On June 4th, 2012, I gave a long session on using Inkscape in-depth to the Long Island Library Regional Consortium. We discussed bitmap versus vector images, and introduced all of Inkscape’s main tools, then ran through recreating an illustration. Some feedback I got after the session included:
Speaker has extraordinary knowledge
Instructor was very open to answering questions and going over things multiple times
Overall, very well done
Very knowledgeable
Hands-on with excellent answers to our (millions) of questions
Very detailed instructor
Excellent intro to new capabilities
The instructional concept in using inkscape/graphic design (was a strength)
On May 31st, 2012, I got the opportunity to teach high school students about Inkscape, open source software, and open standards. I went over basic functionality in Inkscape, demonstrated some design techniques, and helped students with portfolio based projects. Special thanks to Mike Harris and Debi Dixler.
The Program: Pinterest is an exciting new social networking service that uses visual media to promote ideas. John LeMasney will give a broad overview of Pinterest and explain how to use it to promote your personal and organizational brand. With Pinterest, you can follow others, and others can follow you; pin visual items, like photos and videos, to categorical boards and repin others’ pins that you find interesting. You can collaborate with others to make collective boards. You can like things that you enjoy but that are fleeting or less categorizable; pin things that you find online, or things that you upload yourself. Pinterest takes the best parts of Diigo, Twitter, Facebook, and other networks and gives them a very pretty, unified face. It is a quickly growing network, with phenomenal adoption rates, and users who often say they are addicted to pinning.
About the Speaker: John LeMasney is the Manager of Educational Technology Training and Outreach at Princeton University. He is a father, artist, designer, technologist, consultant, and open source evangelist living and working in New Jersey.
On October 26th, 2011, I gave a talk on Google Plus, the relatively new social media platform, using the service’s hangouts feature to present remotely to NJLA’s Adult Services Forum.
Google+ How Libraries can Use Next Gen Social Networking will be covered by John LeMasney who will tell us about this new, much-anticipated tool from Google, how it extends the capabilities of current tools like Facebook and how we can use it to improve our communications and services
