[ConGeek] Last OLA SupCon post, likely…

I’ve officially covered all of the sessions I went to at the OLA Superconference and while I may revisit some of the topics from time to time, I think I’m just about done posting about the actual conference. The only thing left at this point is to give a little overview about the actual experience I had.

Being on crutches added a little ’sense of adventure’ to the whole experience, but it was still doable, despite everything being rather spaced out. A criticism here would be that the coat check did not seem very central and that to get food, it was quite difficult unless I was willing to physically leave convention centre, which was not always possible considering the snow storm. Timothy’s, while good, is not really equipped enough to handle that many people. Getting a seat was difficult and then you could easily wait an hour for the line to die down, if you were lucky. I was disappointed that the vendors who served muffins and coffee in the morning did not come back with sandwiches and soup in the afternoon or something to that effect. However, all of this can be worked around, surely.

My other big complaint (yes, I’m sorry that I’m full of them) is that there were no accommodations made for bloggers! There was no net access, wired or wireless, but to add to this issue, there was nowhere you could just plunk down with your laptop, plug it in and even work in Word for this purpose during or after the sessions. Some of us (myself included) do not have laps to speak of and are not comfortable with a machine which heats up resting on a body part such as a leg. As the chairs were all connected to each other, you couldn’t even commandeer one as a make-shift desk. This is why I blogged throughout the week following the conference — by the time I went back to the hotel after each day of activities, I was simply too tired / braindead to blog.

And the final ‘negative’ note I have is that considering I expected to go and schmooze, network and meet people, I felt rather isolated and alone throughout the conference. I managed to get maybe a couple individuals to chat superficially while waiting in line-ups or while waiting for sessions to start, but most people had their own thing going on or a group to be with. Now the reason I put ‘negative’ in quotes is because I don’t know that this was a truly negative experience. I am rather extroverted, but on the reverse side of the coin, I don’t mind tooling around on my own. If I’m off on my own, I’m working on my schedule and going where I want to go. Being rather independent, I can adapt to this sort of situation rather easily. It just wasn’t what I was expecting. I had taken my MOO / Flickr cards with me and maybe handed out two cards.

Yes, it’s possible to feel alone in a crowd that large. Heh.

(I’d like to thank, however, my colleagues who stopped to chat with me if they were able to. The companionship was welcomed!)

Now for the positives!

I love that there was such a wide variety of topics, though I found with having a lot of topics all at the same hour detrimental only in the fact that I had to pick only ONE to go to! Heh. But seriously, the topics were great, the speakers were knowledgeable and aside from a few technical glitches here or there, I think they went fairly smoothly. I appreciated that you could just pick and choose, that it wasn’t mandatory to sign up ahead of time for a session.

Registration, by the by, was absolutely painless and there were NO lines. It was great. The volunteers were wonderful not just for this fact but also that they, too, were very knowledgeable and could direct me to wherever I needed to be fairly quickly.

The Expo was impressive and I’m sorry that I didn’t get a second chance to go through it since I only managed half of it on the Thursday. Some of the stalls were unclear as to who was behind the display or stall, but they were all very interesting from what I could see. (I even came home with a graphic novel and a book about how to draw superheroes!)

Overall, I think it was a worthwhile experience. Despite the feelings of singularity and the physical difficulties, I feel that I got a lot out of the conference and would love the opportunity to go again.

[ConGeek] OLASupCon (Day 2): Session Reflection: “Building the Social Library On-Line”

OLA Superconference Session #: 1205
Title: “Building the Social Library On-Line”
Speaker: Meredith Farkas

Meredith is the author of Social Software in Libraries and runs the Information Wants to be Free blog. She started the session by saying that the biggest issue she had with people talking about web 2.0 is that no one seems to define what it means; everyone seems to have some idea of what it is or some facet of it, but no one seems to come out and give a definition, so she created her own. Initially, that meant defining what web 1.0 means, which she stated as “democratized access to information” and that we were “consumers of the web” (in regards to the fact that web creation, newsgroups and the like were all for the hardcore hobbyists at one point, not the casual user). Meredith stated that she felt we moved into web 2.0 when it things became about “democratized participation”; the average user can contribute actively to content, not just the hardcore webmaster or mistress.

So, this brought along the next question: what is social software?

