Running sessions on Web 2.0 tools for researchers

Edit: This post has been sitting, completed and tagged, in my drafts folder for over a month - it was meant as a direct follow up to a previous post (linked below) but then the gender and digital idenity thing came up (which is now EVERYWHERE in the media - glad the issue is getting proper coverage) and after that my second daughter was born, so it all got pushed back... Anyhow, here it is. I recently ran a suite of 3 workshops, collectively entitled Becoming a Networked Researcher. I've put all the presentation materials elsewhere on the blog, so check them out if you're interested. This post covers the approach, what worked, what didn't, and general stuff about librarians getting involved with running researcher events that cover new online tools.

It's definitely time to do this

I've been wanting to do workshops like these for years... I run workshops for information professionals so I know how valuable it can be to learn about these tools - and blogs like the LSE Impact Blog show that in Higher Education generally, more and more people are finding Web 2.0 essential. As info pros a lot of us have this knowledge, so why not share it with an academic community who will be grateful for it and will benefit from it?

Previously some people may have thought I was something of a stuck record on this topic - just banging on about Twitter because it was what I knew about, when actually the Library should be focusing more on the traditional things we do with Researchers. (No one directly said this to me so I may well just be projecting!) But the thing about stuff like this is it opens doors - it positions the library or librarian as expert, and gains us respect. It means researchers become more open to the other things we have to offer.

Anyhow, demand for these sessions was huge. We're going to be running them twice a year from now on as once isn't enough. So if you have expertise in this area, try and make something happen!

What to cover?

I'd previously run an 'Enhancing your online reputation' workshop for academics which mainly covered blogs and twitter only, due to time constraints - I still see these as the big two. They're arguably the two most important platforms or tools, and they're definitely the right foundations on which to build a useful presence.

I also ran a taster session on online tools for academics which covered no less than 9 different things - interestingly, lots of them put in their feedback forms that of all the tools we covered, they'd want more training on Prezi. So I put Prezi into the collaboration and dissemination session, but actually it needs its own bespoke training really - it's too big to cover as part of something else.

I put in Academia.edu because I think it's actually quite useful, I put in LinkedIn because everyone else TELLS me it's useful, I put in Slideshare because I think it's the great underrated secret weapon of communicating ideas. I left out ResearchGate because I'd heard they're pretty aggressive in emailing people once they sign up, in a way which is annoying.

Anyhow, the Blogging session and Twitter session were much more successful than the other session, so I'd advise starting with these, and adding more if there's demand.

What worked

• Collaborating with RDT. The Researcher Development Team are nothing to do with the library, but thankfully they're open to collaboration. I managed to meet up with Russell Grant, who runs a couple of social media courses anyway, and suggest the suite described above to build on what he'd already done - in theory, an academic could have attended his two workshops and then my three workshops and they'd have all worked together, building knowledge and understanding. I really like working with departments outside the library generally - not least because then the events aren't 'Library events' that no one shows up for, they're University events which happen to be delivered by a librarian
• They What, Why, Examples, How method. I try do this in most of my training. You have to introduce a tool and tell an audience what it is - but it's vital to then go on to why they might want to use it before you go into the detail of how it works... With relevant examples if at all possible. Lots of the feedback suggests people really value this approach.
• Enthusiasm. I'm really enthusiastic about these topics, and that always helps...

What didn't

• Doing the workshops with only one-day gaps between them - I felt like it completely defined my week and didn't leave much room for anything else
• Not enough example - I tried to put loads in (academic examples specifically) but I could always use more
• The Collaboration and Dissemination session tried to fit too much into the time. We're splitting it up in future (see below)
• I can't make LinkedIn sound exciting... I know it's important. Everyone says it's important, researchers particularly. But I can't seem to convey its value well
• Some logisitical stuff to do with rooms and timing, with which I won't bore you now...

Future plans

We're running a tweaked programme in the next academic year, and it's going to be different in a few ways.

