I’m gearing up to head to Honolulu, Hawaii to present at the Hawaii Library Conference 2009. One of my sessions will be all about library experiences, particularly the slant that Boulder Public Library is taking on this broad and increasingly interesting arena through our Pulse Point initiative.

Those that are attending the session on Pulse Points will  get a lot of context for this image. What we know is that libraries and places of learning come alive when the people they are intended to to serve are engaged, intrigued or delighted in the process. By creating Pulse Points in your library or facility there is the opportunity to capture the imaginations and genius of both your customers and your staff.

With the Pulse Point  initiative, we are really undertaking a way of creating more interesting experiences while at the same time learning much about our capacity to explore curiosity, creativity and new ideas. Flexibility and discovery…all wrapped up in a great branded effort!

For some time I have been advancing the idea of drawing bigger circles in the library community. One way that we can draw these bigger circles involves sharing our large initiatives and ideas from the inside out and working to replicate these in libraries that may or may not be in close by. The inspiration, ideas and learning through the success of one library can set a firm foundation for a successful program or initiative in another.  A terrific example of this idea is happening this very weekend at San Francisco Public Library when Tricycle Music Fest West rolls forward. Trike Fest West builds out of the enormously successful Tricycle Music Fest that started back in 2007 at PLCMC in Charlotte, NC. The idea of connecting the dots between literacy, libraries and great kindie rock music was a hit in Charlotte for 3 years. It is incredible to see it evolving in a city all the way on the other side of the country. I’m cheering for all the members of the audience who’ll be rocking out at the library as well as the incredible staff who take ideas and make them come to life (Christy, Jason, Angela!)! Are there ways that you or your library are working to draw bigger circles? I think that more of this kind of activity is not only beneficial, it really is one of the directions we need to go as a large library community showing us that we don’t always have to reinvent the wheel (especially with tricycles).

I am still learning.

These words have been attributed to Michelangelo and they came to mind when I contemplated this photograph I snapped back in March. It is an image of my grandmother Carrie only a few weeks before her 101st birthday. Her hands had never held an iPod. On a whim I placed it in her hands and brought up the Koi Pond app. Suddenly she held an experience that she could hardly fathom. I realized quickly that this thing I carry in my pocket each day was a thing of wonder. Seeing my grandmother’s 101 year old eyes light up as her fingers splashed the touch screen pond was a delicious moment. My grandmother spends her days quietly in her chair by the window reading the books and magazines people bring her. Now she was moving this digitized water and the fish were responding to her touch.  When I remember this moment a flood of ideas come to mind: how we take our little gadgets for granted, how the generations can find new territories for connection, and how the world quickly shifts for some but not all.

Only a few days ago I put this picture into a slidedeck for a presentation I’ll be doing soon.  ALA conference attendees who will be participating in the “Punch it up with Pictures” preconference will hear me talk about how a picture can open up a world of stories. As you can guess, this will be an image I’ll be using for sometime to illustrate that point.

Columbus Metropolitan Library is showing that important matters should not be hidden. By placing this very obvious, shocking screen right out front before you can access their Web page, there is no denying that this library wants you to know what they (and most Ohio libraries) are facing.  Is this an interruption to the library user? Absolutely. Does this speak volumes about the matter and how CML’s level of concern? Absolutely.  Libraries can often be subtle. Now is not the time for subtlety. This very unsubtle statement and well worth applauding.

Today I was a part of the webinar The Future of the Library User Experience hosted by Urban Library Council. The webinar featured Nate Bolt,  user experience leader with Bolt Peters. A key item that Nate suggested is that in order to be craft more significant user experiences for library customers in the future it’s important that we are aware of 3 Principles:

1. Open Architecture Wins
2. Build Small
3. Behavior not opinions

The third point rang out for me very strongly. How important it is to see actual behavior–evidence–to drive our programs, design and decisions. Nate suggested that we never utter these words: “tell me what you think about our Web site.” This open ended request–used in many circumstances (replace ’Web site’  with a choice of other offerings or services) can easily open up a can of unactionable input.  Act upon behavior–not words. So, to drive home the idea of ‘Behavior not opinions,’ I offer up this quote from Michael Schrage, Serious Play: How the World’s Best Companies Simulate to Innovate:

Behavior change matters more than technological changes. The most intriguing perspectives don’t come from looking at what these new toys can do, but from using them to see how people and their organizations behave.

How about this: behavior. consideration. action.

 I’ve been reading through Daniel Pink’s book A Whole New Mind: Why Right Brainers Will Rule the Future in preparation for a webinar later this week. This books triggers a general (and vast)  interest I have in storytelling in its many forms. Pink includes a whole section on “story” and refers to a movement called “organizational storytelling” that is really quite fascinating. He briefly profiles the work that Steve Denning helped pioneer in this area.

…Denning discovered that he learned more from trading stories in the cafeteria than he did from reading the bank’s official documents and reports. An organization’s knowledge, he realized, is contained in its stories.

 Stories have an incredible amount of power! Power to move people, ideas and organizations forward. This same power can keep us in the dark, living in flux or simply the past.  Some of the big players are getting this concept and moving it forward into the fiber of their organizations. Pink mentions 3M, NASA and Xerox. Recently I attended a performance by Laurie Anderson and learned that only a few years ago NASA made her their artist in residence. What an incredible match!