She defined social software by the idea that it needs two of the following to qualify as such:

1. That it allows communication, collaboration and the building of a community online.
2. That it can be syndicated, facilitates syndication, be shared, reused or remixed.
3. That it allows people to learn from others’ behaviour and knowledge.

Examples are: blogs, RSS feeds, wikis, social networking sites (Facebook, MySpace, Orkut, etc.), social bookmarking sites (del.icio.us, etc.), IM/VoIP/webconferencing, podcasting, video blogging/screencasting, multi-user environments and games (YAY!!!), and other online communities.

Characteristics of social software, she suggested, are: easy content creation (eg. Wikis), online collaboration (eg. Google Docs & Spreadsheets), conversations: distributed (eg. Blogs), conversations: real time (eg. IM, VoIP, etc.), capitalizing on the wisdom of crowds (eg. del.icio.us, wikis), transparency (eg. company sites with a ‘human face’, listening to users/consumers, etc.), personalization (eg. RSS feeds, roll your own newspapers, etc.), and finally, portability (eg. PDAs, cell, etc.; we should be providing content to the tech that the users are using).

She went on to go through what social software can do for libraries, which I took a lot of notes on, but I’m going to paraphrase before this gets too huge. Basically, libraries can use this software to disseminate information, get feedback and start conversations with users, highlight collections / interesting books / etc., give the library that ‘human face’, provide services to remote users, take the library to where the users are, provide the library’s services using the tools patrons are using and capitalize on the collective intelligence of our users (with tagging and comments).

Thinking about McMaster’s libraries, I have to say that we use blogs to disseminate information and get feedback (many blogs, in fact), that the use of IM/Second Life/Facebook has really brought us to where many of the students ‘live’, in my opinion, perhaps giving that ‘human face’ to us, and we keep trying to bring in more and more of this. I’m sure I’m missing many other tools that we use regular, as I know wikis are being used among staff and I think a first year experience wiki has been started up by the library, as well. (Someone will correct me if I’m wrong.)

Going back to Meredith’s talk, she also went through creating a strategy for implementing web 2.0 projects in the library. She warned that it’s easy to get carried away and that there should be a need for the technology before a project is started; be careful not to start a project for the sake of using the ‘cool tools’. Make sure that you know your users and what they want (this can be figured out by focusing on assessments first). Staff should be involved at all levels of the planning in these projects. She also encourages developing a learning culture (such as the Learning 2.0 programmes that are starting to pop up). She emphasized that a risk-tolerant culture needs to be developed so that there’s a constant feedback loop, not a focus on putting out a “perfect” product which only sets you up for failure.

Some more of her advice also included starting small and keeping it simple by doing pilot projects and to capitalize on your network, their skills, knowledge, etc. By doing so, you build a network of “experts”. Also important is the consideration of maintenance and sustainability because no one wants “dead blogs” for example. As such, she really stressed that it’s important to integrate these projects well into the staff workflow and to make it as easy as possible, to provide the training for staff and patrons and to create more partnerships (among libraries, with the campus, with the community, with other universities, etc.). When marketing the idea, it’s also helpful to focus on the functionality of the site, so instead of calling it a “wiki”, you might use more familiar names like “research sharing site” to make it less alien. And finally, be agile and willing to change and develop as things progress.

One point which she really stressed was the importance of devoting time to these projects. She seemed to feel that people have to be given additional time to do all of this, that adding these projects to an already crammed daily schedule is unfair and stressful to the person and that the project will likely suffer for it. This might mean shifting responsibilities in a job description or even hiring a person specifically to focus on the web projects. Regardless, she did emphasize the necessity of allowing time for the development and maintenance of these projects to help keep them growing and keep them alive. If no one has time to update the blog, it seems like nothing is going on, when in reality everyone is just too busy to put a blurb up. I’d have to agree with her, frankly, knowing full well how many hours I’ve put into my own personal web-based projects on a weekly basis or how much I’ve worked on editing webpages for the library in my own job while trying to juggle the rest of my duties so that nothing suffers. It’s very tough and I’ve found myself wishing I had more hours in a day.

If anyone’s interested, Meredith’s presentation slides can be found on her blog (link posted above).

