Robin Williams Joins the TechSource Blog Team (Part 1)
[Robin Williams is the newest member of the ALA TechSource Blog Team. Welcome, Robin! Recently she and I met and chatted on ALA Island in Second Life, the 3-dimensional virtual world. The text chat transcript of our conversation is pasted below. Greylin Fairweather is the name of Robin's avatar in Second Life, and Maxito Ricardo is my avatar. Because the transcript is long, it has been divided into multiple blog posts.]
-- Tom Peters (interim editor of the TechSource blog)
[12:58] Greylin Fairweather: Maxito Ricardo!
[12:58] Maxito Ricardo: Hi, Greylin
[13:00] Maxito Ricardo: Welcome to the TS blogging team!
[13:00] Greylin Fairweather: Thank you : )
[13:00] Greylin Fairweather: I'm very excited about it
[13:02] Maxito Ricardo: What are your thoughts, hopes, fears, etc. as you begin your TechSource blogging thingy?
[13:03] Greylin Fairweather: I hope to bring relevant school library technology information in an interesting and useful way.
[13:03] Maxito Ricardo: great!
[13:03] Greylin Fairweather: I am a born techie, but a literature major so I can usually make it accessible.
[13:03] Maxito Ricardo: Hey, I'm an old lit major myself.
[13:03] Maxito Ricardo: Anything in that area really have you revved up at the moment?
[13:04] Greylin Fairweather: I'm doing a lot with documenting the ephemeral
[13:04] Greylin Fairweather: how do you capture what you do on the internet, from web pages to virtual worlds
[13:04] Maxito Ricardo: Great need for more study, research, and tools in that area.
[13:05] Greylin Fairweather: I've been working with Dr. Loertscher a lot on the 21st century librarian concept
[13:06] Greylin Fairweather: and rather than just focus on bringing the social networking computing into the library, I like looking into what the essential characteristics of online communities are and how to translate the best of it into the
[13:05] Maxito Ricardo: Are you finishing up your graduate work at
[13:06] Greylin Fairweather: I finish this semester, yes
[13:07] Maxito Ricardo: I've been pondering the essence of virtual communities, but haven't gotten much past some unstructured pondering.
[13:07] Greylin Fairweather: lol anytime you want to coponder on that I'm in. : )
[13:07] Greylin Fairweather: I've written a little bit and have more planned on it
[13:07] Maxito Ricardo: If we coponder, does that make us a virtual community?
[13:07] Greylin Fairweather: haha
[13:07] Greylin Fairweather: virtually ; p
[13:08] Maxito Ricardo: Coponderers Anonymous!
[13:08] Greylin Fairweather: rofl
[13:08] Greylin Fairweather: I'm doing an internship for Sun Microsystems
[13:08] Maxito Ricardo: So, how are we going to keep track of all this collaborative work we are doing online and in virtual worlds?
[13:09] Maxito Ricardo: Oh, and I want to hear more about your internship at Sun.
[13:09] Greylin Fairweather: screen capture, web capture, machinima
[13:09] Maxito Ricardo: screencasts, podcasts...
[13:09] Greylin Fairweather: And we can share it with posts blogs, ustream and blip, etc
[13:09] Greylin Fairweather: you tube, etc
[13:10] Greylin Fairweather: My biggest concern is that I am very much a practical, this is what you DO kinda gal
[13:10] Greylin Fairweather: rather than a theoretical researcher
[13:10] Maxito Ricardo: You are very action and outcomes oriented?
[13:11] Greylin Fairweather: Yes
[13:11] Maxito Ricardo: That's great
[13:11] Greylin Fairweather: I'm a teacher to the core,
[13:11] Greylin Fairweather: 13+ years
[13:11] Greylin Fairweather: and I like to share useful how to's, solutions
[13:11] Maxito Ricardo: Speaking of outcomes, this
[13:12] Greylin Fairweather: Aww thanks. I still think of our part as more of a beginning
[13:12] Greylin Fairweather: but I love the layout, it's just so easy to navigate
[13:12] Maxito Ricardo: yes, very open and inviting.
[13:12] Maxito Ricardo: For some reason, I always think of an Olympic Village.
[13:12] Greylin Fairweather: lol It's the flags
[13:12] Maxito Ricardo: Maybe this will become the
[13:13] Greylin Fairweather: you should have one to coincide with the real olympics, how fun would that be?