• It'll be run twice, once in the Spring and once in the Summer - the Autumn term is just too crazy for everyone concerned
• It'll have one session per week. Last time round I did all three sessions in a week and I'm not sure that really benefited the participants much - it just made me feel like I was having a crazy week
• There'll be a blogging session as before, a Twitter session as before, but the Collaboration and Dissemination session we're splitting up into two. We're doing a Prezi session, and then a 'social networks for researchers' session - I've asked a colleague from the Researcher Development Team if he can do the latter, because I think he'd be better at it than me
• I'm splitting the blogging and Twitter sessions into a 'PhD and Masters researchers' session and an 'academics' session - there's 90% crossover between those two groups, but the other 10% I found it frustrating only giving examples that worked fully for one or other group. Seeing as the sessions were over-subscribed anyhow, we may as well provide targeted workshops for each group
• So what this means is, in consecutive weeks we're offering an Introduction to Social Media (talk, given by my colleague Russell Grant), Enhacing your Online Reputation (workshop by Russell), Blogs (workshops, by me - one for postgrads and one for academics), Twitter (workshop, by me - workshops, by me - one for postgrads and one for academics), Social Networks For Researchers (workshop, by Rusell) and Prezi (workshop, by me). All one and a half hours except the Prezi one which needs to be 3hrs - I've tried teaching Prezi in less but it doesn't really work... .

Exciting stuff!

Becoming a Networked Researcher: a suite useful of presentations

Web 2.0 tools have finally moved firmly beyond the 'potential fad' stage, to gaining widespread acceptance as valuable weapons in the Researcher's arsenal. Statistics about social media are almost meaningless because a: there's so many of them and b: the information becomes outdated quickly, but at the time of writing it's thought that around 70% of academics use social media for personal use, and in my view we've most definitely reached the tipping point where social media's utility for professional use is properly understood. This is directly linked to the 'impact agenda' - the research shows that blogging about and tweeting about research results in more citations for that research, and pretty much everyone wants more citations. But becoming a networked researcher is about more than the REF-related bottom line, it's about being part of a mutually beneficial, supportive, and intellectually engaging community.

With all that in mind, I ran a suite of hands-on workshops at my institution, the University of York, on behalf of the Researcher Development Team. The suite was entitled 'Becoming a Networked Researcher' and it covered firstly blogs and blogging, then collaboration and dissemination, and finally Twitter. Rather than divide these up into three blog posts I thought the most useful thing to do would be to have them all here - so below you'll find various links to, or embedded versions of, presentations and handouts for the course. I've tried to make it so they work without me there to talk over the top of them...

The workshops themselves were really enjoyable and the researchers themselves very enthusiastic and engaged - a whole bunch of blogs and twitter accounts have already sprang up since they ran!  But I'd like to improve them for next time around (we'll be running them twice a year from now on); whether you're a Masters / PhD researcher, an academic, or an information professional reading this, I'd be interested in your views on how useful these materials are, and any advice or tips or, particularly, examples, I should be referring to in future sessions.

The workshop materials

The three parts of the suite were designed to work together and separately - if you're only interested in one aspect of becoming a networked researcher, you don't need to look at the materials from the other sessions.

Part 1: Blogs and Blogging

Blogs and Blogging was the most successful session. The advice here is slightly York-centric in that we all have Google accounts, so we all automatically have Blogger blogs; if you're reading this at another insitution it's definitely worth considering Wordpress.com as your blogging platform. Better still, Wordpress.org, although that requires some technical knowledge.

Here's the Prezi presentation:

And here's the handout which goes with it:

Blogs for researchers: workshop handout by University of York Information

Part 2: Dissemination and Collaboration

I've decided against embedding the materials for this one - there was a lot more group and collaborative work and the session was slightly shorter, so my presentation doesn't cover as much ground. But you can view the Dissemination and Collaboration Prezi here (the handout doesn't really add anything); it covers LinkedIn, Academia.edu, Prezi itself, and Slideshare.

Interestingly, I really struggled to convince people as to the value of LinkedIn. I'm suspect of the value of LinkedIn myself, but I've heard countless researchers talk about how important it is, so I flagged it up as a key resource anyway...

