Notes from an Open Life

Your Klout score and why you shouldn't give it a second thought

I just had a conversation with Brent Mills, a friend and new information professional, about Klout and the whole Klout score thing. (Justin Bieber has a "perfect" Klout score, did you know that? And I am childishly not going to link to him. Nyah.) Brent was asking, "as a social media guru" - a phrase I cringe at - "what do you think about Klout scores?"

And the guru's opinion is - don't worry about it. Don't give it a second thought. 

A disclaimer: I looked at Klout a while ago when it was first emerging, and I haven't really seriously looked at it since. I haven't found it worthwhile to look at, to be honest.

And in looking at Klout on my Chrome browser this morning, I see their tagline is "The Standard for Influence." Which is exactly the key to why you shouldn't worry about it. 

Klout REALLY WANTS TO BE the Standard for Influence. So does every other social media property, measurement method, marketing firm, etc. etc. etc. Why? Because everyone is chasing the Holy Grail of social media measurement and is obsessed with finding some kind of "standard." Ultimately, the goal of these companies is to MONETIZE that.

And as far as I can see, there is no current standard, and there never will be one standard. I can't see how one number can capture ANYONE'S social media presence or influence. Because there IS no one way to use social media effectively. That's exactly the beauty of it. It's a creative space. Some people use it well, some don't. Two people or companies in the exact same industry can use social media very differently and still both be equally "influential" and effective. 

I'm sure the Klout people would have a rebuttal to this, and I would be open to hearing that. But what I encourage YOU to think about is this:

Would you want someone to put some kind of number on your social skills? Do you want someone to assign a ranking to you as to how "influential" you are in the community? What the hell would that even mean? 

Social media is first and foremost about people. And I will always stand up for people first. I'm for compassionate, fun, interesting, open, and thought-provoking people, and I expect the same of my social media. A number will never, ever capture anything like that. 

If a company is going to discount you in some way because your Klout score is too low, well, you're probably a whole lot better off not working at that company. Period. 

End of guru lesson for today. 

The Future Ready 365 initiative - what's "future-ready" to you?

Current SLA President Cindy Romaine has kicked off an ambitious new project, called Future Ready 365. In my view (and drawing from the aims of the blog), it's an effort to illustrate and provide a forum for the many voices inside the information profession, and to draw in insight and perspective from across industries. It's an exercise in collaboration, sharing experience, and helping each other be more resiliant and forward-looking in a changing profession and a changing world.

The entries so far have been very good. After I posted my entry earlier this week, I heard from someone who said she wanted to see "more specific examples of how knowledge professionals have transformed themselves with the changing needs of business."

While I can certainly share my own experience - and hopefully I will have a chance to post again this year, but I don't want to take anyone's spot - I would encourage you, if you're reading this, to consider contributing your voice to the blog. How do you see the world changing? How are you adapting to it? How have you transformed yourself and your skills to create new opportunities for yourself?

If you'd like to participate, see the information for submitting a post here. I know I'd be interested in hearing what you have to say!

Innovation, creativity and competencies

Mary Stansbury, LIS Program Chair at University of Denver, gave a presentation at the annual membership meeting of the Rocky Mountain Chapter of SLA last night in south Denver. She talked, in part, about how we teach competencies in library school, and the role of innovation in competencies. It was an intriguing and thought-provoking presentation - and I will link to it when it becomes available.

The (admittedly somewhat scattered) notes that I'm sharing here reflect some of the thoughts she shared, and some of the thoughts and questions that came up for me during her presentation.

I will confess, there is a part of me that sighs - inwardly and tiredly - when I hear the words "innovation" and "competencies".

I think "innovation" is tremendously overused. Mary pointed out that in business these days, innovation is seen as the panacea that will cure all of our business/revenue/product/company/(insert word here) woes. I agree with this, and I think this contributes to my growing irritation with the word.

I feel that "competencies" is another word that, for me, is starting to attain "innovation" status. I'll talk about this more in a bit.

Mary began by distinguishing between innovation and invention. Innovation essentially means creative change of a process (rather than an object), while invention means creation of an object. She also noted that innovation includes elements of change and risk.

Mary posited that customers - library and information customers - might not always be the most reliable sources of knowing what innovation might look like. She quoted Henry Ford as saying, "if I'd asked my customers what they needed, they would have said, 'a faster horse'." While I think it's important to ask the recipients of our services what they need - mainly because we often fail to do this - this point gave me a different perspective on innovation. Yes, we can ask our customers what innovation might look like, but part of me feels it's a disservice to our customers to ask them for what they think is innovative - why should we put all of the burden on them?

One of the most intriguing pieces of her presentation was her reference to John Isaacson, who says that, when hiring, he looks for "hunger, speed and weight". Hunger means a willingness to take risks, and to fail. Speed means intellectual agility - the ability to listen and synthesize, and to learn. (To me, the ability to learn blows the needs for 90% of our written competencies out of the water. Feel free to argue with me.) Weight, as Isaacson puts it, is the ability to use power wisely, but I also feel there's a sense of emotional maturity in this piece.

I believe that these are valuable abilities for success. Part of the discussion of the evening was, does our focus on competencies support innovation? Often, our competencies are skill-based and retrospective - they address achievement, not aptitude. Achievement measures look backward; aptitude measures look forward. And to me, Isaacson's qualities are about aptitude.

Which brings us back to my irritation with the word "competencies". We talk a lot about competencies, but I think we are losing sight of the reasons behind competencies. As Mary pointed out, one of the benefits of having competencies is that they are measurable. And we have a very high need to measure, to gauge, to be able to point to something and say "There, you see? It is a 4.5 (or an A or X or Level E-3 or 86%)."

