Information Today’s new conference on social networking & collaboration inside the enterprise has an exciting program planned for New York Hilton, September 27-8.

Experts and practitioners discuss how to put collaboration tools to work in a business environment and turn them into strategic assets that can contribute to increased productivity. Hear noted authors, researchers and practitioners: Elizabeth Lane Lawley, Director, Rochester Institute of Technology Lab for Social Computing, & Visiting Researcher, Microsoft Corporation; Esther Dyson, Editor, Release 1.0; Mark Levitt, Research Vice President, Collaborative Computing, IDC; Deb Wallace, Co-Author, Leveraging Communities of Practice for Strategic Advantage; Dave Pollard, Consultant, Meeting of Minds, Former Chief Knowledge Officer, Ernst & Young and Author, How to Save the World Weblog; Liz Winfeld, Co-Author, The Web Conferencing Book; Ross Mayfield, CEO, Socialtext, Inc.; Stan Wasserman, Professor, Indiana University; Denise Going, Manager, Enterprise Information Management, Indian & Northern Affairs, Canada; April Moore, Project Manager, Collaboration, SAP; Tim McMahon, President, McMahon Worldwide Management; Michael Littlejohn, VP, IBM Business Consulting Services; Denise Robinson-Gravatt, Director, Technology Development, Pfizer; Giovanni Rodriguez, EVP, Eastwick Communications. Discussions focus on current research about collaboration in the workplace, how to build the business case for deploying new collaborative tools, how to prove the value of new collaboration tools, and how to determine which tools are suitable for enterprise use.

Can you believe it? It’s time to start thinking about Computers in Libraries, March 22-24, 2006 in Washington, DC. The theme is Managing Digital: Innovations, Initiatives & Insights.

We now live, work and play digitally. Some of our key resources are created digitally while others, including physical libraries, books and, most importantly, people are not digital. Others are born digital. How do we reconcile, and manage, the digital and non-digital so that our work flows cohesively? How do we keep a personal touch in a virtual world? How do we plan for a successful, productive, future with many complex challenges and opportunities? The conference theme, Managing Digital, focuses on digital initiatives and innovations in all types of information enterprises, tools and techniques for enhancing user-friendly digital work flows, mining and archiving “born digital” data, information discovery and visualization methods for dealing with large digital databases, supporting digital communities, and more. Participate in the most comprehensive conference for library and information professionals interested in technology to discover the insights, strategies and practices that will allow us to manage computers, libraries, digital information, and people in a cohesive and productive way. Check out the the call for speakers at the Information Today web site, and send in a proposal to speak — share your innovations, initiatives and insights.

Ernie Ingles, Vice-Provost (Learning Services) & Chief Librarian, University of Alberta, and founder of the Northern Exposure to Leadership Institute, talked at an Education Institute teleconference this afternoon about “Key Practices in Developing Managers & Leaders“. He referred to himself as one othe individuals who has been toiling in the “bibliographic vineyards” for quite a while. Great term!

Ernie defined leadership as taking the initiative and getting things done through others. His definition of management, structuring your own activities and those of others while co-ordinating resources and operations.

He talked about the 8 R’s Research Study on the future of human resources in Canadian libraries which is being launched at CLA in June. It has 300+ pages of analysis and recommendations about managerial and leadership competencies. It will be available online at the CLA web site later next month.

In our knowledge economy the study examines opportunities for librians and issues of recruitement, retention, remuneration, retirement, rejuvenation, restructuring and a couple of other R’s! Results are based on 1300 surveys to institutions/libraries (filled out usually by Human Resources or senior management) and 8500 to individuals.

Although the study indciated that there was no shortage in the supply and demand of librarians, library capability is in decline and there is a need to revitalize our profiles. The following were the 10 top ranked leadership competenceies that are important and also difficult to fill:leadership potentialflexibility and responsiveness to changeable to deal with workloadinnovationtechnololgy skillspeople skillsmanagerial skillscommunication skillsdeal with and work with

Continue reading Developing Managers & Leaders

Robert Joachim, Information Systems Engineer, MITRE gave a meaty presentation about intranet search at his organization including the different software and approaches they have taken. He talked about how search at MITRE has evoled with using the Google Search Appliance.

Karin Schneider of Johnson & Johnson Pharmaceuticals talked about their challenges, their use of federated searching and clustering, as well as how they worked with Vivisimo‘s clustering engine.

Gareth Lodge of Voca had some great strategies for sorting through the many search vendors and choosing a solution, or more a partner, for search in your organization.

Who would have thought of comparing finding information with bovine examples?Lou Rosenfeld asked yesterday, “Why is there a beef chart providing so much information on beef cuts and not one for areas in our enterprises?” He opened Information Today’s Enterprise Search Summit in NYC, a 2 day event with great speakers and top search software companies. In his presentation, Findability for the Enterprise: A Roadmap, he talked about what’s involved in top-down navigation, bottom-up navigation, search and guerilla information architecture (IA). He discussed how roadmaps work for education, planning, design, and mind control –”distracts from ‘redesign thinking’ in favor of continuous improvement.”