I did accurately predict that I wouldn’t post every day – I managed on average every second day & I thought that was pretty good. I did tend to have a bunch of posts on a musical theme.

I wanted to do some housework on my site. I did clean up a few areas and I’m nearly done working up a newer and more modern template. That will be in place shortly.

Going through this process did reignite some thoughts that I wanted to get in writing. I did find that some posts felt a little rushed, so I might revisit and expand on a few thoughts in a more articulate fashion. I’m keen to build on the momentum.

I enjoyed reconnecting with my library community again. Everyone was positive, everyone posted about different things, professional and personal. It was so interesting getting such a varied daily reading fix.

I was thrilled when everyone became passionate about my proposal for a common post topic. This was a highlight for me.

I’m guilty for not commenting on posts. The discussions for me happened elsewhere on Twitter – that was interesting although not unexpected. Ruth was a shining light in comments and has given me so much to think about for future posts. Stay tuned for #shyjuly.

I did find myself slipping back into things that I don’t like about social media. Checking statistics to see if posts had been read, checking twitter stats to see if things had been interacted with. I need to learn to not worry about that.

At the end of the month, I’ve got a few more topics in half finished drafts that I’ll get to over time. I’ve got my vibe back so I’ll be more active here in the future. Thanks #blogjune!

Earlier in #blogjune, Kathryn Greenhill & I were having a conversation in response to her post about a session at the Margaret River Readers and Writers Festival, where people were asking where to get book recommendations and libraries didn’t come up in the conversation.

I’ve been thinking a bit about “content as experience” rather than “books as object” recently. Getting content part of whole experience?

— Ninjakat (@libsmatter) June 8, 2017

This got me thinking about something that I’ve been embarking on over the past year. It gets murky, because in this day and age, with digital delivery of music, movies and books, the concept of “books being an object” or “music being an object” for many, doesn’t exist. We’ve surrounded ourselves with what are essentially dumb objects that are there for displaying/playing inanimate binary content. The “object” used for consumption is identical whether you are listening to Beethoven or Metallica. Can one device sufficiently deliver such varied experiences? Meanwhile this delivery object sits there when not being used, not necessarily a thing of beauty like a bookshelf full of varied physical objects – fixed containers for content.

Like many people around the world I was devastated when Prince died last year. I wouldn’t have considered myself a die-hard fan – I had a few of his albums & had seen him perform live which was amazing. So when he died, I wanted to seek out more music, listen to the legacy he left with the world.

This led to an interesting issue. So much of his music was unavailable. There was a massive amount of his career from the mid 1990’s through to around 2010 where his music was essentially self published & not released through a major record company. You couldn’t purchase it in the shops, it wasn’t available for streaming online. How could I go back and fill in the missing parts?

In June 2016 Tidal made his entire catalogue available for streaming. I set myself up with a Tidal account and discovered his music. However, something was lacking. Listening to an inanimate thing was good, but not fully satisfying. I would have loved to read the liner notes associated with all of these albums and find out more. Plus I still love to own things.

So I cancelled my Tidal account & off I went on a journey of discovery to hunt down & start collecting some of these unavailable albums.

It was fun, scouring second hand stores, looking online at discogs and eBay. Going online you can essentially get anything if you are prepared to pay. Half the fun was hunting for the right items at the right price. It was really like going back 25 years and scouring record stores for new releases and hidden gems. It was enjoyable. Along the way I had plenty of conversations with a wide variety of people, all of them fans and lovers of music. It made the process personal again. You don’t get handwritten notes on your monthly streaming invoice!

Let me go back to my earlier concept. These albums (content) still aren’t available in an inanimate form (digital) – only a physical form. This is kind of nice as the packaging for these albums was really quite something. There is beautiful artwork, creative packaging. Some are nicely printed, but just in a cardboard sleeve (these were given away for free with newspapers in the UK – another interesting distribution model). It’s a bonus having something that has content and is a beautiful object as well.

So I believe that “content as experience” and “objects as experience” work together in harmony. Digital content is inanimate & needs another object to allow you to experience it in any form. On the other hand, these physical CD’s are pretty, and I have a  partial experience by holding, looking, reading – but I can’t fully experience the content without the assistance of yet another object. At least I know, having “objects as experience” will allow me to have “content as experience”.

