June 9 was the second day of the conference. For more info:

See part 1
See part 2
See part 3
See part 4
See part 5

Lightening Talks were 5 minute introductions to various concepts, products and service being discussed or showcased at the conference. Most, if not all of the lightening talks were followed up with a workshop after so more people could understand the concept and technology behind the product or service.

The first round was 45 minutes late, because a number of the speakers just didn’t show up. This would never happen at a librarian conference and the audience didn’t know what was going on. I went and talked to my friend and found out. I thought it was really unprofessional for the speakers to bail, but it could be part of the decentralized culture.

Brian Warner talked about Tahoe-LAFS. They also have a GitHub site. LAFS stands for least authority file store. It uses other computers (friends, family, etc) for storage. Information is encrypted before it leaves your system. A ‘hash’ was included in the discussion. It has a feature/functionality called ‘magic folders’, which is a two way sync like DropBox. There is a web interface and it is written in Python. You have to make your own arrangements with storage providers directly.

Stefan Thomas (@justmoon) talked about his site, Interledger. Money is the first social network. Interledger is a protocol. It is a way to record money transactions because you don’t want to duplicate transactions. This is called a managing ledger. Their goal is to make it cheap, instant, global (imagine buying something with Euros when the price is in American dollars), scalable. Bitcoin was distributed and is a good start. Bitcoin is open source so you can make changes to the code. IP allows people to communicate with others on different networks. You can’t, however send an email to SnapChat. There are two basic functions: addressing and fragmentation.

Interledger addresses. It uses decimal amounts and has protocols that are part of a stack. They are in the process of writing plugins for different ledgers (e.g. PayPal, Google Pay, Apple Pay and others).

Natalie Meyers is from the Center for Open Science (COS). She talked about the mission of COS, which is to preserve the data used for scientific experiments so that the experiments can be replicated.

She talked about metascience and the infrastructure COS is working on. They have an Open Science Framework which allows scientists to pass information through tools they are already using. This will be used to investigate how software and operating systems influenced project data. part of their mission is to collaborate in order to promote openness.

Making behaviors visible promotes adoption.

She also discussed better stewardship of scientific data.

Juan Benet: IPFS – he mentioned a ‘merkle’ in his talk about the Interplanetary File System. IPFS has versioning of datastructures. IPFS tells you how to name and move info.

Arkady Kukarkin talked about his company, MediaChain. It is an open and universal media library, decentralized database that provides a unique content ID. Anyone can participate.

There is image recognition so that two versions/instances of the same image have the same content ID and can be discussed as the same. They preserve the raw metadata with ingestion (uploading). People who own images/artworks can amend or retract records, but not edit.There is a log that shows the history of the record. It has similar qualities to Shazam, which tells you the artist of the song when you are listening.

This is a concept about which I am really excited. I want to participate so I can mark my artwork as mine and don’t have to deal with the IG “I forgot where I found this image” issue again.

Other Notes:

Cloudfleet is your own personal data center and some great sounding features.

Resources:

• Cloudfleet
• MediaChain
• MediaChain on Facebook (page is in Polish or Russian)
• Center for Open Science (COS)
• Open Science Framework (part of COS)
• Cryptographic hash function, a derivation of data used to authenticate message integrity
• Fragment identifier, in computer hypertext, a string of characters that refers to a subordinate resource
• Hash function, a derivation of data, notably seen in cryptographic hash functions
• Hash table, a data structure
• hash (Unix), an operating system command
• slack.mediachain.com
• github.com/mediachain
• Ethereum is a public blockchain platform with programmable transaction functionality.^[1][2] It provides a decentralized virtual machine that can execute peer-to-peer contracts using a cryptocurrency called Ether. (Wikipedia)
• The block chain is a public ledger that records bitcoin transactions. A novel solution accomplishes this without any trusted central authority: maintenance of the block chain is performed by a network of communicating nodes running bitcoin software.^[15] Transactions of the form payer X sends Y bitcoins to payee Z are broadcast to this network using readily available software applications. Network nodes can validate transactions, add them to their copy of the ledger, and then broadcast these ledger additions to other nodes.^{[11]:ch. 8} The block chain is a distributed database – to achieve independent verification of the chain of ownership of any and every bitcoin (amount), each network node stores its own copy of the block chain. Approximately six times per hour, a new group of accepted transactions, a block, is created, added to the block chain, and quickly published to all nodes. This allows bitcoin software to determine when a particular bitcoin amount has been spent, which is necessary in order to prevent double-spending in an environment without central oversight. Whereas a conventional ledger records the transfers of actual bills or promissory notes that exist apart from it, the block chain is the only place that bitcoins can be said to exist in the form of unspent outputs of transactions.^{[11]:ch. 5} (Wikipedia)
• InterPlanetary File System (IPFS) is a content-addressable, peer-to-peer hypermedia distribution protocol. Nodes in the IPFS network form a distributed file system. IPFS is an open source project developed by Protocol Labs with help from the open source community.^[1] It was initially designed by Juan Benet.^[2] (Wikipedia)
• Cory Doctorow’s presentation
  Tim Berners-Lee’s Solid project
  Twitter hashtag #DWebSummit
  Tweets about #DWebSummit video