[ConGeek] OLA SupCon (Day 2) - Session Reflection - Slow in the Age of Speed

OLA Superconference Session #: 1100
Speaker: Carl Honore
Title: “Slow in the Age of Speed”

Carl Honore is a Canadian-born author living in the UK who has written a book called In Praise of Slow, which was the inspiration for his talk at the OLA superconference. He was a fantastic speaker who kept the rather large audience entertained and riveted the entire time with his commentaries about how this ‘Cult of Speed’ in today’s world seems to be pervasive in every aspect of our lives from relationships to sex to children and even to the workplace. He spoke of a rather colourful story of a man and woman who got a divorce because the wife was checking her Blackberry while in the midst of an intimate act with her husband; everyone laughed, but the truth of the matter is that it demonstrated just how technology- and speed-saturated we’re becoming.

The big statement which he wanted to drive home was that we have all forgotten how to unplug, slow down and so on in a world of speed and that we keep pushing to fit more and more into less and less time. Even activities designed to slow us down (such as yoga) are not safe. Carl stated that we are all a part of this “Road Runner culture”. Everything is rush-rush-rush, go-go-go and the nearly mindless search to make everything speedy seems never-ending (even resulting in concepts such as Speed Yoga and Drive-Through Funerals). We’re so caught up in the Cult of Speed that we’re oblivious to the damage it does to our lives, health, quality of life, quality of work and our relationships and that usually we become aware through a wake-up call (a major illness, the crumbling of a failed relationship, etc.). He offered that by slowing down judisciously, we will improve every aspect of our lives, including work and play.

If we keep speeding through everything, we miss out on the enjoyment of our food, we don’t eat well (resorting to fast food as a result) and so we miss out on proper nutrition, that we skimp on our relationships and lose out on companionship, just to name a few areas which would suffer. Carl was adamant about the idea that slowness still has a role to play even in the 21st century. He stated that people are beginning to realize all of this and so various ‘Slow Movements’ have begun to crop up around the world, such as the ’slow food movement’, which suggests that we get more out of food when it’s cultivated, cooked and eaten slowly. The ’slow city movement’ strives to re-do urban landscapes by adding more greenspace, more benches and such, designing spaces geared to offering places to encourage people to stop, slow down and take a break. The ’slow homes movement’ is a reaction to the cookie-cutter homes; houses are made with craftsmanship, neighbourhoods are designed so that you don’t need to driver everywhere, etc.

Even sports are affected. Where yoga, pilates and tai chi might have been considered a little off in left field at one point, athletes are found doing these things to help strengthen core muscles and to develop their ‘inner calm’ to put them in their ‘zone’ for their game. As a result, these activities are no longer so strange and are accepted alternatives to traditional workouts. This inner calm can then be taken back into the workplace. There is a focus here to link the mind to the body again. A reaction to ‘fast medicine’ which involves a lot of pill popping and quick fixes is that listening has been put back into medical curriculums. Another is the uprise of alternative medicine. People want therapies that work more harmoniously with the body, unlike harsh chemical drugs.

One of the scariest concepts that Carl brought up is that we are cultivating this Cult of Speed and that we will pass it off to our children, which is too much. Children need slowness for introspect, socializing, creating and inventing and simply learning. He pointed out that children learn more deeply, not superficially, if they’re given time to absorb and consider what they’ve been given. A slow education movement offers a regular Slow Down Day in the curriculum to encourage this process. Even Harvard’s welcome letter to freshmen apparently encourages them to excel but to give themselves time, to find a balance; the title of this document is apparently, simply: Slow Down.

How does this fit into the workplace? Carl suggested that if you’re fast all the time, it will backfire in that you will be a less effective worker. You will lose focus, productivity and will burn out quicker. The quality of your work will suffer and you may experience more sick time off of work. He suggested that adjusting work hours to work less will help us work better and avoid burnout, and that we will retain more (much like children who learn more deeply when given time to absorb it). If we work more slowly, again, we will encourage our brains to think more deeply. Switching gears is something our brains apparently need. And finally, reinitiating our relationships with technology will help if we learn to actually use that little button labeled “OFF”. Companies are beginning to look for ways to slow things down, including reintroducing small siestas in the afternoon, slow email movements (including no email one day through the week and on weekends or checking only twice a day), and forcing vacation upon workers who had been refusing to take it by shutting down offices and plants at Christmas and other major holidays.

