“Saying Nix To Big Deals and the Terrible Fix”

This morning I was lucky to be able to attend a presentation by Ted Bergstrom called “Some Economics of Saying Nix To Big Deals and the Terrible Fix.” Professor Ted Bergstrom of the University of California, Santa Barbara has been collaborating with Paul Courant and Preston McAfee to learn about the deals behind Big Deals and find out what the contracts really say. One juicy tidbit was that similar institutions for similar contracts can pay as much as double (or half) of what others are paying, making the idea of a costs formula basis for pricing clearly a fiction.

The short version of his finding is encapsulated in Ado Annie’s “Cain’t Say No” song from the Rogers & Hammerstein musical Oklahoma.

I’m jest a girl who cain’t say ‘no,’
I’m in a terrible fix!
I always say, ‘Come on, let’s go,’
Jest when I oughta say ‘Nix.’

The idea (oversimplified) is that the commercial publishers, like Elsevier, are the sweet-talkin’ fine young men and the libraries are Ado Annie, with a heart of gold but without a lick of good sense. In the show, Ado Annie ends up rescued (sorta’) by a combination of her sensible father and the young man who truly cares and is really on her side. The idea in this presentation is to look at the stories we are being told, how they are being told, what the real story is, and to generally piece together a sensible response beyond that of a young woman flattered that the peddlar will offer her a special deal if he can steal a few kisses on the side.

I was able to livetweet the event (until my battery ran out), which generated some interesting conversations with people from Philadelphia PA, Brockport NY, West Lafayette IN, Albuquerque NM, Denver CO, Lebanon NH, and even local folk from Ann Arbor who weren’t able to attend!

---

–> BEGIN LIVETWEET <–

* WARNING: Will be minimally livetweeting talk by Ted Bergstrom on economics of library subscription models.
* He starts by making interesting parallel between how libs select/pay journals & drs prescribe for patients – payer's not selector
* "monopolistic paradise" & California power plant economics, w/gov paying but industry setting price. Oops! "Enter ENRON"
* Interesting look at the relatively equitable historical model of paper publishing, w/ 1copy=1sub pricing + shelf space 4 storage.

• navi: RT @pfanderson “monopolistic paradise” & California power plant economics, gov paying but industry setting price. Oops! Enter ENRON
• me: @navi Well, isn’t that what libs are doing? State school, gov pays, publishers set prices, and (per California) the taxpayers lost

* w/ web access, publisher goal is extract as close as possible 2 ALL library’s “surplus” budget via Big Deals. New jrnls not added
* Big Deals created “crack journals” w/ faculty addicted 2 online access, unwilling 2 use print. “Can’t just say no” Audience laughs.
* Ted describes getting ALL of Elsevier’s journals as “freedom contract”, not getting all is called “complete contract.” More laughs.

• srharris19: @pfanderson Freedom *from* your money!
• me: @srharris19 Exactly! “freedom contract” means faculty get everything for free
• srharris19: @pfanderson I’m on an anti- big deals kick. I want access to everything, want to pay based on what we actually use.
• me: @srharris19 I hope Ted puts his slides on Slideshare or video online. His model does what you want.
• srharris19: “Big deal” subscription packages are “just in case” collection development. Pay a lot for stuff that doesn’t get used… just in case!

* Oooh, scary — ask faculty to pay-per-view. Uh hunh. Right. Elsevier charges ~$35/view for individuals.
* Ted points out that publishers don’t provide stats / metrics that allow libs to evaluate what we’re spending and how it is used
* Hehehe. Non disclosure agreements block libs fr sharing contracts w/ econs studying models. FOIA saved the day. “Pursuant to …”

• srharris19: @pfanderson We’re an open records state. Non-disclosure clauses are invalid. Yay!

* Ted keeps emphasizing that costs 2 publishers 4 online access approach 0%, but costs 2 libs R significantly greater than 1% (~7%)
* Interesting comment – libns like contracts kept secret to promote fiction they are getting a “deal”. But secrets actually hurt all
* He isn’t even mentioning the problem that users pay for their own access not realizing library already paid.
* Propose PPV 4 endusers. Works in no-fail resources, but not when quality is an issue, & endusers not best informed 4 choice #health
* “so long as monopolist 4profit publishing survives, these $$ R as real 2 U’s as heating/electric, shd B economized” Bingo.
* Does it make economic sense for monopolist publishing models to survive?
* Why Elsevier has such small profits, when small publishers like OSA charge less & make higher profits? Administrative overhead?