See part 1

See part 2

See part 3

See part 4

Security in a World of Black Hats

We all know that spam, phishing, hacks, identity theft, etc are big money and a big pain. This panel talked about what they are doing in their companies and strategies.

Ross Schulman, Open Tech Institute

Van Jacobson, Google

Mike Perry, Tor

Paige Peterson, MaidSafe

Brian Warner, Tahoe LAFS

One strategy they suggested was using safer code languages. Paige said that MaidSafe products are being rewritten in older languages. She mentioned C++, but I am not sure if they are using that or C++ was an example. I guess those older languages aren’t dead.

There is also something called a Freedom Box, which allows an individual to host their own part of the web. I’d like to take a look at this.

The speakers talked in general terms about what their companies are doing, but couldn’t make specific details public because the event was being livestreamed. That would open them up to hacking and other nastiness.

Moonshot Challenge: What Can You Do?

Juan Benet: websites divorced from locations

Trent McConaghy, Big Chain DB and IPDB: decentralize at scale

Karissa McKelvey, The DAT Project: breaking open scientific data

Denis Nazarov, MediaChain: connect content creators with audiences. MediaChain is an open universal media library that provides a content id to your artwork. This idea keeps the owner/creator information with the image.

Evan Schwartz, Interledger, an Internet protocol for money: he is interested int he future of money. He wants to help payment systems talk to each other. I actually had some idea what this company was talking about. If you use Google Pay and your vendor uses PayPal, Interledger will allow your systems to talk to each other so that you can still pay. In my mind, it gives everyone choices about what payment system works for them and doesn’t require us to have multiple passwords and our money spread around. Interledger helps with the routing of packets of money across networks. It will lead to agnostic payment systems

IPFS is a peer to peer hypermedia protocol

Resources:

• slack.mediachain.com
• github.com/mediachain
• Ethereum is a public blockchain platform with programmable transaction functionality.^[1][2] It provides a decentralized virtual machine that can execute peer-to-peer contracts using a cryptocurrency called Ether. (Wikipedia)
• The block chain is a public ledger that records bitcoin transactions. A novel solution accomplishes this without any trusted central authority: maintenance of the block chain is performed by a network of communicating nodes running bitcoin software.^[15] Transactions of the form payer X sends Y bitcoins to payee Z are broadcast to this network using readily available software applications. Network nodes can validate transactions, add them to their copy of the ledger, and then broadcast these ledger additions to other nodes.^{[11]:ch. 8} The block chain is a distributed database – to achieve independent verification of the chain of ownership of any and every bitcoin (amount), each network node stores its own copy of the block chain. Approximately six times per hour, a new group of accepted transactions, a block, is created, added to the block chain, and quickly published to all nodes. This allows bitcoin software to determine when a particular bitcoin amount has been spent, which is necessary in order to prevent double-spending in an environment without central oversight. Whereas a conventional ledger records the transfers of actual bills or promissory notes that exist apart from it, the block chain is the only place that bitcoins can be said to exist in the form of unspent outputs of transactions.^{[11]:ch. 5} (Wikipedia)
• InterPlanetary File System (IPFS) is a content-addressable, peer-to-peer hypermedia distribution protocol. Nodes in the IPFS network form a distributed file system. IPFS is an open source project developed by Protocol Labs with help from the open source community.^[1] It was initially designed by Juan Benet.^[2] (Wikipedia)
• Cory Doctorow’s presentation
  Tim Berners-Lee’s Solid project
  Twitter hashtag #DWebSummit
  Tweets about #DWebSummit video

See part 1

See part 2

See part 3

After the Big Guns, others started to talk. There were panels, lightening talks, workshops and informal meal socials.