If you could go back and tell your 20 year old self one thing that was going to happen to you between then and today, what would that be?

At 20 I was still at university, what I thought was real world experience was nothing like real world experience. I would tell myself to stop worrying, you will be happy. You are going to take some risks, you are going to get out of your comfort zone and there will be times in your life when you’ll be stressed and worried about the future, but it will all be OK. There will be some amazing opportunities presented to you – grab them and make the most of them. You have to trust yourself and your judgement.

In 20 years time (presuming the world gets better, not worse) what do you think will be the biggest technological difference between your life now and your life then ?

In 20 years time I’m really excited about where medical technology is going to be – maybe I’m a little biased as I’ll be in that target age group where age related issues start to develop. I’m banking on having science on my side. I don’t know what form this will take – I’m assuming there will be continuous background monitoring of everything with fully automated detection and prevention of issues that arise. Preventable diseases will be preventable. For more severe issues, ingesting nano-machines to carry out surgery and repair damaged tissue rather than undergoing traditional forms of surgery. This technology will be affordable and available without patents for the benefit of humankind.

• There were posts from Australia, New Zealand and the UK.
• You all use everything including the kitchen sink!
• There were pens and pasta
• There were accessibility aids – hearing loops and glasses
• There was new machines and old machines, desktops and laptops.
• The environment where you work , avoiding a commute and a nice view were important.
• Using our brains combined both hardware and software

I really enjoyed stopping and thinking about the tools I use. I kept my answers to those things I use on a very regular basis. There’s a mass of utilities that I use for specific purposes, but I didn’t start listing them as I thought it could go on and on. Maybe they are the really interesting things?

From the feedback I got, it seemed like you all enjoyed the task too. We ended up with a really good overview and insight into how we get things done. I feel like I know a little bit more about everyone, things that you don’t pick up in 140 characters. Thanks everyone!

I’m Paul Hagon, web developer at the National Library of Australia. I’ve been working in libraries and museums for nearly 20 years now – always on websites. I’ve been so lucky to work in major institutions and magnificent buildings. I don’t know how much strict designing I do these days (in the sense of picking colours etc). My job covers so many aspects of front end design (HTML, CSS, JS), user experience, analysis and accessibility.

What hardware do you use?

I spend most of my time at work on a late 2014 27″ iMac. The massive retina screen is beautiful. I use an iPad Air 2 for testing sites and apps, meetings etc.

My personal machine is a mid 2011 11″ MacBook Air. This is the best laptop I’ve ever owned & I can’t believe that it’s just about to hit the obsolete list in Apple hardware. It’s 6 years old & still going strong. I am glad I maxed out the processor, memory and storage when I bought it, although these days it would be nice to have more than the 4Gb memory in it, but I can cope.

I communicate and develop websites on an iPhone 5s. I seem to be on a cycle where I keep my laptops for at least 5+ years and my phones for 4 years. You’ll see a little trend developing here. I’m not one to be replacing my gear on a regular basis if it still works fine. Money spent on a holiday provides much better memories than money spent so I can use my phone as a credit card. The only reason I would like to upgrade is for the better cameras you get in the latest models.

I’m not a big gamer or video editor so my hardware needs are fairly basic.

Whichever machine I’m using there’s usually music in the background. I’ll be listening in my own little world via Bose AE2 bluetooth headphones. I can highly recommend bluetooth headphones. Not getting caught up wires is so liberating.

I use an EyeTV USB receiver that handles recording TV shows when needed.

To get from point A to point B and for general exercise I’m on my bike. It has Campagnolo components. I’ve been riding with them for 25 years & the design, quality & efficiency is fantastic. These components just work.

All this coding and cycling makes you hungry – in the kitchen a good set of knives is a must, I use Global. I’m always making pasta using pasta rollers and cutters attached to a kitchenaid mixer. Having both hands free to manipulate the pasta is so convenient. My current favourite gadget is Global pinboning tweezers. I also love my Alessi kettle. It’s always used as an example of impractical design (you burn yourself on steam removing the bird), practicalities aside it is a thing of beauty and doesn’t drip when it pours.

And what software?

The most valuable and essential piece of software I use is 1Password – this password manager holds everything – my life would be a shambles without it.