Part 3: Twitter for Researchers

I really enjoyed this as I think Twitter is such a vital tool for modern scholarship and communication - you can see the Slides from the session here:

Twitter for Researchers from Ned Potter

And the handout is here:

Twitter for academics: workshop handout by University of York Information

Any questions, comments or queries, leave them below.

Digital Marketing Toolkit workshop, 21st May, Edinburgh

Next month I'm running a workshop on marketing information services using new technologies. It's a course I really enjoy teaching - during the full-day we discuss marketing with video, mobile, online publishing, geolocation (Foursquare), actual real-life useful things to do with QR Codes, social media... The emphasis as always is on talking not just about why they're relevant, but what actual next-steps you might take towards using them.

The course is being put on by UKeIG - full details can be found on their website.

Here's some pariticpant feedback from last time we ran it:

• Really useful, great delivery. Thanks!
• Brilliant workshop, well done!
• Perfect; taught me more about things I was using and also some new
• Excellent day
• Very informative, paced well
• Hugely useful
• Thought it was a great overview, got a lot from it .

So, I hope to you see some of you there!

10 non-standard tips for public speaking!

 

I teach a full-day Presentation Skills course for the British Library, among others, and I recently sought feedback on it from someone I trust. The thing he wanted more on - and it was one of those 'it's obvious now they say it' moments - was presenting itself, the process of it, rather than just preparing the materials. There was indeed a section on this in the training but it wasn't very long, so in order to improve the course I've read up on it a bit more; I learned a lot of useful things (and had others I already knew better articulated to me) so I thought I'd share some of them here.

Preparation

1. It's better to know the subject than the presentation. Learning anything from memory is really hard. But so is looking at notes, or reading presentations out from a script. If I try and learn a presentation I get worried - I'm aiming for something so specific, there's a feeling of pressure around getting it right, and a feeling that if I forget something the whole house of cards will fall apart. I prefer to only speak about stuff I know a bit about, and just use the slides to reinforce key points and basically prompt me to talk about certain aspects of a topic, as appropriate to that particular audience. This is much more relaxing than worrying about remembering particular phrases etc. It also means you're more flexible - things can even be tackled in a different order based on what the audience wants, for example.

In short, you can't be derailed because you're not on rails. That's a very reassuring feeling.

2. Imagine your audience leaving the room (after your talk!). It's often very hard to know where to start when creating a presentation - the default position is 'what do I know about this subject?' but actually that's the wrong way around most of the time. The more pertinent question is 'What do the audience want from this subject?' - if you imagine your audience leaving the room after you've spoken, what have they learned, what do they know now, what did they get out of it? Think about what is important to them in that moment, and build the presentation from there - if necessary going and doing more research beforehand, so you can talk more authoritatively about what matters to them.

3. The rule of three - there might be something in it... I've heard many times now that we remember things most easily in groups of three. There's a lot of it about - 3 act plays, stories with a beginning, a middle and an end etc. Presentations-wise, it's relevant because the audience will likely only remember 3 things from your presentation, so you need to make sure these are the most important three! If you're completely stuck for a structure, try the 3:3:3 method - three main parts of your presentation, each divided into three sub-sections, and if necessary each of those subsections divided into three as well.

4. Store your presentation in the cloud. Of course every presenter takes their presentation along on a USB stick but USB sticks do break sometimes, and they're small and easily lost. So a sensible back-up plan is to store your presentation in the Cloud, and of course the easiest way to store your presentation in the cloud is to email it to yourself. (Then it's backed up twice! Once in your inbox, once in your sent box. :) )

5. Have a one-page cheat sheet. Part of presenting well is being relaxed, and a lot of being relaxed (for me, certainly) is knowing exactly what your doing with the logistics of the day. So make a one page document with EVERYTHING you need to know in it: presentation start time, room number, directions to the venue, contact name and details, train self-ticket machine reference number, etc - print it out and carry it with you, and email it to yourself so you can check it on your phone. You're much more likely to arrive relaxed, on time, and focused.