While competencies are important, I think the qualities that Isaacson outlines are equally important. Yet, how do you measure and codify risk tolerance? How do you codify capacity to learn? Maturity?

More importantly, is there a way to build these qualities into what we teach? Is there a way to teach not only skills but aptitude? Is there a way to create an environment - really, a scenario, a safe place to take risks - that builds both real skills experience and aptitude?

I think so. Though I'm not quite sure what that looks like yet. 

Connecting

Last week, along with my fellow Division and Chapter Cabinet Chair-Elect candidates, I got to participate in a call with SLA unit leaders. It was a really good session - great questions from the moderator, SLA President-Elect Cindy Romaine, and from the participants. I continue to be impressed by the quality of all my fellow candidates. No matter who wins this election, you're gonna have excellent leaders!

A question came up around the difference between networking in-person and networking online, and I wanted to share my reflection on this. It's a thought-provoking question.

Typically, the opinion is that "nothing beats in-person networking". I would agree that in-person networking is a unique experience. As we were talking on the call, though, I realized that in-person networking and online networking really compliment each other.

Let me share two examples:

I've been connected with a person on the Board of the local Rocky Mountain Chapter of SLA for several months. I hadn't met this person locally - we only met in-person for the first time at the conference in New Orleans in June. What was striking was that, when we did meet in person, it was as if we already knew a lot about each other. It felt as if I was meeting a long-time friend, and meeting in-person was icing on the cake.

On the opposite side, I met many people in-person at the conference. Afterward, we quickly connected via LinkedIn, Facebook and/or Twitter. These tools, in many ways, have allowed us to continue the conversation we started at the conference. We've gotten to learn more about each other. We've gotten to know each others' interests more.

Previously, I may have only interacted with my new connections at the next conference - if we both attended, and if we connected beforehand, or if we were in the same place at the same time. Maybe we would have exchanged a few emails, but likely many of those connections would have grown cold. Social networking tools are keeping our connections "warm", so to speak. We may not be talking directly all the time, but I know what's going on in their world, and they know what's going on in mine. It's pretty nice!

I don't think online connection replaces in-person connection, or vice versa. I think the two compliment each other nicely. I'm glad I had a chance to reflect on this, because it has had a real effect in my life. My SLA membership, and my connections with SLA, have made my personal and professional life richer.

How have social tools complimented your life?

Opening statement for SLA Board candidates

As you may or may not know, I am a member of the Special Libraries Association (SLA), and this year I am running for an SLA Board position for 2011-2013. The position is Division Cabinet Chair-Elect (which is quite a mouthful).

Even SLA members will look confused when I tell them the position I'm running for. Flippantly, I will tell them the position is "king of Divisions". More seriously, the Division Cabinet Chair-Elect primarily acts as a liaison between the various SLA Divisions and the SLA Board. The Division Cabinet Chair-Elect helps out Division leadership in whatever way he or she can, and is an active member of the Board.

I'm excited about the possibility of serving on the Board. It's yet another way that I can give back to SLA as an association, which has done so much for me, professionally and personally.

As part of this process, I wanted to share some of the statements I made at the SLA Annual Conference in New Orleans. I think this will give you a little more insight into my position and thoughts.

I'll be sharing more of this information over the next few weeks.

Opening statement and platform

I’ve been an SLA member since 2002, but have been active in public, academic and corporate libraries for almost 20 years, and am currently doing independent work, teaching, speaking and consulting. Most recently, I was at Sun Microsystems, a tech company, for over 9 years, doing research, training, competitive intelligence work, and working with social media, among other things. I am currently a member of the SLA Virtual Worlds Council, a founding member and Past Chair of the Competitive Intelligence Division, and was President of the Rocky Mountain Chapter when the conference was there in 2007 (and there weren’t any tornadoes, thankfully). I also blog, tweet, do a bi-weekly music podcast called Music Therapy and will receive a second Master’s degree in Counseling in August of this year.

Not to trivialize the scale of what’s happening in the Gulf oil spill, but I worry about a similar slow-motion crisis happening to SLA, and to many associations. To me, there are a few major crises facing us as Divisions, Chapters, and SLA as an association:

• Funding
• Membership
• Programming and value outside of the annual conference

These are all tied together tightly, and really come down to a question of value – the value that members, vendors and SLA get out of the association.

I think some of the best tools we can use to bring more value to SLA members are:

• Transparency/openness 
• Communication 
• Flexibility 

By transparency, I mean something that is a hallmark of what we do – making information available. We need to know plainly the difficulties we are facing and the resources that we have. We need to know the state of our membership and our units, and what your thoughts are. Otherwise we make decisions that don’t consider critical elements. We make the potentially wrong decision.

By communication, I mean talking with each other. I mean sharing information back and forth. Talking and listening. And I think we need to expand the conversation to include everyone – units, members, vendors, Board members.

By flexibility, I mean a willingness to consider new things, potentially big changes, new ways of thinking about ourselves, our programming, and our fundraising. Flexibility and change frankly mean being uncomfortable, but it also means doing something new, interesting, exciting and relevant. And I’m all for that.

In difficult times, it becomes critical that we have all the information we need, all the participation we can get, and all the options that are possible. Only by having all three can we get through the adjustments and changes we need to get through, and to ultimately thrive. And I think we can thrive.

(End of opening statement)

I'd love to have a conversation with you about this. What are your thoughts? What would you suggest for the betterment of SLA and its members?