Much of my day is spent in my preferred code editor, Coda. I’ve tried various coding fonts but have settled on SF Mono at the moment as it complements the rest of the Apple interfaces. I configure Coda with the Monokai theme. Spending so much time in an editor, a nice colour scheme and font become important. Generally if there is a dark theme for software it’s enabled.

Being a web developer I have all the different browsers installed. I use Safari for personal use, Chrome for work (only because it’s what most users out there are using so it makes sense to use it). Both have great developer tools & do the job just fine.

I use Sequel Pro for wrangling with MySQL databases.

All code is in Git repositories managed by Tower. Generally if there’s a GUI interface for something that’s my preference. There’s some things that need to be run from the command line so a Terminal window is always open in the background.

For making things look pretty I now use Sketch for prototyping designs. I did use Fireworks for layout work & was so sad when Adobe stopped developing it.

To keep up with my RSS feeds I use Reeder. It uses Feedly behind the scenes to sync between all my devices.

iTunes is always delivering tunes & the occasional movie or TV show. I prefer to own physical copies of media rather than digital only versions.

Keynote handles all presentation tasks and sometimes layouts and interaction designs. I try to avoid any of the Office apps as much as possible although it’s inevitable that I have to use them. I always feel like I’m fighting with them to get it to do what I want.

All my backups are handled through a combination of Time Machine and Carbon Copy Cloner.

What would be your dream setup?

I don’t know if I have a dream setup. My needs are limited. I value portability over power. I get excited by the thought of all the fancy features in OS releases, but in reality I don’t use them as the promise isn’t delivered. I’m sure it will one day & I’ll be able to just think of things and it will be done. Until then I just want software that works and a stable configuration.

Oh … and knives that never need sharpening.

Now I deliberately switch off. In the evenings, sometimes I might do some tinkering, but mostly if I am on a device, I’m doing something different. At the weekends I might read the news over breakfast, do a sudoku with coffee and really that’s about my limit.

To help switch off here’s some tips I use.

Keep seperate email accounts. On my phone/tablet/computer I have my personal email/calendar configured to use the default mail client. This keeps things consistent across various devices. Any work related email/calendars are configured using the Outlook iOS app. If I go on holidays, I actually delete Outlook from my phone, that way I’m never tempted to just check in and see if everything is OK. I quite like the right to disconnect law that France has introduced.

Notifications. I’m selective on what notifications I receive. On my phone I turn off all email notifications for both work and personal accounts. My personal email is configured to not automatically check for email. I have to make a conscious decision to open mail and connect. I only keep a VIP contact list of family that are allowed to trigger email & messages notifications. I have Twitter notifications, but as I’m not that prolific on twitter, this is manageable. I also disable sounds on many notifications. I would love it if there were time sensitive notifications and I could configure work email with notifications restricted to 9am-5pm on weekdays.

Do not disturb. I configure do not disturb on my devices so from 9pm till 7am nothing gets through. My phone gets put into airplane mode each night when I go to sleep, no wi-fi, no 4G.

FOMO. Once you go 48 hours without checking everything religiously you realise that if there’s anything really important you’ll end up hearing about it. The rest, you don’t miss it. Whatever you do, don’t check your phone as the first thing you do when you wake up. Wait a little while. Enjoy other more substantive things. Which leads to…

Carefully select your online communities. There are online networks that I very rarely log into anymore – particularly Facebook. I’ve never had a big network there & for me it’s never proven to be beneficial. Every time I have to go there I’m reminded by just how vacant so much of the content there is. For others I know, Facebook is just what they need to be part of their network. Don’t be afraid to be selective in where you decide to be active. What works for me and what my family/friends/community use is going to be different to yours. You don’t have to be part of everything.

The downsides

I haven’t had too many downsides to this. It has probably contributed to the current state of my site. My photo cataloguing is a bit behind where it should be. Neither of these are really major issues. Since I implemented this approach, there’s probably a handful of situations that have occurred where it would have been nice to have a notification, but in reality it’s never proven to be a critical issue.

The positives

I feel so much healthier. I’m not as tired and agitated. I’m focusing on a range of different things throughout the day. I’m focusing on others around me rather than being focused on a machine. Physically I’m much better off. I haven’t got that permanent laptop/tablet hunch that is so easy to succumb to. My eyes are focusing on things further than 50cm away. Shoulder, back and leg aches and pains have reduced.