• jokrausdu: @pfanderson How is 30-40% profit small for Elsevier? OSA=optical society of America?
• jokrausdu: @pfanderson How can a non-profit society publisher make a “profit”? The money is put back into society activities, conferences, etc.
• me: @jokrausdu Actually, he said that. OSA pushes profits back into RESEARCH!! What a concept, eh?

* Efficiency: allow online access at no added cost, or not pub journal at all if setup exceeds value to audience
* Oh, this is cool. Model proposed that rewards authors for publishing in cheap journals – cheap=more readers, more cites

• jokrausdu: Faculty want to publish in high “impact” journals with high readership, not always = cheap. @pfanderson You prob. already know that though.
• me: @jokrausdu Yes – he is proposing pricing model to shift high impact to cheaper journals. Wish I understood better.

* Drop Big Deal subscriptions. Subscribe to avg cost jrnls as needed. Subsidize pay per view in *part*, user bears rest of cost.

• novoseek: follow @pfanderson and for tracking talk by Ted Bergstrom on economics of library subscription models.

* Praises institutional repositories, esp local one 4 contract to host Elsevier articles by local authors. Authors to provide copies
* Can publishers really stop authors from sharing copies of their own articles?

• BudGibson: @pfanderson According to copyright law, yes.
• me: @BudGibson He says not for last draft of article – faculty can share that with impunity.
• BudGibson: @pfanderson So, I guess the publisher only has copyright for the version that is actually published.
• me: @BudGibson Exactly. Publisher owns the copy they format and edit, not the copy as submitted.

* He mentions that more and more people are putting early drafts of articles online with no penalty.
* Q fr audience: how do we know if we need the article before we pay for it? How do we sample? We risk time spent plus cost of access
* Ted personally will not write, publish or review for journals that charge over $1000 for a year subscription.
* Q fr audience: remembering early computer use fees as parallel to current dynamic. Interesting. Wd make gd article.
* Another option – get libraries out of business as paying for subscriptions. Charge to grants, user pays fees, etc.
* Reputation of existing journals is what monopoly is built on. Doesn’t erode quickly, and won’t if freedom contracts persist.
* what would user fees/ PPV do to interlibrary loan? Ouch. That would take some negotiations.

• davideisert@pfanderson I would stop using the library and just buy from Amazon, Borders, or B&N
• me: @davideisert Hard to buy research journals from Amazon, Borders, Barnes & Noble. Probably in future …
• davideisert@pfanderson But that isn’t what I am getting from ILL. Local library typically has what I need.
• me: @davideisert Here in MI, state is closing state library & funds 4 publibs. Then you can’t get it. Can’t assume local library will persist

* Q: How do publishers maximise their profit? How do nonprofits succeed at this better? A: What gets called profits? Fancy accounting
* Hmmm. Blackwell divides online subscription fees rcd by cost of journal. Nonprofits charge less, receive less.
* MI, WI, IL Elsevier contracts for “freedom contract” 2mil, 2.3 mil, 1.2 mil – Wisconsin got the “good” deal

• Rudilibrarian: Which was IL?
• me: Illinois.
• Rudibrarian: @pfanderson got that — was wondering which number? And hearing my SUNY peeps cry
• me: @Rudibrarian There was a lot of backchat in the room when those numbers came out! We paid almost double WI. Ouch.
• me: @Rudibrarian I’m not sure, but I *think* IL was the 2mil, and MI the 2.3mil.

• loganrath: @pfanderson how’d they negotiate that??
• @loganrath He doesn’t know backstory.

* Battery out, have to stop. SORRY! Will blog.
–> END LIVETWEET <–

---

Final discussion and comments included this bits.
From the audience (mostly Scott Martin at this point):
– Libraries should be thinking of collections, not conduits.
– Many people accessing something doesn’t mean it is good.
– The idea that additional access costs $0 is an article of faith, not a guarantee for the future.

Q: What about blogs and Science 2.0 for self-publishing and collaborative science and research? How could this impact on economic models?
A: Organized open access such as PLoS still tends to have what seems to be excessive costs to preserve online access. What is the money for? Where is it going? PLoS actually has negative profist. Why? Still, for those topics where blogging is possible and effective, this may have some impact.

