The Green Kangaroo

Checking up on earlier paths followed....

For anyone out there interested in being a library voice at the next World Future Society conference, the early bird registration -- substantially cheaper than on-site -- is up and ends mid-September (yes, these folks take early seriously). To get the session proposal form -- or just get more information -- go here. The announced theme will be "WorldFuture 2007: Fostering Hope and Vision for the 21st Century." Sounds like a library to me.

It's nice when paths come together... Doing my homework for something I attended back in May, I read master mediator Mark Gerzon's new book, Leading Through Conflict: How Successful Leaders Transform Differences Into Opportunities. When I finally had a chance to read the August issue of Associations Now, the monthly journal of the American Society of Association Executives, there was an article by Mark Gerzon, "From Me to We," on "bridging leadership," which he defines as "building partnerships or alliances that cross the borders that divide an organization or community." It's a role libraries and the people who make them work have often filled. He lays out four fundamental skills for leaders -- in libraries, in associations -- seeking to bridge member or community differences: integral vision (the big picture), inquiry (asking good questions), conscious conversaton (making conscious choices about how we communicate with each other) and dialogue (ultimately creating new options).

Then, the title of Gerzon's article in Associations Now reminded me of another encounter -- well before the Green Kangaroo set up a post in the intersection here. At the 2005 meeting of the Ontario Library Association, Craig Keilburger, founder of Free the Children, an international network of "children helping children," provided a "get yourself up and do something" sort of opening plenary speech. An interesting story this -- and it came with a great t-shirt: "We are the generation we have been waiting for." Keilburger was then a student at the University of Toronto. He became an activist at 11 -- when his local public library branch was threatened with closure, and the proposed new location was too far away for kids to walk or bike. He organized other 11-year-olds for a campaign. His next step came at about 13 when he saw a newspaper story about child slavery -- and went off to his local public library to learn more. That led to Free the Children. The connection -- twisting, I know -- between these paths? Craig and Mark Keilburger pulled together a book: Me to We: Turning Self-Help on Its Head, including contributions from Oprah Winfry, Dr. Jane Goodall, Archbishop Desmond Tutu and others. Response from Canadian libraries and librarians to Keilburger was strong, in the form of raising money to build libraries and hire librarians in places with few such resources. My friend Larry Moore, executive director at OLA, tells me that Keilburger knows libraries and library people are a major part of the solution -- and would welcome contact with U.S. library communities.

Thinking about the children served by public and school libraries, I pulled a couple of items from my stack of "interesting stuff." These two came off the ALSC-L discussion list.
Sylvia Vardell -- a faculty member in the School of Library & Information Studies at Texas Woman's University -- has a blog focused helping adults find and share poetry with kids. Her latest entry is focused on the Katrina anniversary.
ALSC past-president Gretchen Wronka also posted an announcement to ALSC-L of a "low-residency" master of fine arts degree focused solely on writing for children and young adults. The program is at Hamline University in St. Paul (MN). If you're interested, additional information is available here. The faculty includes a number of well-known authors of books for children and young adults, such as Kate DeCamillo.

Then, in the process of pulling these items from my ever-growing stack of "interesting things," I spotted this one -- from ACRL Forum. Northeastern University, along with the University of Pittsburgh School of Information Sciences, has launched a new online learning tool in the spring, with a "supplemental discussion blog." The announced purpose is to explore "key concepts in new media and address a host of new media issues including the collapse of distinctions between media forms and the societal effects of new technologies such as blogs, chat rooms, TiVo, and Facebook." Checking in, there are some interesting pieces to discuss and the fall term is just beginning...

Finally, in my incoming email, I just got a welcome invitation from Matt Ivaliotes -- the individual in ITTS who is supporting ALA's growing array of blogs and, soon, wikis -- to join BUG, our internal "user's group" for ALA staff working with blogs. This is good - good because I'll learn how to do more things, and good that there are enough people interested that IT needs to organize us into a manageable, "tell 'em all at the same time" information exchange group. There's also a b2evolution upgrade -- promising more "robust" antispam capabilities.

A lot of twists, turns and connections here. That is, truth be told, the way the intersection looks to the Green Kangaroo much of the time. Things bump into each other, ideas get exchanged, directions are adjusted, and so forth.

As usual, I'm behind -- on posts, on projects, probably on life. I take one thing out of the "stack of interesting stuff" -- and add two or three things. There are two projects where one existed before. In balance, it's a stimulating way to live.

This has been the annual "transition" time at ALA. We measure time here in "member years" -- from the end of one annual conference to the end of the next. New terms of office, new appointments begin after Council III at Annual Conference. The internal operations of the association -- budgets, performance reviews and related work -- are on a September 1 to August 31 "fiscal year" cycle. July and August are always a period of winding up and starting new: learning the work and communication styles and preferences of new officers, new board members, new committee chairs; providing "here's where we are now" information to people joining in on ongoing projects and advocacy efforts; integrating new ideas.

At the same time, we all try to enjoy a little summer. About those heirloom tomatoes I planted in May... but that's another post.

