These are posts centered around presentations delivered by John LeMasney on various technology, branding, and design topics.
[audio
We would certainly be delighted if you checked out the introductory episode of
presented by ThePods & Sods Network and hosted by John LeMasney and Craig Smith.
DOWNLOAD | http://podsnsods.podomatic.com/…/2015-08-20T18_09_35-07_00.…
STREAM | http://podsodcast.blogspot.com/2015/08/RH00.html
Please enjoy and share.
I had the pleasure of being interviewed by Rich Kazimir on Technology Today on WDVR on the topic of open source. He asked me variations on the following questions.
“WDVR FM hit the air waves on February 19, 1990 as a newly established, Non-Commercial Station. It is licensed to Penn-Jersey Educational Radio, a New Jersey, 501 (c) (3), Non-Profit Corporation. Its mission is to provide high quality, Non-Commercial Educational Radio service to the Delaware and Lehigh Valley area of Western New Jersey and Eastern Pennsylvania. WDVR provides a uniquely diversified format of music and talk, utilizing a staff of over 50 unpaid volunteers, each with his or her own specialized expertise in music and/or talk–“50 colorful gems creating a beautiful audio mosaic”. WDVR is a full-service FM station operating 24 hours a day at 89.7 Mhz from Delaware Township, NJ and at 90.5 WPNJ in Easton, PA. It also utilizes a translator on 96.9 Mhz in Trenton, NJ, serving the Lawrenceville, Princeton, Trenton area and points south. On the internet WDVR can be heard streaming live on www.wdvrfm.org . WDVR is a listener supported community oriented station, offering radio programming which is always suitable for the entire family.” – WDVR FM 89.7 91.9,
I am very excited to have been asked to present the keynote and other presentations at Lib2.0 2015: A Media Specialist Symposium, in October 2015 at Stockton University (http://www.ettc.net/lib20/). At the event, I have been asked to talk about the following topics. Details for each session are below. If you are interested in having these topics delivered at your staff day training, conference, ot other speaking opportunity, please contact me at 609 553 9498 or john@lemasney.com
Keynote Presentation: Organizational Branding for Libraries
SESSION I: Social Media for Librarians and Media Specialists
SESSION II: Creating Sharable Content for Libraries
SESSION III: Google Cloud-Based Services for Libraries
SESSION IV: Top Ten Transliteracies for School Libraries (15 Minutes TED Style Talk)
The aim of organizational branding efforts is to make these three ideas merge:
Come and learn about your library’s brand, and what can be done to improve or maintain it.
We’re in what is referred to as the third wave of Social Media: The first wave was one in which people got Twitter, Facebook, Pinterest, Google Plus, Hoot suite, and other social media accounts to connect with others socially and casually. The second wave was one in which organizations discovered that everyone was on these services and that they should probably be there too to take part in the conversation, without necessarily knowing what that might look like, what their intent was, or what to expect about outcomes. Now, organizations are starting to make sense of how those social media accounts can help them to engage stakeholders differently than they do in person, track and make sense of visits, interactions, and connections and how that affects the rest of their work, and develop plans for success in social media in similar ways to the way that they developed their strategic plans. Come and learn how to make the most out of your social media efforts, how to decide if what you are doing is what you should be doing, and to discover what success looks like in social media outcomes.
There is a trend in social media towards the visual. Images, videos and graphics get the most attention and lead more people to your other content. Social media platforms like Pinterest have grown powerful in a short period and reflect and strengthen the trend. The issue: while many of us are visual learners, not everyone considers themselves a visual creator, and so participation in the trend often is limited to simply sharing others’ images. In this session, we discover new tools that will help you to develop a beautiful visual representation of your ideas without having to become a certified graphic designer, photographer or visual communicator (even though you are likely doing those things already without much help or guidance). Learn how to create and find great images that support your ideas.
In this session, John LeMasney will share 10 key ideas to consider when creating sharable content. What makes an article, image, idea, quote or other media particularly sharable? What technologies and methods can help you to give an interesting idea the best chance of being shared? How can copyright be honored and original sources be found? Why is there such emphasis now about sharing visual media over other forms? Join us for this session to help us find the answers!
Learn how libraries can use Google’s free suite of office, productivity, organization, and life tools to improve communications and increase visibility in your community. We’ll discuss what can happen when library staff, administrators, and patrons use Google Drive, Hangouts, Maps, Calendar, Gmail, and Google Plus to advertise, communicate, and share information more effectively.
Transliteracy is the ability for a communicator to flexibly use a variety of methods to communicate their ideas more fully. This skill is an increasingly important one. Communicators who embrace photography, audio editing, coding, graphic design, video editing, can speak to a broader audience more easily. Let’s look at ways in which libraries can embrace, learn and take advantage of these literacies to communicate more effectively with their communities of service and practice.