Learn more:
Ted Bergstrom: http://www.econ.ucsb.edu/~tedb/ OR
http://www.econ.ucsb.edu/%7Etedb/Journals/BundleContracts.html.

9-11 & Twitter: The Stories Around Us

Often, as I think back to the day of September 11, 2001, I think of the social technologies we have now, especially Twitter, and how things might have been different THEN. Maybe more people could have been rescued, for example. I imagine that people trapped in the rubble could have texted, and the people around the world could have helped crowdsource to triangulate where they were. Applications of social media for disaster response is a topic for another series of posts.

This morning, I opened my computer to find an email with a powerful essay from Col. Holly Doyne of the US Army and author of Kuwait Diary (about her work in the Iraq conflict). She highlighted some of her personal losses in the 9-11 disaster, recommended Exhibit 13 by Blue Man Group, talked about the losses of the day, the losses that followed, and the losses to us all from the changes made to keep us safe. She closed with this quotation.

“And the work of the righteousness shall be peace, and the effect of righteousness, quietness and confidence forever.” From the Prayer Book for Jewish Personnel in the Armed Forces of the United States – 1984 JWB

When I opened Twitter, the discussion was already raging – people remembering, telling stories, personal experiences and more. I captured the following slide images in the space of just a few minutes. There is much much more in Twitter, but these few selections give a sampling of the stories being shared and the memories being relived. The power of Twitter (specifically) as well as microblogging and social media in general for storytelling, healing, sharing and disaster response ought to provoke further thought and what we can and should be doing with these new technologies, as well as what the risks may be at the personal level from not developing the competencies to make effective use of them.

Twitter Ethiquette?

This is such a clever idea and so well researched and implemented, I don’t feel I need to say a thing. Except.

1. I really like the coinage of the new word “ethiquette” or “ethiqette”, meaning the fusion of ethics and etiquette.
2. (Irrelevant to the blogpost) I am going on “vacation” and you won’t see another blogpost from me until sometime early next month. This assumes I survive being with no internet. Yes, this also means I am going to fail at this attempt at a blogpost a day for a month. I had a choice. Finish the month of blogging, or have a brief but significant vacation when it was offered to me. What would you choose?

Enjoy the slideshow!

Presley, Slywia. Twitter Ethics. http://www.slideshare.net/sylwiapresley/twitter-ethics-presentation

What Have You Got To Lose? Parable of the Business Cards

This is a personal story, and I’ll even illustrate with visual aids. This story has been persuasive to a few business folk who didn’t really see why they might use, for example, Twitter.

The story started as I was franticly preparing for a business trip a week before I needed to fly out, and the business cards I’d ordered through my institution still hadn’t arrived. I was an invited speaker, and had to have business cards. If I was putting my own money into it, I really wanted the minicards from Moo, but at that time Moo was UK-based and I didn’t think I could get them shipped in time. Next best choice for mini-cards and US-based was Zazzle. So here I am, in the wee hours of a Saturday morning (and I mean before 7AM) trying to place an order via the Zazzle website.

Me: “Zazzle says, There is a slight problem with your credit card. >> Please try again.” For both credit cards. Checked account. Have money. What gives?”

I wasn’t happy. I tried every online option for assistance I could find, then reluctantly phoned customer support, where I was on hold for something like twenty or thirty minutes. When I finally got customer service, we chatted for a long time, but I won’t inflict the conversation on you. Suffice it to say that the young woman was both incapable and unwilling to provide assistance. I asked to speak with a manager and was told there weren’t any. I suggested a manager might come in later that day and would she please pass along a message. She agreed to do so, but it was clearly under duress. I asked when a manager would be likely to come in and she said usually in two hours. By this point, that would have been around 10am my time, and I had been working on this for a good while.

After I waited an hour, then another hour, and longer. I was worried, frustrated and a tad desperate. I sent a cry for help out to Twitter.

Me: “Tell me, folks, I need business cards ASAP, as in within 6 days. What are my options? Can Moo ship overseas that fast?”

I received a quick hopeful reply.

JennyBento: “I’ve always loved my Vistaprint cards, so we’ll see how these turn out.”

As I was hesitating, trying to decide whether or not to try Jenny’s recommendation, I received this.