Of the content meetings I attend from time to time, one of the most interesting is the annual conference of the World Future Society, which met in Toronto at the end of July. It's a small conference by ALA standards -- taking place entirely in one hotel. That said, it is always very international -- this year with delegates from 34 countries. The organizational and professional background range is equally broad -- education, engineering, design, librarianship, criminology, financial services, government, association management, and so on. There are also people who think of themselves as futurists -- by training, orientation and practice. Given this diversity, the opportunity for different perspectives -- even profound disagreement -- is large. I go to have my perspective shifted, to be jolted out of an habitual way of thinking about something, to attend a session on something I didn't know I'd find interesting.

Plenary session speakers ranged from David M. Walker, the U.S. Comptroller General, who opened the conference, along with reporter and editor Joel Garreau, to inventor Ray Kurzweil.

In between, there were as many interesting sessions as I could absorb. I also shared panel duty with an association colleague, Marsha Rhea (Anticipate the World You Want; Learning for Alternative Futures, from Scarecrow Education)and Chris Lowry from BALLE (Business Alliance for Local Living Economies) in Toronto, who distributed a interesting list of "Resources for Sustainability Education, K-12." Being on this panel gave me an opportunity to point an audience of primarily educators to the March 2006 report of the Partnership for 21st Century Skills, Results that Matter: 21st Century Skills and High School Reform. (The American Association of School Librarians is a member of the group and AASL's announcement of the report provides a clear statement of the link to school library media centers.)

Recapping the whole meeting exceeds my present capacity -- but here are some of the references, ideas and sources I've added to my list...

- Artin Kiani, a student from Vancouver, talked about facuty-student "cyber salons" on critical issues. You can check this live project at the Applied Foresight Network site.

- Thomas Frey from the Da Vinci Institute, whose paper on "The Future of Libraries" caused some stir on discussion lists earlier this year, teamed with William Crossman (VIVO)for a discussion on "The Future of Libraries." So, I was extremely happy to find myself in a meeting room with a lot of librarians -- from public, academic and school libraries -- to get our voice into that discussion. Thanks to all of you who were there and added your voices to the debate! It's important for us to be in this discussion.

- In the category of "presentations I didn't know I wanted to hear" -- but found interesting -- Stan Gibson from the Ecologos Institute in Mississauga did a quick presentation on his idea for reinventing regional action to advance a "just and sustainable" future. Even at 7:00pm, it was interesting. (Even by ALA's high standards, the futurist crowd attends sessions! This was one of a wide array of quick, half-hour programs at 7:00pm on a Saturday night, preceding a later two-hour session. With my meeting planner hat on, I wasn't optimistic -- but sessions were well attended.)

- Futurist Wendy Schultz, who has presented at library events, pointed us to some interesting sites to explore (here,here and here). She urged us to "get loopy" or to think in "geodesic" -- not linear -- terms. Other people in this session -- mostly focusing on digital communication strategies -- were Wayne Pethrick from The Futures Lab in Australia and Joseph Tankersley, senior show writer with Walt Disney Imagineering. This was a lively discussion ranging from graphic novels, to wikis to games to literacy in a visual age. Ideas from the mix... Don't be blinded to new communication options -- and needs -- by "the tyranny of text." In literacy, we need to be teaching - -and learning -- how to "deconstruct" images. Try "backcasting" -- what are the elements, how did we get here, what assumptions were made.... An interesting turn-of-phrase I'm still pondering -- "innovative familiarity." We are telling stories -- always. We need to put the technology in the service of the storytelling, in the service of the participants. Be inclusive. Let the audience be proactive -- not reactive. We need to provide "sturdy handrails to the future" for our members, our staff, our users. Another site to check is that of the Media Ecology Association (MEA). (It's true; there's an association for everything.)

- David Pearce Snyder, The Futurist contributing editor, did two sessions. In the first, he focused on the transformative nature of current information technology: "Open-Knowledge + Groupware = Communities of Collaboration." Among other points, he connected the decreasing cost of gathering information and flattening or disaggregation of organizations (virtual, vs. vertical, integration), pointing to the work of Nobel economist Ronald Coase (and Coase's Law). In his second talk ("The Future is a Funny Place") he posited four "futurist" mindsets: the discounters (nothing's certain, have a contingency plan, "muddle through"), the extrapolators (extend the trends), the modelers (scenarios, simulations) and goal-setters (big initiatives, critical path, leadership, with roughly 40% of us in the 1st category, 30% in the 2nd, 20% in the 3rd and 10% in the last. Working with this framework, he managed to cover a lot of ground. Many of David Pearce Snyder's speeches are posted; these are not yet -- but likely will be. Check here.

Finally, Ray Kurzweil also made two presentations -- a late Saturday evening talk (which did entail getting hotel staff to expand a room, when people simply refused to abandon the full-to-capacity session) and the closing plenary. In both sessions, he used a succession of logarithmic graphs to show why you can see change coming -- but, because we tend to use linear graphs, we experience it as "coming out of nowhere." Samples of his charts are in the Wikipedia article on Kurzweil. Among other points he made, the current changes "will go into hyperdrive," when we master the underlying processes (Think about the new 2.0 ways of working together.) By 2020, "information technology" will be most of the economy. With a heavy focus on bio-technology and artificial intelligence, Kurzweil pushes hard on the limits of my "futures" thinking.

For those who may be interested, the 2007 meeting will be in Minneapolis, July 29-31 -- and the process for submitting a proposal is here. You're taking libraries, information literacy and learning into the future. Be heard here. This is a diverse group of people trying to look seriously at our future and how the choices we make -- in our personal, professional and civic lives -- might make a difference.