I’m probably still finding that balance between maintaining my online life vs offline life. I still feel part of my online community and still feel as through I contribute, just maybe not as much as I once did.

Find your balance. It’s working for me.

Some background to where this came from

When you go to Amazon and undertake a search, like most sites these days, you start to get autocomplete suggestions as you type. In this example below, when I search for headphones, there’s some clever mathematics going on behind the scenes that along with suggesting product titles for my term, it suggests the most relevant subject areas that relate to my term. In this case there’s higher relevance for headphones in Electronics than in Cell phones & accessories (or maybe a clothing option where there might be prints of headphones on a T-shirt).

This search suggestion serves exactly the same purpose as a traditional website structure in trying to deliver the user to the right area of content on the site as quickly and easily as possible.

In Trove terms, lets relate these back to zones. When we undertake a search, we get presented with results for each zone and are given a number of results for each zone. What we aren’t given is how relevant each of these zones are. Each zone is presented with the same level of importance as every other zone regardless of the search term. As a designer, how can I change this so that I could present the most relevant zone for a search term to the user and potentially structure the page differently to do so & hopefully lead the user in the right direction?

Let me walk through a little experiment that shows how I might come to a solution to this problem.

When querying Trove through the API, one of the responses that is returned for each record in a result is a relevance score.

...
relevance: {
  score: "8.01584",
  value: "very relevant"
},
...

In the most simplest terms we could plot this relevancy score for the top results in each zone (by default this is 20 results per zone) on a chart to easily compare the difference between various search terms.

It becomes obvious that different searches deliver very different types of content as their top results. We’re starting to get an indicator as to what might be the most relevant zone for a query.

If we look at the chart above for the search on my name – what would the most relevant zone be? Would it be the archive zone that has 1 very relevant result and then very little or the picture zone that isn’t quite as highly ranked in relevance, but has a lot more content that appears relevant?

We could look at the basic statistical types of measures such as averages, means, standard deviations to come up with a figure. For my purposes, I’m going to stay with the chart I’ve generated and measure the area under the line to make my determination. This can easily be measured by calculating the area of a trapezoid for each result as it’s plotted and adding these together: (x + y)/2 * w

So we could use the following formula to calculate the area under the line (assuming the width of each trapezoid is 1):

(result 1 relevance score + result 2 relevance score)/2 + 
(result 2 relevance score + result 3 relevance score)/2 +
(result 3 relevance score + result 4 relevance score)/2 +
...

and so on until we get to result 20.

If we return to the search for “Paul Hagon” we get results for areas of:

1. picture: 47.425
2. article: 44.195

We now have an answer that for this search, the most relevant result for this search is pictures, the zone with less relevant but more results, compared with the articles zone that has one highly relevant result and not a lot of other relevant results.

We could tailor the display of results to provide an emphasis on pictures and deliver the most relevant result.

 Moving beyond the maths

We live in an age of visualisations and so in addition to tailoring the display in a certain manner, we can expose these calculations to a visitor without bombarding them with the maths behind the result.

I love the UTS ribbon, that lives of on the catalogue of the library at UTS. This is a rainbow of dewey classifications for a result. It enhances your search results without taking away from the results themselves.

Could something similar be used to enhance the zones for Trove? We’ve already done all the maths for each item in the results – we know the averages of relevancy scores, the area under a graph, the standard deviation. Let’s combine some of this and turn it into something interesting. This is where my initial purpose of generating some dynamic SVG’s to visualise something came to life.

By plotting the average relevance of the zone on the x-axis and making the area of the bubble the same as the area under the line chart, we can create a simple little visualisation of the zone relevance breakdown. This provides a user with an indication of which zones are likely to provide the most relevant results for their search term. You can click through a range of sample searches below to see all the details about the search term & click on a bubble.

Summary

So that is my Trove bubbles. From starting off looking at how to generate some SVG files, this lead to looking for something to visualise, which in turn lead to looking at Trove zone results. Sometimes it’s a very strange path that you take to learn something, but in the end, it’s not necessarily about the end result, it’s about the journey. The random discoveries you make along the way can be really fascinating.