A key phrase which I found both amusing and appropriate was: “Get in touch with your Inner Tortoise as the Inner Hare has taken over.”

Why should we slow down? For one, we’ll have more energy and not be so tired from constantly going so fast all the time. Our work will improve. Our relationships will seem much tighter. Children will open up more if they feel we’re moving at their pace, as well, which is important for a parent or anyone working with children in an educational setting.

This is when Carl touched on libraries and how even libraries have become fast-paced. Even the fast returns on books seems to be a sign of the ‘pulse quickening’. He reiterated that people will do some things better if they can slow down, such as longer loan periods on books. He found it ironic that he saw his own book in a library on a shelf labeled as ’short-term loan’ or something similar, making the expectation that readers should read and absorb the book as quickly as possible so that the next person can get it more quickly. His message to us was: find a good balance. While ‘bad slow’ does still exist, there is ‘good slow’ which can even just boil down to getting enough sleep and remembering to switch gears from time to time.

If I may reflect on this for a moment, I want to say that I think it’s important for libraries to keep up with the ever-changing technologies that are available and to keep up with the most current data and information. I think of a saying from Frank Herbert’s Dune: “The spice must flow!” I often think that way about information: “The info must flow!” Anyone who knows me knows that I love the toys. I’m all about technology and gadgets and web 2.0 fun. But on the reverse side of the coin, how much is too much, or can we sometimes take a step back and slow anything down? Is it up to our users to slow themselves down or are the new spaces which are being designed all over with beanbag chairs, softer lighting and even waterfalls and fireplaces being created to help encourage these ’slow down times’? (Much like the slow cities movement.)

Online renewal systems likely help with this, as well. People don’t feel as pressured by the due date (unless the item is recalled by another patron) if they can just simply renew their books online if they’re not yet finished with them. Do we have enough aspects of ’slow’ integrated, however, or will our users simply be overwhelmed with all the tech and all the information? Will they be overloaded and get swept away at break-neck speeds down the proverbial information highway? (Is that phrase even still used anymore or is even that too slow a phrase?) Granted, even at McMaster, we have Research Help Librarians and Liaison Librarians who seem to try to bridge that gap, to gather up the resources and information into more digestible chunks or pathways and to guide patrons more smoothly toward the data they seek.

The question is: are we doing enough to facilitate a new Cult of Slow? Perhaps we are. Perhaps we’re not. I certainly am not an expert. But I have definitely seen indications that we’re at the very least trying to find that balance that Carl suggested we so desperately need. Can we take an active role in guiding our users in finding that balance?

[ConGeek] OLASupCon (Day 2): Session Reflection: “Google: the New Library Vendor”

OLA Superconference – Session #1009
Speaker: Greg Sennema, Electronic Services Librarian, Wilfrid Laurier University
Title: Google: the New Library Vendor

This was the second session I had managed to get to at the conference and I’ll say up front that I was impressed that Greg managed to hold my undivided attention that early in the morning on a Friday, especially considering the ordeal it was to get there in the snow storm! Kudos to him for keeping the session informative, interesting and just all around fun!

He started out by saying that Google is not always spoken of in a positive light, but that they’re always spoken about though they aren’t exactly out at a table at the Expo, for example. Amazon has become a vendor to us too and seems to be more traditional than Google, but the speaker asked ‘what about Google Books as a jump to other vendors?’ He mentioned that Google Scholar is attractive to users because of its simplicity. Gmail seems to be better than other email accounts, has more storage and so on. Google Calendar is more widely used now because you can integrate email into calendaring with relative ease, publish the calendar to a webpage publicly, etc.

Most of the session was involved in simply pouring through all of the various facets of and tools that Google has to offer, most of which are pretty much free. Some of these included: Google Calendar, Gmail, Google Scholar, YouTube (bought by Google), Google News, Google Groups, image searching, news archives, maps, Google Directions, Google Translate, flight status checks, calculator, dictionary, conversions, “similar pages”, Google Docs & Spreadsheets, Google Labs, Jotspot, Blogger, Orkut (social network site), Google Page Creator (online website creation), Google Earth, Google Sketch-Up, Picasa, Google Desktop/Toolbar, iGoogle and many more. There are simply too many to cover. In truth, Greg even ran out of time trying to get through them all. The number of options, facets, tools and tricks that Google has up its collective sleeve is staggering. Considering I’ve been using quite a few of their tools including Gmail for quite a few years, I was stunned at how much I didn’t know about.

