The scene is Eugene, OR, fall of 2001. My future wife is in law school and I’m working yet another food service management position (read: managing a vegan sandwich shop). Food service had been my “career path” since finishing my undergrad studies in 1997. I knew it wasn’t the long-term plan, but then again, I didn’t really have a plan. “Waiting for the right opportunity to present itself,” I’d convinced myself. With the prospect of a marriage proposal in the horizon, I was feeling some self-imposed pressure to step my game up. She was studying to be a lawyer, after all.

I was spending a fair amount of time at the Eugene Public Library, browsing through their CD collection and using their express public PCs. One day, I was watching with interest as the reference librarian scurried around helping people, almost running, first here and then there to find things for people and answer questions. It occurred to me that I’d probably be quite natural in a similar role. Researching and delivering information, while not having to write meaningless papers. Sounds better than the academic life I fled from upon receiving my Art History degree.

Anyway, I put the notion out of mind until an evening shortly thereafter when, as if in a moment of clarity, I solidified the plan to head to library school.  And then I went. That’s pretty much the tall and short of it. By the time I’d graduated in May of 2003, I’d already had this blog for two months. I spent two months unemployed after graduation, due in no small part to being geographically constrained by my wife’s job.  But the job came. And I’m still part of the same organization, albeit in my fourth position.

I’m usual good for some meme tagging, but I haven’t really followed who has and hasn’t done this one and, well, I’m a little short on spare time these days.

Here’s the promo from the OPAL site:

Friday, July 11, 2008 at 2:00 p.m. Eastern Time, 1:00 Central, noon Mountain, 11:00 a.m. Pacific, and 7:00 p.m. GMT/UTC/Zulu:

A Casual Conversation with Greg Schwartz

Greg Schwartz is the Library Systems Manager at the Louisville Free Public Library, a blogger at Open Stacks, and the host with the most at Uncontrolled Vocabulary, a live weekly Internet-based audio program.The Casual Conversations series is designed to be up-close and personal from a respectable online distance. While there are many conferences (in-person, online, and in-world) where librarians can hear leaders in the field make formal presentations about interesting projects, there are few opportunities to hear these same leaders discuss informally what they currently are working on, their future plans and goals, the challenges and opportunities facing librarianship, their personal pet peeves, etc.

Host: TAP Information Services

Location: OPAL Online Auditorium
 

Between my recent vacation and the scurrying required to resume functioning after said vacation, I almost forget to mention that I’ll be in Columbus this weekend for PodCamp Ohio, which takes place Saturday, June 28th.

It looks like a decent lineup of presentations, but I’m mostly going to take in the PodCamp experience and connect with other podcasters. Since I’m not so concerned with the presentation content, I’ll be volunteering, probably at the registration desk or in the halls helping people find sessions. If it happens that you’ll be there, drop me a line and let’s connect in Columbus. You can also find me on Twitter with a new username: gregschwartz

Day 28 - Blog Commenting Strategy

This challenge asks us to answer the question “Do you think it’s important to take a more strategic view of commenting and to have a plan for how you want to incorporate commenting into your overall online behavior?”

And my answer is not really. Unless that strategy is as follows: Be authentic. Comment because you have something to say. Focusing on any other motives can’t help but compromise authenticity. Doesn’t mean you can’t be aware and even embrace the auxiliary impact that commenting might have on your brand or on traffic back to your blog or whathaveyou. But again, I’m not willing to construct my notions of commenting around anything other than contributing to conversations in meaningful ways. Whatever else follows from that is icing.

Day 29 - Commenting guide for students

This challenge is geared towards the educators who make up the majority of the challenge participants. So rather than fumble around aimlessly, I’ll refer any students to my response to the day 28 challenge: <guide>Be authentic.</guide>

Day 30 - How Can You Use What You’ve Learned about Commenting to Change Your Teaching Practices?

Again, not much to say here. I’ve learned, if nothing else, that people prefer a variety of commenting styles, just as people have different learning style preferences. We have to provide the means to learn and participate in a variety of media to let everyone engage in the ways that work best for their learning needs.