Peer to Peer Networks

The first talk was a panel about Peer to Peer networks. I was thinking that we already have that when someone else echoed my thoughts. Kevin Marks of Indie Labs was the moderator and the panel included Feross Aboukhadijeh of WebTorrent, David Dias or Protocol Labs & IPFS, Zooko Wilcox of Zocash & Tahoe LAFS and Gavin Wood of Epthcore (sp??), Etheory and Ethereum.

In this section, Kevin asked questions and answers were given by the most interested or qualified person. In some cases, questions were directed at certain panelists. All of the panelists are clearly passionate about their projects.

They don’t think links are as fragile as the Big Guns made them out to be.

Zcash has privacy in the payment system, which prevents censorship.

Public applications are saved to the network without having data in once centralized location. They think this helps find content on a network. I wonder how and if there is an opportunity for content management

Ethereum decentralized http post allows transactions within post request (filling out a form on the web) with no server on the other end.

Webtorrent – they are trying to make a torrent client that runs in the browser. Other torrent clients have to be installed, which is a barrier.

Visitors help host various sites

Torrents area and efficient way to send data across the web

Naming and User IDs in the Decentralized Web

Again this was a panel with a moderator. Participants included:

Chelsea Barbaras – moderator

Muneeb Ali (@muneeb), Blockstack

Joachim Lohkamp, Jolocom and Ouishare

Jeremy Rand, Namecoin

One of the things I liked about this talk was that right away they acknowledged that the decentralization of the web is not an intuitive thought for most people. One person gave an example of 10 sites being involved when a person types an address into the browser bar.

Naming matters.

They want to decouple data from applications. This would help with archiving issues such as not having the software to run and look at data.

Building Values Into the Decentralized Web

Amber Case – Calm Technology

Primavera De Filippi – Backfeed and Coala

Max Ogden (@denormalize) – DAT Project

Wendy Seltzer – W3C

Peter Van Gardenen – Artefactual Systems

One of the speakers said that decentralization should be a means a different object NOT the object itself, which I think is fairly profound. I can’t say I noticed that people wanted to decentralize the web in order to decentralize the web. Many listed privacy, anti-censorship, etc as reasons behind it. I got the impression that there are a limited number of reasons, which might focus the effort, but also not be enough.

provenance of information

• authentication
• how do I trust it?
• does it have good metadata?
• are there multiple copies?

Bandwidth and storage of commodities of the Internet. I never thought of it like this, but it is true.

Resources:

• Ethereum is a public blockchain platform with programmable transaction functionality.^[1][2] It provides a decentralized virtual machine that can execute peer-to-peer contracts using a cryptocurrency called Ether. (Wikipedia)
• The block chain is a public ledger that records bitcoin transactions. A novel solution accomplishes this without any trusted central authority: maintenance of the block chain is performed by a network of communicating nodes running bitcoin software.^[15] Transactions of the form payer X sends Y bitcoins to payee Z are broadcast to this network using readily available software applications. Network nodes can validate transactions, add them to their copy of the ledger, and then broadcast these ledger additions to other nodes.^{[11]:ch. 8} The block chain is a distributed database – to achieve independent verification of the chain of ownership of any and every bitcoin (amount), each network node stores its own copy of the block chain. Approximately six times per hour, a new group of accepted transactions, a block, is created, added to the block chain, and quickly published to all nodes. This allows bitcoin software to determine when a particular bitcoin amount has been spent, which is necessary in order to prevent double-spending in an environment without central oversight. Whereas a conventional ledger records the transfers of actual bills or promissory notes that exist apart from it, the block chain is the only place that bitcoins can be said to exist in the form of unspent outputs of transactions.^{[11]:ch. 5} (Wikipedia)
• InterPlanetary File System (IPFS) is a content-addressable, peer-to-peer hypermedia distribution protocol. Nodes in the IPFS network form a distributed file system. IPFS is an open source project developed by Protocol Labs with help from the open source community.^[1] It was initially designed by Juan Benet.^[2] (Wikipedia)
• Cory Doctorow’s presentation
  Tim Berners-Lee’s Solid project
  Twitter hashtag #DWebSummit
  Tweets about #DWebSummit video

See Part 1
See Part 2

Sir Tim Berners-Lee @timberners_lee

He is the director of the WWW Consortium. He was really hard for me to understand. He is so smart and talks so fast that mere mortals have to run to catch up. He made some excellent points

Sites/services such as FB, Flickr, Instagram don’t talk to each other. Those sites are silos. These sites display the siloization of the web.