I’m suggesting that everyone who is participating in #blogjune take part and on Wednesday the 21st June, create a post answering these 4 questions.

1. Who are you, and what do you do?
2. What hardware do you use?
3. And what software?
4. What would be your dream setup?

You could talk about work, a combination of work & home or what you use in a hobby. Once you’ve posted, make sure you let Daniel know by tweeting @usesthis a link to your blog post.

Daniel releases everything for the interviews under a CC-BY licence and is keen to see how his idea is used.

What do you think? Let’s do this!

If you know me, you know I’m not the most outgoing person, I’m a bit of an introvert. I find it’s cathartic to get out of my comfort zone and push myself in new directions.

There’s a lot of opportunities in the library profession to present. You don’t have to start off at a major national conference. Start small. Volunteer to give a lunchtime presentation at work, present at a local ALIA event or a public library network event. These are a lot less formal and much less stressful that a full blown conference.

I thought I might give a few tips on how I prepare for a talk, the setup I use and hopefully, provide a bit of advice that might help someone give a presentation.

Preparation

Don’t underestimate the time it takes to put together a presentation. If I have to do a 20 minute presentation, I allow a full week of work to prepare the talk, generate slides, rehearse, refine, rehearse, refine… It is one of those skills that requires practise. The more you rehearse, the more comfortable you become. Be confident that you know your content inside out.

Structuring your presentation

Some of the most memorable presentations I have been to, have been the presenter just getting up and talking. They haven’t used any supporting material, they are natural storytellers. I’m not at that level and often the subject I am talking about is a little more technical so slides enhance what I have to say.

A presentation is like a novel or a movie. It needs an introduction or background. Why are you talking about this subject and why is this important for your audience. Set up what you want them to get out of it. Provide a narrative. Take the audience on a journey of what you did, what you think. Let it come to a natural climax and conclusion. Your story should come together to provide an answer and leave the audience eager and thinking about what you were talking about.

Know your audience

Discuss with the organisers beforehand on who the audience is. Get a feel for what their understanding of your topic is. Are they beginners? Are they experts? Are the organisers wanting to provide some general knowledge to the audience or do they want you to address something specific. All of these questions will help you tailor your presentation to the audience. There’s nothing worse that looking at blank faces and realising you have tailored a talk at the wrong target audience.

Nerves and changing perspectives

There’s no doubt about it, starting off presenting is pretty daunting. It’s like anything though, the more you do, the better and easier it becomes. I can’t remember where I read it, but it helped in changing my perspective:

Everybody is here to listen to what you have to say. They want to see you succeed.

Nobody voluntarily takes time out of their lunch hour, or travels to another city for a conference unless they are interested in hearing what you have to say. They want to learn from you, not judge you. This is empowering and should be confidence building.

Use your own equipment

Getting up on stage is stressful enough, let alone doing it while using unfamiliar equipment. Most organisers are pretty good with you using your own equipment. Always arrive early and make friends with the AV staff, they will always be able to help you out (especially if you have your own adaptors etc).  You are there for the benefit of the audience and it’s not fair on them if you deliver a sub-par presentation because of the equipment you have to use.

This is what’s in my presentation pack:

1. Laptop
2. Power adaptor (just in case the battery is a little low)
3. Thunderbolt to VGA adaptor
4. Thunderbolt to HDMI adaptor
5. HDMI cable
6. Thunderbolt to HDMI cable
7. USB with 2 copies of the presentation. Good to have just in case there’s issues with my laptop (I use Keynote, but as an option I also save a PowerPoint version – sometimes it doesn’t convert everything perfectly – it’s just there as an absolute last resort). As a final, final backup, there will also be a copy stored in a cloud service that I could download.
8. iPhone (sometimes I use it as a remote clicker)

Be familiar with how to plug everything in and set up 2nd screens. Like I said, make friends with the AV staff early. You can normally set everything up in a break so that it’s a simple matter of flicking a switch when it comes time to make a switch between presenters. You don’t want to spend 5 minutes trying to reconfigure your computer before you present. This will add to your stress levels, bump you over time and you don’t want that.