Day 31 - My five take-aways

OK, here we are, leaving the challenge with more of a whimper than a roar.

1. Be authentic. I knew this already, but believe it now more than ever.
2. Video commenting is awesome. If you haven’t tried it, but have a webcam, give it a go in the comments on this post. I promise a video response to any video newcomers.
3. 31 straight days of blogging is about 27 too many for me. I couldn’t do it. And I couldn’t write anything else in the meantime.
4. The edu-tech community is awesome. I love all of the engaged people who’ve come and commented on this blog via the challenge, all of whom have outstanding blogs in their own right. A true pleasure.
5. I (and this blog) have a great community. I’ve been blown away by the quality and quantity of conversations on this blog since I’ve started writing again. It’s totally motivating. Thank you for that.

Looking back, the challenge was rewarding in a number of ways, even though my motivation really flagged in the final two weeks. It really got me thinking about how I engage conversations both here and elsewhere. I walk away from it feeling pretty good about where I am and confident that there is still more to learn. Thanks to the challenge organizers for making it happen and thanks to my regular readers for enduring this past month. I now return you to your regular library blog.

Personal branding is a new concept to me. If Twitter was fully functional, I’d point you in the direction of an update from just a few days ago. I commented that when I was previously talking about marketing librarians, I might have more properly been talking about personal branding. For a good intro to the concept of personal branding, check out Tom Peters on the topic.

Recognizing that commenting builds your personal brand is one thing. Being able to assess what your comments say about your brand is another. I’m going to assume that my comments sound a lot like my blog posts. That is, the sound of one guy talkin’. I hope that, in addition, they say that I’ve actually taken the time to read and digest what you’ve written. I hope they say that I’m opinionated (and, most of the time, thoughtful). I hope they say that I’m engaged and that I give a damn. Beyond that, you probably have a better idea of what my comments say than I do.

How can I improve my commenting behavior with an eye toward building my personal brand?

One tweak that I’m going to make to my commenting behavior comes from this post, where the author realizes the benefits of using a consistent, singularly identifiable name in his commenting. I’ve usually commented as “Greg” and although I think most people whose blogs I’m commenting on know who I am, that doesn’t help other people who might be reading those comments. So expect to see me comment in full-name format from here on in.

Any other suggestions? What’s working or not working for you? Are you even thinking about your personal brand? Methinks you ought to consider it.

The conversation surrounding my implementation of video commenting was well-balanced between enthusiasm for the expressiveness of the medium and hesitation due to the barriers of both producing and consuming content in that medium. I come down strongly on the side of offering as many different ways to comment as possible. Yes, it might take longer to consume the comment, but you’re worth it. I haven’t given enough energy to examining audio commenting tools, although I suppose you could use Seesmic without a camera to that end. We’ll save that exploration for another challenge.

But yesterday, I finally regrouped, changed gears and sought out the Indonesian blogosphere. I quickly found a post with some visuals that spoke to something I could comment on, namely the Ofcom report on social networking. Of course, I had to find a translation tool. Not much out there for Indonesian-English translation, but I found a trial of a tool called Kotaku, which translates the first 300 words of any web page. Close enough. You can find the post, along with my comment and its translation here.

Today, we’re supposed to highlight a favorite comment, but I don’t want to do that, for the very same reason I didn’t want to pick a favorite commenter: I don’t want to discourage anyone who’s inclined or even tempted to leave a comment here. And I don’t want to tell you what makes a good comment (which is tomorrow’s challenge), lest it shape the way you leave comments.

Almost any comment left on this blog is a good comment in my book. I’m not about to start making qualitative judgments based on some set of arbitrary criteria that I conjure for the purpose of this challenge. I just appreciate that you take the time to say whatever’s on your mind. I try to respond in kind.

I’m not sure it matters. I don’t have any meaningful recommendations to make and feel a bit disingenuous making a recommendation for the purpose of completing a challenge. So I’m gonna leave this alone for the moment and assume that the right moment to make a meaningful suggestion will present itself. I’ll hope that’s still in keeping with the spirit of the challenge.