Wow! Vistaprint was on Twitter! Was Zazzle? Nope, couldn’t find them. Bummer. [NOTE: It turned out Zazzle was in Twitter, but I didn't see them in search that day, and they never replied to my tweets about their company. Twitter search for people is notoriously flakey.] OK, I went to check out Vistaprint. While I whipped through placing the order at Vistaprint, I made a suggestion, was immediately told it would be passed along. Then I had problems at the completion of the Vistaprint order, similar to what had happened with the Zazzle order, but without all the error messages.

Me: “Well, I made it all the way through clicking finish purchase, but it never went through. Do your folks send a confirming email?”

A few minutes later, I had a reply from Vistaprint on Twitter that the order was fine.

Vistaprint: “I see that the order is now in the processing stage.”

I thanked them effusively.

Me: “I love you guys! The customer service experience you have provided is exceptional. I deeply appreciate it.”

What about Zazzle? Well, I never got a phone call or email message from them, and at this point I didn’t care if I heard from them. Was that the end of the story? Unfortunately not. The next morning I woke up to find an email from Zazzle saying that the order had been processed and shipped. Excuse me? What? So now I had TWO sets of business cards coming via express shipping. Pricey, pricey, and much more than I had anticipated spending.

I will say the products from both were excellent, and I really enjoyed the minicards I got from Zazzle. Their shipping was really prompt, fast, and they arrived quickly, a day ahead of the Vistaprint order. The quality was exceptional. Zazzle carried the product I really wanted to order, while Vistaprint did not carry minicards. I get a lot of compliments on both business cards, and the Vistaprint customer service was mind-blowing. In the end I thought I would use both again.

Me: “End score: Customer service: Vistaprint +10, Zazzle 0; Satisfaction w/ experience: Vistaprint +8, Zazzle +3. Will probably use both again.”

Months later, I received an email from Zazzle asking why I had not returned as a customer, and would I fill out a survey. I filled the survey in, you betcha. They offered me a coupon for a small discount on my next order. Somehow I never got around to it.

I suspect that the Zazzle experience was a fluke – that I simply got unlucky with a less than sterling employee encounter. I bet she never gave the message to her manager, or that the manager fixed the problem online and didn’t think to tell me they’d fixed it. These are things they can and probably have fixed since then. The moral of the story is how Vistaprint gained a customer who will happily sing their praises through effective use of Twitter. I tend to tell people abbreviated versions of this story every time I hand out my business cards. If someone says, “Wow, those are cool cards,” I proudly say, “I got them from Vistaprint! You should try them!”

Oh, what did the cards look like? Alright, alright, here they are.

140 Healthcare Uses of Twitter

I thought I’d gathered a lot of information about Twitter in Health, but this totally blows me out of the water. Wonderful presentation!

Don’t want to work your way through the slides? Here is the list as a blogpost.

Phil Baumann: 140 Health Care Uses for Twitter: http://philbaumann.com/2009/01/16/140-health-care-uses-for-twitter/

Henry Ford Hospital Surgeons Twitter Surgery As Outreach & Teaching

You may have already heard the buzz about this, since it is in a lot of news venues.

CNN: Surgeons send ‘tweets’ from operating room: www.cnn.com/2009/TECH/02/17/twitter.surgery/

Since it is a local group doing this, I wanted to be sure to bring it to the attention of the University of Michigan community. Ten days ago a surgical team at Henry Ford Hospital twittered a surgery. (More about Twitter.) The first time a surgery was twittered it was done by the patient who was under local anesthesia for the procedure on his legs. (More about the original twittered surgeries.)

That was quite fascinating. Reactions to that suggested the idea that twittering (or tweeting) surgery might serve as yet another way to provide outreach and education about surgical procedures. The docs at Henry Ford took the idea and ran with it. Concept proposed, approved, selected what type of surgery they wanted to educate folks about, Twitter explained to patient and family, authorized by the patient and family, tech accommodations made in the operating theater if needed, protocols proposed … all in a couple months. Wow!

I remember a few years ago when my college-aged daughter developed a fascination with surgical videos broadcast on cable. Luckily, I’m not squeamish, and I do have a professional interest in all things healthcare, but I never did understand why my daughter found this to be high entertainment. I especially did not understand since trying to get her to go to the doctor is almost impossible, and the closest she comes to healthcare is usually autoclaving tattoo needles. From the fact that they actually have surgical videos on cable, my daughter is evidently not the only non-healthcare weirdo who finds some sort twisted thrill in watching random surgical videos.