How do we use these stories that float aroud us but perhaps never make the annual report? We know they play a big part in who we are.  Are these the stories that tell the deeper truth of who we are as organizations? I’m curious about how anecdotes turn into story and expand into the minds and behaviors of staff and leaders. What are the stories we tell ourselves–about ourselves? A great work is to harness the power of the stories that make us–libraries, nonprofits, businesses, families–who we are, or who we think we are. How do we broaden the story? When is it time for a plot change (when anecdote starts ruling decision-making, perhaps)? There are endless ways to celebrate our stories.  Now, what about those stories that simply need an ending?

Today I heard someone say “I hope we’re not playing with fire” in regard to making budget reduction proposals. I’m not even sure the complete context of what they were saying, but hearing this phrase in the context of what is going on in our economic forecast gave me reason to pause. It does feel a bit like playing with fire. There seems to be something dangerous and somewhat scary about the state we are in. I do believe that fire can purify and transform, at least symbolically. This is a way that I think about what we are going through right now. When I read Helene Blowers’ post about new beginnings I felt a like mind chiming in. I think that many of our current practices or approaches may have to burn up in the proverbial fire that has been cast. Sincere vision and dreams will be burnished, but not destroyed.

In this past week I’ve become very aware of the fine line that we often draw between what it means to be business-minded and vision-minded. As the economy continues to plan a trip south and we find out what the reality of this means in our local worlds, I think that it can easily be open season on dreamers. Now is not the time for dreams to die. Now is not the time to sell our vision out to fear. This can be a tall order right now. Business and dreams seem to clash in the air. Where is the mix between the two? What becomes our guide? Do we cash in our vision to projections of hard(er) times. Vision that is grounded continues to lead if we allow it to do so. Has the world shifted in the past several months? Yes. Do we know where this is leading? No. Do we need to be really smart right now? Yes. Do we have to forget our dreams in order to be fiscally-minded? No. Business and dreams can exist together. Yes.

I offer up some thoughts to help dreamers make it through the day, into the board room and away from the cliff:

1. Fill in blanks where you can by telling what you know.

2. Create some method to get creative ideas into action (faster than usual).

3. Re-think before you re-write you reasons for being (don’t throw the vision out with the bath water).

4.  Keep stirring the dreams in the mix. Stir a little harder before watching the news.

If Buddha took up guitar and decided to sing music that blurred the lines between age groups, he’d likely be doing back-up for the South Carolina band Lunch Money. There are so many reasons to love this band. And they recently released one more reason to love them–because they love libraries…and they put it in song on their latest release DIZZY!  Read the lyrics, go listen to the track then repeat.  It’ll make you feel good…

I Love My Library

I’m going to the library…to see my librarian…who’ll send me home with 60 things…as if I could carry them (I’ll bring my red wagon)…Passing out the picture books like my granny hands out food…”Leggi, leggi, take all of these…And you might like this one too”…and my brain’s getting fat on stories and facts…and it feels like love…All the librarians…they say come follow me…They’re looking straight at me….They take me seriously….and all the things that I’d never have picked….become my new favorites…I show them to my friends at school…and they get addicted too (to Nancy Drew)…I feel so understood when a story’s this good…Oh, it feels like love…All the things that I could ever wonder about are waiting here for me…All the places I could ever wander to…I have a ticket for free…and guess who tossed me the keys?…Books about boys and girls and magic worlds…Heroic dogs, a toad, a frog…Sleuthing teens and big machines…Hippo friends and astronauts…Freight trains and snowy days…Wind-up mice and caps for sale…Lightning and wild things…I love my library.

Why are you not blogging? This is a question I’ve been asking myself since mid-December. I’m  constantly crafting posts–posts that simply aren’t going live (at least not outside of the sandbox). I’ve even asked myself the sharp question: am I a blogger anymore? Do I want to be a blogger anymore? Is YestoKnow still where I need to be channeling my voice, ideas and observations? I’ve thought about this much. So, here are 3 big reasons I’ve come up with to answer my question about why I’ve not been blogging much lately:

• Blogging is about communicating your ideas. I am doing this in a myriad of ways almost every waking minute of my day. Since taking on my new role in Boulder, I am crafting and recrafting communications each day–from focusing on taking Boulder Library’s primary print publication to be more of a newsletter, story-related format to crafting vision and goal communications. So, I’ve been feeling communicated-out a bit lately.
• Hiring a key leadership position is intense. Early on in my new role, I worked to re-focus and re-brand the Library’s Information Technolology Department to focus on a broader range of technologies and innovative applications. What resulted from this is a Library Innovation & Technology Department. Knowing that it would take a very dynamic individual to help lead this effort, crafting a job fitting description, getting it posted and finding the right manager for this effort was real work. I’m happy to say that we found a great LIT Manager who’ll be starting on Monday. Yeah and whew!
• Moving across the country in two chunks–before and after selling a house in Charlotte–in a 5 month span is utterly life shaking. There are so many facets to any move, especially a cross-country move. I recently read an article that discussed the difficulties many libraries are having with finding new directors, not because of the pool of qualified candidates but because of all the implications of making large moves.

Finding words for this has been a good little practice in looking back on the past few months of my life through the lens of blog-action.  Wheesh, there is a lot going on. 2008 was an intense, life-changing, growth-filled year. Now that can really keep you blogging–or not.

So, why are you not blogging?