So I recently gave a class at Princeton Public Library on Google Drive. I speak about it often to organizations and internal groups as well. It is a topic that is nearly as close to my heart as visual literacy, and one that strongly affects the way I learn, work, and live. The accompanying presentation is at this link on Google Drive. And that, in effect, is part of the power of it. I can control who gets what kind of access to all of my documents going back to my first digital document, and can grant access or editing rights with a link.
Let’s talk about the various things that I’d like you to know about using Google Drive:
“Our guest speaker for the May 21st (this week Thursday eve) graphics workshop is one of our favorite speakers, John LeMasney. For our May meeting John will introduce us to “Blender”, a free graphics program with some amazing abilities. Blender allows you to create professional-grade animations and 3D models through a well-laid out interface equipped with a variety of tools. Whether you’re experienced in digital animation or want to develop your skills, you’ll find what you need in this comprehensive program.” – BCUG Graphics Workshop Meeting – Brookdale Computer Users Group (Red Bank, NJ) – Meetup, https://www.meetup.com/Brookdale-Computer-Users-Group/events/222436641/
I volunteer to take part and present in classroom interactive sessions arranged by Nepris.com. It is mostly with grade and high schools who want to talk with experts on a particular topic. I’m honored to do the work. This morning, I had the opportunity to answer the following interview questions via video chat with Stephanie Edmiston’s class in BENTON MIDDLE SCHOOL, BOSSIER PARISH via Nepris. Here’s the session description:
“Students enjoy learning about careers from people who are in the field. They like to understand how they can get on a career path and greatly appreciate practical insights and advice.” – View Session | Nepris – https://app.nepris.com/#!sessions/view/36551
Since I was going to answer these questions live, I decided to write out my answers beforehand to think about my logic, and so I’d be able to share the answers with you.
Also, Nepris was kind enough to share the video with me, so here is the video as well.
JL: Mathematics, observational skills, and Linux. Also, try to understand every detail of knowledge contained in some thing. It can be anything: flowers, food, language. Be the most dedicated enthusiast of something, and know it through and through. Mine is Inkscape.
JL: Increasing exponentially. Internet of things, Cyber attacks nationally and internationally, Sony, etc.
JL: I first caught the bug in a class in college where we were in a computer lab. I wanted desperately to be a computer lab tech for the classroom. I wanted to help people to know what I knew about computers and technology. It excited me, and I spent the rest of my life doing that.
JL: Not really, but I was an early enthusiast. I learned Basic on a TI99-4A at 12, basically at the urging and influence of my mother (sensing the increasing importance of technology), and I fell in love with technology in waves throughout my life.
JL: I have a Bachelor’s of Fine Art in Sculpture, and a Master’s in Organizational Leadership with a focus on Communications. I am a lifelong learner. People tend to find my Degrees odd, in that there are not technology degrees there. My knowledge about technology comes from my passion for it. My degrees helped with understanding creativity and organizations, and I use those skills every day in my technology work.
JL: Science, Technology, Engineering, Arts, and Math. (STEAM)
JL: I find the rise in robotics teams and Makerspaces to be amazingly helpful. There are often computer enthusiast clubs, and lots of opportunities to learn about making and hacking. We are having a Princeton Hackathon to help solve civic problems like potholes with tools like Arduino. The entire community is welcome to learn to hack.
JL: No, though I find that pursuing higher levels of knowledge to be very common among hackers. Hackers are often lifelong learners.
JL: Learn and practice open source code. Learn everything you can about the ways that code works, which you can do with open source projects. Then, use it in unexpected ways. Figure out the essence of what makes code work, and you can be a stellar computer security specialist or technologist.
JL: Join Maker groups and find Makerspaces in your area, often in libraries. Look for Linux Users Groups (LUGs) and Computer Users Groups (CUGs), and find topics to present on.
JL: My primary focus is Web Development, and my job responsibilities include Server Management (Apache, MySQL), Service Management (WordPress, Drupal), Graphic Design (Inkscape), Branding (a marketing imprint), and Customer Service (how can I help you?).
JL: All of the above. I am an individual consultant, with my business. I work alone a lot, or in co-working spaces, like my library, because it often leads to new connections or re-connections with colleagues and clients. I often pair or team up with people for short-term or long-term projects. I just had dinner with the team for TEDxCarnegieLake, in which I was the technologist on staff. I also teach at several local libraries, schools, and universities, all of whom have people I have to work with to arrange times, space issues, technology infrastructure, etc. I recently worked with the technology staff of a local school district to migrate to Google Apps for Education, all of whom knew most of what I knew.