It is different when people are trying to learn something about the procedure – if they or a family member might be going through this. Surgical videos are a wonderful way to get a better understanding of what might happen, as well as to get used to the idea that people go through this and it is OK, they are fine. So now, if you search YouTube for the word “surgery” you get 55,000 results; if you search Google Video for surgery you find over 68,000 videos; if you search Google for (Surgery OR surgical) Videos YouTube you get 1,300,000 results. Alright, I get the idea. People want to know about surgery, or they want to tell about their surgery.

The drawback of the videos is that for those who are squeamish, well, um, the videos can be a bit graphic, or upsetting. What do you do if something upsets you, or you have questions about what is happening? This is where Twitter comes in. With LiveTweeting the surgery, people in your extended audience can virtually observe the surgery without getting too grossed out, and can ask questions in real time and get answers. This is what happened during the Henry Ford tweeted surgery. Here’s some example tweets.

Are the blood vessels feeding the tumor?

branches of the main blood vessels are feeding the tumor, it is important to dissect and clip them

Now for that example, Henry Ford’s surgical resident who was doing the twittering was actually answering a question from someone local, also in Detroit. During the surgery, they also responded to questions from:

• Words_by_Chris in Swansea, UK
• Cubus in Antwerp
• TStitt in Redwood City, California
• TopherAlexander in Chicago
• SavvyDaddy in Chicago
• MSpeir in South Carolina.

I don’t know that they could keep up with this if a large group of people got really excited and started asking lots of questions, but you get the idea. Pretty exciting potential, eh? In addition to sending out descriptions via Twitter, they also grabbed video from the Operating Room cameras and pushed it into YouTube.

YouTube: VUI Surgeons (Henry Ford Hospital): http://www.youtube.com/user/VUIsurgeons

Henry Ford Hospital tried this out in January with a bladder surgery. They are doing it again on March 6th. Think about it. Outreach, education, real time engagement with observers around the world, all via social media. Stay tuned.

Livetweeting Andrea Forte, Learning in Public

Earlier this week, I attended a presentation by Andrea Forte on “Learning in Public” and the use of social media such as wikis and Wikipedia in formal education. Here is the twitter stream related to this event.

=================

Live tweeting – Andrea Forte: Learning in Public – Info Literacy, SocMed and Public Schools

HS Student: I’ll look at government sites first because I *know* I can trust them

swbuehler @pfanderson So naïve

TeeMonster @pfanderson Was he absent when his history class was covering Watergate?

TeeMonster @pfanderson More to the point — is that HS student missing THIS: http://tinyurl.com/cejcb8 #blackout

@TeeMonster Thanks!! Good link! I’m saving this. AF’s talking abt SocMed as community of practice, gradually moving towards centrality.

Orientation of contemporary students to online information. Focus of talk on Wikipedia as publishing model & social engagement venue

@swbuehler Yes – that was her point. And the room laughed when she emphasized the trust aspect of the comment

AF: Information literacy is a problem of people knowing how to act in communities, not just finding but also contributing

She highlights: NewGrounds, YouTube, Digg, Bloglines, Wikipedia, Twitter

Discussing model: Wikipedia assumes good will and consensus and ethical behavior of editors.

kgs @pfanderson except sometimes it stops at edit wars, because Wikipedia is a human product, and therefore fallible

@kgs AF: that is part of consensus building – info goes in or stays out. But yes, all human knowledge is fallible and susceptible 2 change

NYT Quote: “The problem w/ Wikipedia is that it only works in practice. In theory, it never works.”

h2cm @pfanderson Hi. Thanks I just favorited your tweet re. WikiPedia. I’ve a blog post to follow… Governance is a major issue

@h2cm She is actually talking about a governance class she used for this. Check out her articles: Andrea Forte.

AF: Wikipedia as learning environment. Disagreements > edit wars > consensus > knowledge building discourse

AF: Wikipedia process: Assertion > Challenge > Support > Resolution. INCLUDED: “How do we know this?” aka info literacy

AF: Example: global warming = politicized issue, does this mean it is ok to cite political documents?

