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ALA Annual Conference 2009, e-participation snapshot

The following data was provided by Jenny Levine in ALA's IT operation. It seems electronic participation - of the kind ALA didn't generate solely - was quite a hit at the conference.

The numbers:

· 4,011 Flickr pictures (http://www.flickr.com/search/?q=ala2009&w=all)

· A Google Blogsearch says there are about 14,000 posts using the tag ala2009, but that’s not really right (http://blogsearch.google.com/blogsearch?hl=en&ie=UTF-8&q=ala2009&btnG=Search+Blogs) because it includes the Flickr pictures, comments on blogs, etc. Unfortunately, it’s impossible to get an exact count. If I had to guess, I’d say that most of the posts are recaps of someone’s conference experience, followed closely by summaries of sessions, and links to presentation materials (in that order). Some samples:

o ALA 2009: A Perspective - http://yolaleah.wordpress.com/2009/07/20/ala-2009-a-perspective/

o ALA 2009 Wrap-Up (Warning: It’s LONG) - http://bedtimebooktalks.blogspot.com/2009/07/ala-2009-wrap-up-warning-its-long.html

o Displaced at ALA Annual - http://wpmuhosting.com/displaced-at-ala-annual

o ALA lesson #2: The Power of Teh Intarwebs - http://notemilybookblog.tumblr.com/post/146623422/ala-lesson-2-the-power-of-teh-intarwebs

· 10,362 tweets using the #ala2009 tag by 1,321 authors (including the ALA Annual account and other ALA units)

o Specific statistics for Twitter:

§ tweets before: 765

§ tweets thu: 680

§ tweets fri: 1380

§ tweets sat: 2390

§ tweets sun: 2250

§ tweets mon: 1725

§ tweets tue: 589

§ tweets after: 583 (7/15-24, although tweets continue to appear so this number will still increase a little)

§ by tag:

· #ala2009 – 8517 (this was the main hashtag that we asked people to use)

· #ala09 - 415

· #alacouncil - 82

· #membership - 39

· #totebag – 265 (an unofficial snark channel)

· #unala2009 – 450 (the unconference)

· #acrl101 - 22

· #ala09_is – 8 (ACRL Instruction Section)

· #ala2prom – 26 (Library 2.0 session)

· #lib2.0 – 118 (Library 2.0 session)

· #ttt2009 – 35 (LITA’s Top Tech Trends)

· #toptech – 43 (LITA’s Top Tech Trends)

· #bigwig2009 – 13

· #clene09 - 10

· #clenets09 - 6

· #godort09 - 3

· #mobile_lib – 50 (WO panel)

· #rusaht – 6 (RUSA Hot Topics session)

o The reason I can give you such specific stats about the tweets is that ALA member Heather Devine offered to create an online Flickr/Twitter tracker for the conference a couple of weeks before the event. She finished it just a couple of days before Annual started, having done most of the work while she was on vacation. You can see it still running at http://www.flexyourinfo.com/projects/ALA2009/, and she’s going to give us the code and database so that we can 1) archive it, and 2) implement this for other conferences in the future. I can’t begin to describe how lucky we are that Heather did this, because there’s no good way to archive tweets right now, and we don’t have the resources to create this ourselves. The site got a lot of notice and a lot of hits during Annual, with Roy Tennant in particular noting it at http://www.libraryjournal.com/blog/1090000309/post/1110046911.html. I’d like to request that ALA to send Heather a letter of thanks if possible for this herculean and incredibly valuable effort.

o LJ very smartly did a daily recap of what they considered to be the “best” tweets of the day. Reading through them gives an excellent overview of the conference.

§ Saturday - http://www.libraryjournal.com/article/CA6670399.html

§ Sunday - http://www.libraryjournal.com/article/CA6670525.html

§ Monday - http://www.libraryjournal.com/article/CA6670879.html

§ Eric Hellman did an analysis of the ala2009 hashtag - http://go-to-hellman.blogspot.com/2009/07/twittering-librarians-confront.html

§ Then there was the interesting, but relatively harmless, appearance of the anonymous alasecrets (http://twitter.com/alasecrets) and alasecrets2009 (http://twitter.com/alasecrets2009) accounts on Twitter. While they were discussed, retweeted, and linked to online, those tweets didn’t spill over very much into the mainstream hashtag, and in fact, it allowed the really nasty stuff to stay out of the ala2009 space, which was good for us. One media blog picked up on it and noted it at http://www.washingtoncitypaper.com/blogs/sexist/2009/07/13/library-conference-secret-twitter-feed-proves-librarians-sexy-stern/, but that was about it. Someone shut down the original alasecrets account when it devolved into sex talk, but others had saved the tweets and posted them at http://www.scribd.com/doc/17344326/Library, and the alasecrets2009 account took over where the other one left off. LJ did an interview with the anonymous originator of both accounts at http://www.libraryjournal.com/article/CA6671858.html.

· According to Boopsie, more than 1500 people downloaded their ALA2009 application (http://boopsieinc.blogspot.com/2009/07/thank-you-ala-2009.html). I’m unclear if this figure includes people like me who accessed it on the web (Deidre, maybe you can get some clarification on that?) It garnered a lot of praise online, with a couple of people tweeting that it helped them find a session when they didn’t know where it was.

· There are also a ton of great videos on YouTube from the conference, including several of the book cart drill teams and a wonderful fake fight between Neil Gaiman and James Kennedy for the Newbery Award (http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=pAvkmkFIf24).

ALA Annual Conference 2009, e-participation snapshot

Google Voice

There was some buzz recently about the introduction of Google Voice, a service providing a single number that can manage all your calling and SMS needs. One needs an invitation to get a Google Voice number and I finally received mine yesterday. I would list the number here but since I don't normally share my number with people I don't know, if you want to know the number, just ask me.

I've been playing with it yesterday and today. All seems good so far. Calls are free (well, as long as your cell plan has sufficient minutes or if you have an unlimited plan) within the US and the service provides low international rates (which I haven't yet tried because I'm not sure how this will work with the cell pone charges). So far, I have calls routed to home and cell. I have not yet had the calls routed to my office.

Of course, there is seamless integration with your Google contacts, so if you have telephone numbers there, you can place calls directly from your computer. You will get a telephone call, then be connected to the person with whom you'd like to speak. If the person has caller ID, your Google Voice number is the one that will be displayed for them. Very cool.

GV provides a voicemail transcription service. Voicemail transcription isn't the best, but to be fair, I didn't ask folks in my greeting to s-p-e-a-k c-l-e-a-r-l-y when leaving a message. As with any voice recognition program, there isn't 100% accuracy, but in the test messages I received, there was greater than 80, perhaps 85% accuracy in the transcription. Not bad, I would say.

I'm not sure how many of you will remember MCI One (which I had, I dunno, about 15 years ago). This service would provide you with one number that would ring wherever you wanted it to - home, cell, office, pager. I thought this was so great at the time (it was!) and if MCI didn't have such horrible customer services practices at the time they would certainly have kept me as a customer.

I'll give the Google Voice a chance to convince me that this is the only number I should give to folks when I'm sharing a telephone number.

Try it!

Google Voice