JL: I start at about 9 am, and often go until 2 am. My life and work float in and out of each other, which keeps things interesting. If I have meetings that day, I usually arrange them in places near each other to keep travel down, and often between 10-12 or 2-4. I have some luxury with my meals, which is nice, because I love to cook and I’m a foodie. Also, I will often reward myself with a nice walk if I’m keeping up with projects. The work-life balance of a consultant can be very rewarding. I usually keep coding work for late at night, when it’s quiet, and I can focus. But it’s hard to describe a typical day, as I don’t often have two days alike.
JL: The greatest challenge, by far, is keeping a steady income and managing it. In the work that I did in Academia as an Instructional technologist, there was a check that came every month. Now, I get lots of checks, but all with relatively small amounts compared to a 9-5 job. There are a lot of $125 checks that have to come in to add up to a $40,000 salary.
The greatest reward by a mile, is flexibility. If I don’t want to work today, and can afford to take a break, I do. No demerits, no excuses, no concerns. If I want to go take a walk because it is an amazingly beautiful day, I do. It would take a hard, hard year to make me want the 9-5 schedule back.
JL: I travel a lot! I travel every week to NYC, Princeton. Philadelphia, Cherry Hill, Bucks County, Trenton, and other local areas for work. However, I visited (with gratis travel) to LA, San Francisco, Washington DC, Maryland, and Chicago since January. I really do not enjoy driving, but I do get to listen to my favorite podcasts, like All About Android, and This Week in Google.
JL: I work from home most of the time, unless I am meeting a client, or presenting. There are days where I work all day from home, and never leave.
JL: Generally speaking, not really. I encountered a lot more danger in my time as an artist with chemicals and solvents and tools. There is a lot of driving, and the issues that go with that. I guess inhaling solder fumes or getting electrocuted, maybe? There are a lot of amps in a power supply.
JL: Casual, organized, comfortable, utilitarian, knowledge-oriented, natural, creativity-oriented, mindful, technological, healthy, sunlit, cat-friendly, human friendly, equal, warm, garden.
JL: I am often surprised at how often truly brilliant people marvel at what I know about technology. I think that people think that it is a special kind of knowledge, but it’s only as special as 1000 other expertise areas, like cooking or gardening or fishing or selling, all of which have an amazing depth and breadth to explore. The myth is that technology is especially difficult to learn or know deeply comparative to any other expertise worth diving into. .
JL: I’ve done both. In a large company, you are a cog. I am not using the term negatively. You might be a very important cog that keeps the mill running, but at the end of the day, you are a small part of a large machine. As an independent consultant, you are the entire machine connecting to cogs of other machines.
JL: It’s a toss-up between waking up when I want and the pride that I feel in my work.
JL: System Administrator, Emerging Technologist, App developer.
JL: Library, volunteer, tutor, study abroad, web development intern. At least that’s what I would look for. In all honesty, the interview is most important, and it’s the answers you can give to problems they have more so than anything else. If you can describe how to solve a problem the employer didn’t know they were having, that’s impressive. Security expert applicants should find holes in the systems of their potential employers and demonstrate them in interview. I’d hire that person.
JL: I have no earthly idea. My best explanation is that I made myself available, offered to volunteer, and put myself in contact with ‘hubs’, people who enjoy connecting people. The person who launched my independent consultant career asked me to speak at a library about technology, and that is when everything changed as far as considering technology as an independent consultant. She ended up creating hundreds of connections for me, including many other hubs, and I will be forever grateful. Her name is Janie Hermann, she is at the Princeton Public Library, and she is a force to be reckoned with. She and other members of the library recently won an award for programming at PPL from NJLA. #Libraries have become incredibly important to my work, mostly because of Janie.
JL: As a technologist or manager at a university, expect between 50-90 unless you pursue administrative positions, which can be 120,000 or more. As an independent consultant, expect more like 40-60 for a few years. Develop a business plan if you want to be an independent consultant. Know your expenses through and through.
JL: I don’t know anyone in my industry who works on commission. We are often selling ourselves or selling an idea and executing it, but not for commission. 🙂 Technologists in organizations are often salaried. I work on a rate that varies according to the client. Here’s my Rate and Policy Doc:
https://docs.google.com/document/d/1trir4rpKcTeK0xBWZcEPbE9cGcv6S5ycB18yEK36-5Y/pub?embedded=true
JL: Treat people well. Treat people with kindness and dignity and truth. Learn everything you can and then give that knowledge away as freely as you can. Become a source of joy for the people you work with. Laugh every day.