AF: Latour/Woolgar sociology of science: “Messy, cyclical, often emotional process of making claims, peer-review, publication” eg Wikipedia

Q from remote audience. Parallels Wikipedia w/ FLOSS community. What is primary motivation for participation? A: We don’t know.

Q: What are the demographics of Wikipedia authors? A: We don’t even know male/female. Where anonymous edits come from is avail, not authors

AF: Affordances for learning implicit in the process of working in Wikipedia. Can we create these same opportunities in other venues?

AF: Classrooms not self-selected. Social connections/structures very different. Does publishing 4 real audience change how content is cre8d?

AF: Students don’t perceive wiki/blog publication 4 class as public forum. Assume no one will look. Except their friends. Oops

AF: Talking about problems with legitimate citation management in Wikipedia. I was only person in audience who’d tried. Interesting.

AF: Recs for classwikis: support citation, protect privacy, support classroom social relationships, make it easy for teacher to find identity.

AF: Likes MediaWIki because opensource and large developer community. EG: ScienceOnline.org
My apologies – wrong URL. Right URL is http://www.scionline.org/

AF: Iterative process of sculpting wiki software 2 support academic & scholarly inquiry (proper citations). Using SciOnline in HS classrooms

AF: Findings: 1: students paid attention to non traditional features of SocMed – own experiences, personal focus, reflection

AF: Findings: 2-3: audience changes behavior in writing and metacognitive reflection on content

AF: Findings: 4: wiki supports process of learning AS a community

AF: Stdt assmt strategies support new heuristics: is material licensed for use? intellectual property entered the classrm. w00t!

AF: students assumptions that if MANY people have reviewed and edited content that consensus must be close and info is accurate

AF: Stdt assessment: Is wikipedia safer because of checks and balances? or less worthy because it is an “edited” (ie. open) source?

AF: Reasoning about why they cite: sense of responsibility to audience *beyond* grading rubric. People care, therefore I want to do it right

AF: what is pedigree or provenance of your info? does it have a credible background?

AF: Students noted that the hard part was writing science in simple language for middle schoolers and broad audience

AF: neat phrase: “cognitive apprenticeship” – how people learn to contribute value in wikis, examining how peers contribute, role modeling

AF: Info takes on new meaning when school work becomes *authentic public resource* rather than simply assessment of learning

AF: more than half young people creating new content online. Opportunity for education? Responsibility for assessing also distributed

AF QUOTE: “Education is not preparation for life, education is life.” John Dewey 1938.

AF: Change in writing was less qualitative product than shift in process and level of engagement.

“Looking for Twitterers in All the Wrong Places” – One Bad Idea and a Half Dozen Good Ideas

A friend of mine just asked me on Facebook how to find people on Twitter. I flew over via Wall-to-Wall and discovered a thread called “looking for fellow Twitterers (in all the wrong places?)”. The first reply said, “What is twittering and are you allowed to do it in public?”

I can’t begin to talk about those two questions in the space allocated to either Twitter or Facebook posts, so thought I’d take it outside, over to the blog, and then will bring the blog URL back to the microblogging environments.

Twittering is a kind of chitter-chatter conversation, a bit like a party where it is crowded enough that everyone is involved in a couple overlapping conversations at a time, and you overhear fragments of other conversations around you, sometimes intriguing enough to turn around and start talking to them. I’ve heard a lot of other descriptions, though, including people who said it is like fishing, like sex, or it is an RSS tool, the social search engine we’ve all been waiting for, crisis and disaster response technology, and much more. I described some of these in this presentation.

Twitter and Microblogging for Public Health: http://www.slideshare.net/umhealthscienceslibraries/twitter-and-microblogging-for-public-health-presentation

Now, given that one of the questions included the phrase “are you allowed to do it in public?” I better clarify that when folks say that Twitter is like sex they didn’t mean like having sex, but more that you can’t explain it to someone who isn’t doing it. Honest! At least for most folks, anyway. I am sure given how huge Twitter is there is probably someone doing something scandalous with it, I just don’t know about it (and please don’t tell me).

If you are going Twitter then, well, you do want to do it with folks you like. I could try to beat the analogy to death, saying it is like finding people to date, but frankly I don’t think the analogy works there. It would be more like finding people you’d like to be with to study, or go to church, or go for coffee and chat.