The point: Google has its fingers in just about everything, so it’s likely hard to avoid it at this point, but what does it have to offer the library?

Some interesting points were brought up in regards to using Google’s products in an academic setting. Why use Google? Greg suggested the following:

1. Citation completion.
2. Citation correction.
3. “I’m looking for this exact phrase.”
4. Author verification.
5. Incorrect spellings.

These are just a few of the reasons he cited. Each of these might be reasons a patron might come into a library or contact a library service, too, so it was mentioned that some librarians might be concerned about Google muscling in on their territory (my paraphrase, not his). It was mentioned that there is concern, for example, about Google Books, where entire books have been scanned and digitized and put online. But he clarified that only public domain works are available in their entirety; copyrighted material, while being there in full, can only be viewed in parts or snippets, but the whole text can be searched for a specific phrase or piece of information. This is much different than offering entire books for all materials in Google Books. He mentioned that this might actually increase the sales of copyrighted materials or the circulation of such materials via libraries if the entire texts are not fully available and that this might actually work well if set up through a vendor such as Amazon for out of print books being printed and sold on demand.

It was noted in the presentation that some universities (over 1000, according to the speaker) are making further use of Google’s products, such as Lakehead. They are making use of Gmail as their official e-mail server, having paid for ad-free e-mail, however they’re also running into the problem that the information is stored on U.S. servers and therefore the U.S. government can look in at any time, in theory. Google is, however, working hard to keep all information stored on their servers as private, to protect the privacy of their users, both regarding the U.S. Patriot Act (which I will admit to not knowing all the ins and outs of) as well as hackers. They have a security management system, apparently, which was brought in solely to keep data safe from hackers. This brings into question whether or not Google’s servers might or might not be more secure than those of a university.

Google’s mission, according to Greg, is to gather the world’s information and make it totally, university accessible. Is this not similar to what libraries strive to do? He mentioned that where some organizations might have a 5, 10 or 20 year plan, Google has a 300 year plan and actually tries to work with various libraries and library people regarding their book project and even has a newsletter which talks to librarians about the book scanning and such.

[ConGeek] OLASupCon (Day 1) - offline post #2

Written: Jan 31/08 @ (around) 3 pm.

This is the end of my conference day, I’m afraid. For those who are unaware, I’m on crutches right now with orders to stay off my leg as much as possible. Between wandering around trying to find my first few rooms, finding the coat check which seemed miles from everything else, hunting down somewhere to eat and finally getting through half of the Expo, I’ve done myself in. The pain in my leg is too great and I’ve returned to my hotel room before the third and last session of the day.

So I apologize, there will be no write-up on the Youtube and Libraries session from me. I hope to go to a few more sessions tomorrow and maybe skip the rest of the Expo.

[ConGeek] OLASupCon (Day 1): Session Reflection: “Web 2.0 Strategies”

Session #411
Speakers: Peter Rowley (Director of Information Systems, York University) & Kathy Scardellato (Executive Director, Ontario Council of University Libraries)

Let me say up front that both of these speakers were very knowledgeable about what they spoke about, but I found myself being “lost” on a few occasions. Peter pointed out a few times that he is coming from a background in Information Systems, so that he leaned toward explanations and theories that were analogous to his background and area of expertise. This is where the theory of Pattern Languages was brought into the session and where I kept getting lost. Not being familiar with this concept, I found it difficult to follow Peter at times, which is not necessarily his fault. He made efforts to try to explain in simple terms what Pattern Languages were and how they (recognizing certain patterns) can really come into play in the planning of projects involving web 2.0 technologies.

And then later on, things were made more fun and interactive when Kathy introduced the concept of music mash-ups and we were all given “clickers” to participate in a really quick survey based on some samples of music. This was tied into the three characteristics given to a project by Kathy and Peter: time, identity and fun. The one mash-up resulted over the course of 40+ years (from an original Rolling Stones tune, “Last Time”, to an orchestralcover, which lead to The Verve’s “Bittersweet Symphony” and a song called “Dirt Off Your Shoulder” by JayZ and finally to a more recent anonymous D.J.’s mash-up called “Bittersweet Dirt Off Your Shoulder”). This obviously exhibited the passage of time for some web 2.0 elements to come around. Other “Time Patterns” included time compression (making a community online look active by taking the dates off the postings) and time limits (deadlines on responses).