Behind the scenes

The other part of a presentation is highly personal, but something you don’t see much of. That’s what I see. For many presentations, the lights are so bright, you actually don’t see too much from the stage. The one thing I can see is my laptop setup. This is what I rehearse with & is why it’s important to be able to use your own equipment.

1. Timer that counts up. This allows you to adjust the pace of your presentation. If you’ve rehearsed you know roughly what time certain slides should be at.
2. Current time. If you are at a conference there’s normally a set schedule for the day. You should familiarise yourself with this and know what time your presentation starts and finishes. This allows you to keep an eye on the actual time and adjust your pacing. You don’t want to be the person that runs late and causes everyone in the room to miss out on lunch.
3. Current slide. Never turn your back on the audience to look at what slide you are on or to talk to the slide you are on. If you can see it on the screen, use that as your reference.
4. Next slide
5. Speaker notes. I normally have notes of the key points and speak to those. I don’t tend to read word for word. I practise, practise, practise over and over.

Feedback while you talk

If I’m giving a presentation with an audience that I know will be tweeting about the talk I’ll always keep my phone in my pocket. I configure it so it remains on silent but vibrates, and make sure I have twitter notifications set up for mentions and replies. While I’m talking & I get to something I’m expecting a reaction on, within 60 seconds my pocket is buzzing & I know I’m getting my message across – it gives me confidence. I find this doesn’t distract me, maybe  because I’m expecting it.

Conferences

I find that I get so much more out of attending a conference if I am also presenting, compared to if I’m just attending. There’s always the social aspect of a conference, lunchtimes, between sessions etc. If you are like me, maybe a bit quite, a bit of an introvert, having the benefit of presenting means people will ask you questions. You’ll be approached. You meet people you normally wouldn’t meet. It’s fantastic.

Other tips and tricks

Here’s a few key tips I can pass on.

Before the event

• Find out your audience
• Let the organisers know you’ll be presenting with your own equipment
• Allow enough time to gather ideas, structure your talk and put everything together
• Rehearse, rehearse and rehearse
• Present in front of a test audience and video the talk. Gather feedback and fine tune.
• Rehearse some more.
• Learn how to plug in and configure your equipment. Practise this.

On the day

• Wear comfortable clothes
• Check that you have all the equipment you need.
• If you are nervous, have a light breakfast, don’t drink too much
• Turn up to the venue early
• Introduce yourself to the organisers and AV staff
• Sign any waivers, release forms early in the day (they will get forgotten about in the rush of things later in the day)
• Know where you have to go, familiarise yourself with the space
• Set your equipment up in advance of your presentation
• Get a nervous pee out of the way
• Relax

After the presentation

• Enjoy the buzz. It takes a little while to come down. You’ve just done something amazing, enjoy thee feeling.
• Meet people, answer their questions. Chat with them
• Respond to anything on social media. Both of these are relationship building.
• Make slides available.
• Thank the organisers

That’s some tips and some random thoughts about how I set up my presentations. I hope there’s some useful advice in there for people. I would strongly encourage everyone at some stage of there career to consider participating in a presentation. It is one of the best things you can do.

Let’s take a look at smart playlists. Smart playlists are automatically generated playlists that adhere to a certain set of rules that you configure. They can be simple or they can be complex, but they’re actually quite useful. Imagine I’m holding a theme party & I want to make up a playlist of tunes to play. The theme is the 80’s so I want to play pop songs from the 80’s that begin with L (it might be a very short party).

That’s pretty simple to do & in no time I have my party tunes set up!

Anniversary albums playlist

In 2017 there’s a bunch of really good albums that are having a significant anniversary since their release: Sgt Peppers, Rumours, Exodus, Sign ‘O’ the Times, Kiss Me Kiss Me Kiss Me, Document, Appetite for Destruction, The Joshua Tree, OK Computer. Let’s set up a smart playlist to display songs that were released in a year ending with 7.

I have a whole list of smart playlists that display tracks from a certain year. This is really easy to create. Go to File > New > Smart Playlist. In this case, it’s a pretty simple query.

Once I have a number of the playlists of individual years, I can create a new smart playlist that uses a combination of nested playlists as it’s query parameters to generate the final result (like a nested SQL statement). Here we’re grabbing all the tracks just from those particular years.

Now we have a list of all the albums/tracks that are having an anniversary in 2017.