Delivery

6. Look everyone in the eye, then pick your favourites to come back to... This is particularly useful for nervous speakers. Public speaking is about communication, and communication is better with eye contact. So I will try to literally look every member of the audience in the eye at least once, at least as far as I reasonably can. (After 5 rows or so, it's hard to be specific.) During this time, I'll notice a few people who are particularly receptive - they're nodding emphatically, or smiling at what I'm saying - and I'll come back to them throughout the talk, as a form of encouragement... I don't get nervous anymore, but even as a non-nervous person I like to see people on my side. (The flip-side of this idea is to work on the more indifferent members of the audience - or even hostile, but that doesn't come up too often in our industry, thankfully - by focusing more explicitly on them.)

7. Remember if people are looking down at a screen and typing, it's a compliment. I can imagine that it can be disconcerting if you're not a Twitter user, and you see people looking down at their phones rather than up at you. It must feel like kids ignorning what you're saying and texting their friends. But it's a good thing! They're sufficiently invested in what you're saying that they want to broadcast it to their network on Twitter - it's also a way for them to make notes at the same time. And of course, that means your words are reaching a bigger audience, which is excellent.

8. Have a Plan B for your intro and your outro. It sounds obvious but knowing what your opening line is going to be is quite important. Sometimes people decide to with something like 'Hello everyone, my name is Ned, I'm from York' but then the person introducing them says 'This is Ned, he's from York' so you really can't use that one... So know what you'll say if your planned opener is ruled out for whatever reason. The same goes with the closer - if it's covered in the questions for example, or if you finish surprisingly early and need some more material to call upon, have a relevant topic in mind in advance.

9. Listen very carefully, an introvert will say this only once... Lots of people reading this will be introverts; I'm one, certainly. A characteristic we share is only saying stuff once - if it's said, it's done with, we don't want to say it again. I feel embarrassed telling a story to someone if I know I've told it to someone else, even if the two people are completely unconnected! But in presentations we have to fight that instinct, and make sure we say the really important stuff (main arguments, big statements, statistics, quotes) at least twice; perhaps in different ways but at least twice nevertheless.

10. Think in tweetbites. You thought it was enough to think in memorable soundbites! Not anymore. For the maximum impact, your most important statements needs to be tweetable so that your presentation is amplified beyond the walls of the room you're in. You've put hours of work into it, so why not double, triple or otherwise exponentially increase the audience for your key messages? Think in quotable, tweetable chunks (as long as that's not actually to the detriment of your presentation, of course...).

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Is there anything else you'd add? I've love to hear from you in the comments so this post becomes more useful over time.

More tips

You can find all sorts of presentation tips online - the following three articles were particularly useful in assembling the list above: 30 quick tips for speakers; Compulsive obsessive details will save your neck; and the Introverts Guide to presenting.

As the title suggests, these are non-standard tips for public speaking - which is to say, beyond the obvious ones everyone knows such as not facing away from the audience etc: for more 'nuts-and-bolts of presenting' advice, and more on creating materials, check out these previous posts:

Good presentations matter from Ned Potter

Stop Breaking The Basic Rules of Presenting from Ned Potter

Plus there's also this early blog post on: tips for first time speakers.

Good luck!

Digital Marketing Toolkit - workshop December 5th

A brief post to let anyone interested know that I'm running a one-day workshop, at York St John University on the 5th of December, on behalf of UKeIG. It's all about marketing with new technologies. Moving beyond the social network basics, this course will look at how to identify which technologies will be useful for marketing your organisation, how to use them effectively, and tips, tricks and general best-practice for marketing online. Topics will include marketing with video, viral marketing, mastering geolocation (such as FourSquare), mobile apps, publishing online, getting the most out of QR Codes, and taking social media marketing to the next level.

I'm also keen to accomdodate any other apsect of digital marketing that people would like to cover - if you're already booked on the course then let me know what you'd like to cover (and if you're not attending, I'd still be interested in the kinds of things you'd like to see covered on a course like this...).

Details of the event (including a booking form) are on the UKeIG website.

Hope to see you there!

- thewikiman