Identity was brought up in the sense that there are a few ways to consider identity in web 2.0. Are participants going to be anonymous or authenticated? This is going to greatly impact how a project will work. Then there are privacy issues, especially where children are involved. The notion that identification increases trust was also rivaled with the idea that anonymity usually instills distrust, but that sometimes it doesn’t because the user is not identified by a name, but by other aspects and therefore are considered part of the community (like a Mac user posting to a Mac tech support forum who identifies what type of Mac they have, what operating system, etc. — they belong in that forum and therefore are trusted to an extent). And an interesting point was brought up: when members of a community step in to try to diffuse a situation and show self-discipline, it’s a sign that the community is a healthy one.

And finally, fun is that sense of play that is intended to be part of the experience but doesn’t always mean a person is being entertained by the experience. They may be learning, but still having fun. (Would we do this stuff if there wasn’t that little element of fun in there somewhere?)

So over all, while I found part of the concepts difficult to grasp, I thought they had some good ideas even just to consider while preparing a web 2.0-based project. The bottom line is: why are you creating this project (what patterns can you see?) and using web 2.0, what time considerations are there, who are you doing this for and will identification be an issue and what is that fun element in there?

[ConGeek] OLASupCon - Day 1 offline post

Written: Jan 31/08 @ 10 am

Due to a comedy of errors, I missed the “Blogging in the Library” session this morning. However, thanks to a colleague of mine introducing me to the speaker after the session, the speaker has agreed to send me her presentation via email at some point, so it was not a complete loss.

In the meantime, I perused the OLA Store for a little bit, picked up three really cute scratch pads, a lanyard and a book entitled Library 2.0 and Beyond edited by Nancy Courtney. There is an entire chapter on gaming, which is what really caught my eye! Once I manage to flip through the book a bit, I’ll have to offer up my thoughts on the book. More later!

[ConGeek] OLA Con - Day 1 - Early Mornin’…

I’m upright. That’s not to say that I’m conscious, granted, but I’m up. I think a cup of tea would be lovely right about now. Anyway! What’s on the agenda for today?

9:05 am - Blogging in the Library

10:40 am - How to Jumpstart Your Web 2.0 Strategy

3:45 pm - Second Life: Pick-up Team or Major League? - OR - Youtube and Libraries (undecided)

Between them, I hope to pop into the Expo for a bit, check things out, etc. I don’t have anything but these three planned and I think that’s still a pretty full day. I don’t want to over-do things, either, since I am in a state of “limited mobility” being on crutches. I have my trusty backpack with me, however, so managing my package and any free goodies (pens, posters, etc?) will be fairly easy for me to manage.I have been told that there is no wireless access in the sessions so I’ll be writing up preliminary notes in Word and blogging either later tonight upon returning to the hotel or over the course of the weekend.

Tomorrow’s agenda is much more open with only two sessions planned. (Will note them tomorrow morning or later tonight in a separate posting.)

Wish me luck! I’m rather excited! I’ve never been to a library conference before, so I’m rather anxious to see what awaits. Cheers!

[GameGeek] Geeking out for a Cause!

So I wrote my last exam of the term last night (that’s another story) and was walking down this long corridor to go back to my car on the way out that had several bulletin boards. I stopped to peruse because one caught my eye. It was something about gaming at the college (tomorrow, in fact).

It was asking all gamers interested to stop in to ‘game for charity’.

*blinkblink*

Reeeeeaaaallllly??

What a fantastic idea. This, ladies and gents, gets me really excited. They are apparently going to be running games like Halo, Guitar Hero and more and players will be playing to provide game systems and games to underprivileged kids.

Wow.

Okay, sure, there are more important things such as food, shelter and clothing. But every Christmas, my workplace runs its annual Christmas Toy Drive for toys for underprivileged kids, so really, this is no different… except it’s more social and more interactive. HOW COOL IS THAT??

I think it’s bloody brilliant.

I think it would be cool if we had something like that. I don’t know how it would work… probably have to talk to manufacturers and local businesses to donate to the cause as it would be free advertising for them. Or maybe how long you game or how many game ’sessions’ you’re involved in equals how much friends and family donate to go toward buying system and game sets. At least that’s how I’m guessing it would work. I don’t really know.