Whenever you start a new job or move to a new town there is this time where you haven’t met anyone yet or no one asks you to join them for coffee, and you feel really alone. Eventually that goes away, and there are ways to speed that along. Introducing yourself is one way, others include asking people questions, telling folks you like what they’re wearing or saying or reading or something like that. A big part of it is listening, and getting the people you meet to introduce you to people they know. Another big part is putting yourself in the same places as people doing the things you like to do — finding common ground. Here are some tips.

(0)
In Twitter there is a “Find People” button. Unfortunately, it does not go to any kind of useful search feature, but is a search users link, and doesn’t allow any granularity and special search features. “Search for a username, first or last name,” Twitter says. You used to be able to search by keyword, location or topic if they included the terms in their profile, but you can’t even do that anymore. This is listed as Zero on my list because even though it is the first thing you should do, I haven’t found it very useful.

(1)
Use Twitter Search (a.k.a. Summize) to find conversations on topics you love.
Twitter Search: http://search.twitter.com/ OR http://summize.com/
Search the words and ideas you love, look for great tweets, click through and read more by the same person. Was the great tweet a fluke, or do they say a lot of great stuff? If the latter, then follow them. Don’t follow everybody, just people saying stuff you really enjoy.

(2)
When you find people who are saying a lot of great stuff, look at who they are talking to. In Twitter folks use a convention of the at-sign (@) in front of the account name of the person they are talking to. You can click on that to go to the other persons account, and see if they are saying great stuff also.

(3)
Along the lines of joining a club in a new town to meet people, and searching words and ideas you love, join a Twitter group.
Twitter Groups: http://twittgroups.com/index.php
Once you find a group on a topic you like, join it, and browse the tweets for the people who are members of that group to find like-minded souls.

(4)
No matter what topics you love, also be sure to include some folks who live near you. This is a good practice for a number of reasons. For one, if they are talking about something on sale, there is a good chance you can get to the same store before they run out. Even better, if there is a weather or health crisis, or traffic is backed up, these are the folks who can help you figure out what’s going on. Crisis and disaster response is a HUGE application for Twitter, but you don’t want to wait until things go bad to make the connections.

TwitterLocal: http://www.twitterlocal.net/

ArborWiki: List of Ann Arbor twitter users: http://arborwiki.org/index.php/List_of_Ann_Arbor_twitter_users

Michigan Twitter Network: http://www.mlive.com/twitter/

(5)
Sometimes you can find Twitter accounts that “collect” people with similar interests. When you find one like that on a topic of interest to you, look at the people who are following it to find people you might want to follow. Here are a couple of examples.

GovTwit (US national, state, and local governments and officials in Twitter): http://twitter.com/GovTwit

MedLibs (Medical Librarians): http://twitter.com/medlibs

BioTecher (biotechnology): http://twitter.com/biotecher

You might find more at Twitter Packs.
TwitterPacks: http://twitterpacks.pbwiki.com/

(6)
Chances are by this point you have probably found as many people as you are willing to follow. Just in case you haven’t, there are also actual Twitter directories. You know – like phone directories?

TwitDir (currently on hiatus with the owner at a conference) is kind of like the white pages, and Twellow is (you guessed it!) more like the yellow pages as is JustTweetIt. These allow you to browse by category. At this moment in time, Twellow is the richest, but is dated and not always accurate. JustTweetIt has the advantage and disadvantage of being user built, with folks adding their own name and tagging themselves.

JustTweetIt: http://justtweetit.com

Twellow: http://www.twellow.com/

TwitDir: http://twitdir.com/

Enjoy! There is an enormous number of wonderful people on Twitter (as in the world, really). There is no shortage of amazing people with whom to share a few thoughts now and then.

Inauguration Story, Part One – From Dawn to Oath-Taking in the Words of Real People

Like the earlier Election Story (still in progress), here I’ve captured a snapshot of real people and what they thought and said while waiting for and watching the inauguration of Barack Obama on January 20th. I’m working on slides and links for a range of the tech I found involved in the process, although bits of it will be reflected here. A sneak preview? Come back for more.

Mobile Healthcare Education

I just stumbled on an old message I had missed that mentioned this presentation. Entirely my fault that I hadn’t seen this sooner!

This is a very intriguing approach to using Twitter, mobile technologies, cell phones and related tools to fill academic functions. This ranges from emergency callouts to managing class activities and assignments. Extremely interesting!