facilitated a session in which the participants defined the direction of our 45 minutes together. It was fun for me and, I think, fun for them as well. After some brainstorming, multi-voting, hand-raising, and discussion, the topic that came to the forefront was “Getting Difficult People to Come [...]

The family Rochester is heading north to Washington, D.C. for the Computers in Libraries conference this week. The boys will be seeing the sights, aka the Air and Space Museum, while I am mingling with book and tech nerds, aka librarians. I will be making two official appearances: Wednesday from 10:30-11:15, on Track F, I [...]

I wrote an article for FUMSI called “An unconference approach can revitalise meetings and training.” FUMSI is an online resource for information professionals. The link above is only for the abstract. The full article is available for FUMSI subscribers only. In the article I discuss some classic unconference facilitation styles, like fishbowl and knowledge cafe, [...]

ALA has been working hard, as have the divisions, in the past couple of years to incorporate more unconference type things into the schedule at Annual and Midwinter. Up until this point, these things have been special events and, while there are a few, most of them are not recurring. It is time to start [...]

Something happened yesterday that I am still trying to understand. I am not talking about the shooting in AZ. This was much less tragic in the worldly sense, but more tragic to me personally. An open meeting was closed to me because I could not physically sit in the room, though the means necessary for [...]

I started reading Tribes: We Need You to Lead Us by Seth Godin a couple days ago. It is a short read and well worth the time. As an individual who has spent a good portion of the last 15 years or so on the Internet, participating in various tribes, the ideas are not new [...]

For many reasons, not the least of which was extremely bad customer service, constantly rising prices, and what I now know is an inferior product, the Rochester household is… wait for it… canceling cable. I will not go into great detail, because Mr. R did a mighty fine job over on the family blog (and [...]

Last week, I briefly saw a blurb on CNN about President Obama changing the dress code at the White House away from suits and ties to a more casual atmosphere. (link is actually to NY Times article where I am assuming CNN got their story as they had no page of their own.) My initial [...]

A friend of mine recently asked what advice I would give to a virtual team. Here is, in essence, my response: One of the things about virtual teams that some people do not realize is that they have a lot in common with f2f teams. All those problems that in person groups have, like motivation, [...]

(I said Friday for big news, but I suppose I am unable to read calendars. This is the big announcement. Enjoy.) People fear and worry about the unknown. The PTB, Powers That Be, in most organizations perpetuate fear by having closed meetings, by distributing meeting minutes that have no substance, hiding or disguising the way [...]