Frankly, I would love to get in on that action to “do my part”, but sadly, it’s during work hours tomorrow.

Gaming for a good cause would be awesome.

I think that’s really all I have to say about that. Heh.

[GamingGeek] MUSHing… Podding…

I have been asked to be interviewed for a podcast!

PennMUSH’s Tinytalk podcast run by Javelin, developer of PennMUSH code and HeadWiz of M*U*S*H is apparently quite popular in the text-based gaming community. Jav has interviewed several prominent people in the MU*ing community including Lydia Leong, aka Amberyl, a developer for TinyMUSH (one of the code bases like PennMUSH for the games) and author of Amberyl’s MUSH Manual.

I am deeply honoured to be considered worthy of an interview for Tinytalk and to be included with such individuals.

What has sparked this wonderful opportunity? After nine years of running Online Gaming Resource (OGR) MUX, I’m passing off the gauntlet to a completely new crew. December 18th will mark OGR’s ninth anniversary, marking the day I opened the doors with Ellyssa and Daystrom way back in 1998. It’s hard to believe it’s been open that long. After maintaining it for the last couple of years pretty much solo, I’ve decided that I need to move on and focus on new projects and things which will encourage me to continue to be creative. I had hit a bit of a wall with OGR MUX and it really could benefit from new blood at this point.

Once I hand it over on December 19th, I will be reclaiming the name and website (including the URL) for OGR but passing on the MUX itself and much of the data from the website. The new text-game resource MUX will be called Gateway MUX. As I understand it, because I was the Head Wizard for so many years, the new crew wish to give me a “Wizard Emeritus” status and I plan to stay on at least in the capacity for training staff (which has already begun) and helping with the initial transition.

I’m also in the process of compiling the “OGR Staffing Manual” which will be based on the information in the staff-side of the website and updated to be more current (it’s about half-finished at present date). This will be e-mailed to the new staff crew and printed up for my portfolio. After some time, I may adjust it to be more generic and make it available publicly for those who run MU* games of their own to use as a basis for staffing.

Contrary to several rather confused e-mails and private pages I’ve received, I’m not leaving the text-based gaming community, I’m not going away and in fact, I’m already involved with three other MU* games, including one of my own creation.

I’m still quite involved in X-Men: Retribution MUSH, having four very active characters on the game grid (three canon Marvel characters and one original character of my own devising). I highly recommend this game if you’re interested in interactive storytelling in a text environment and the X-Men in general. On this game, which is set in Manhattan, you can play a character at Xavier’s School for Gifted Youngsters, an X-Man if you have the chance to get recruited by existing members, a Brotherhood member (following Magneto) or even just an independent mutant out in the big city or even a human character struggling with either pro- or anti-mutant views. Senator Kelly is now President Kelly and the Mutant Registration Act has gone into effect. Will you register?

A second game which I’m involved in but more from a creation and building point of view is being tentatively called ‘Albion’ and is the brainchild of a good friend of mine (I’d give his name if I had permission, but since I don’t, he goes by the name of Oogie on that game). Set in the distant future in what was once the UK, Victorian-inspired fashion and values have begun to permeate society as it rebuilds itself after a great cataclysm which nearly wiped out the human race well over a millenium ago. Gas-light and high society mingles with steam-punkish technology while creatures only seen in horror flicks thrive not just at the edges but also within the cities.

And finally, the third game is one of my own creation and is currently a closed, private game with a small group of friends. It is known as Nexus MUX and is an experiment in roleplay. Most roleplaying MU* games have a single theme for roleplaying within, but Nexus is set up to have multiple themes running at any given time at the whim of the players. Game grids may be built, whether permanent or temporary and multi-use rooms which will have rotating descriptions on them are also put to use. No code system for creating characters is necessary (though we do have one which will create a character sheet for you, but this step is not mandatory and more for your own reference than anything), as this is set up as a primarily freestyle environment. Where other games are interested in experience points and leveling up, Nexus is focused more on story and character development. We’ll see where it leads us.

Anyway, this is where I’m heading after OGR becomes Gateway and I’ve digressed horribly from the original point of the post: me in a podcast!

Once it has been done and is posted, I’ll put up a link for those who might be interested.