=> When I heard him say that it occurred to me that mobile devices are creating a bridge (nota bene: NOT a solution or breaking down the silos) in that photos are stored in one place to the different silos have access to them. This still means that you don’t have to go to different places to find the photos to upload.

=> While you can click on the ‘share with Twitter’ button within Instagram, the tweet still refers the reader back to Instagram.

People think that consumers sold their souls to get web/app services for free.

He wants a place to store that individuals can control

• He is working on a project called Solid

Locking the Web Open / Brewster Kahle

Can web openness be irrevocable?

Can web openness be baked into the infrastructure?

• Build archiving into the cloud

The more access is available, the more a site is used (e.g. Amazon Cloud moves sites around and replicates them for a larger fee if they get more popular)

Reader privacy is an issue that came up a few times at the conference

Listen/watch the video of the whole conference for more detail and more information.

Resources:

Cory Doctorow’s presentation
Tim Berners-Lee’s Solid project
Twitter hashtag #DWebSummit
Tweets about #DWebSummit video

See part 1.

As I said the concept of the “Decentralized Web” wasn’t made very clear at the Summit. Everyone seemed to know what everyone else was talking about.

Mitchell Baker (one of the few women and a powerhouse in her own right) explained it like this:

• Agency. User agent can choose how to interpret content provided by a service offering.
• Immediate. Safe, instant access to content accessible via a universal address (similar to http) without an install.
• Open. Anyone can publish content without permission or barriers and provide access as they see fit.
• Universal. Content runs on any device or any platform.

The above description is what I tried to keep in my head throughout the Summit. The questions it brought up were:

1. Is this a new concept or am I just learning about the movement?
2. Are these concepts coming around again after 20 years as they seem familiar principles from when I first got on the web?

Vint Cerf @vintcerf

Vint Cerf came next. He is a VP & Chief Internet Strategist at Google. He didn’t talk much about Google and didn’t do the gratuitous mentions (much) like many do. Instead he talked about the Digital Dark Ages, which is a time we are in now where content we think is permanent blinks on and off. Files simply disappear and links die.

He is advocating for a Self Archiving Web.

What we have learned from the Internet is that the following is important:

• Collaboration and Cooperation
• Open design and an evolution process
• Anyone can join by following the protocols
• Multiple business models are acceptable
• Modular, layered evolution
  • who really cares about how packets are being carried as long as they are delivered?
• E plurbis unum

Thinking Out Loud

Some of the things that Cerf mentioned were compression schemes and what they could and couldn’t do, Tarball and related formats, the importance of storing and being able to recover particular objects as well as the storage of software with versioning. Imagine a world where you have a lot of digital stuff, but you can’t access it because you don’t have the software.

Internet Archive

The Internet Archive is starting to ‘archive’ the web. Even they admit their efforts are inadequate. They take snapshots of sites. They are time indexed copies. Hyperlinks don’t work. Hyperlinks will have to be reformed to resolve with other archived (snapshot) sites “InArchive” pages.

A complete archiving effort for the web has to be:

• self-contained
• include continuous crawling
• determine how to decide when to create a new instance
  • Is there a role for RSS??

Then he had a random question: Does a set of all sets include itself?

=>This question alone made the whole conference worth it. This type of question would never come up in the corporate world. If you think about it, it will start to blow your mind.

Environmental Thoughts

The web can hardly contain itself. Is there room to replicate it? (LOCKSS)

Hyperlinks deteriorate with time

• Perhaps we need a permanent link – something like digital object identifiers

HTMLx rendering challenge: backward compatibility

What about permissions, access control, copyrights

• these cause problems for archiving over decades or centuries

Some Basic Thoughts

• Automatic, cooperative replication of created web pages could be part of the publication process.
• Is there a role for something like Good docs property of replication/real-time synchronization?
• Could there be a reference space (like a reference room in a  library) held in common by cooperating web archives?

More Thinking Out Loud

• Is there a role for publication/subscription mechanisms for cooperative and other entities?
• A lot of metadata is needed to replicate some kind of Time Machine feature
• A library of rendering/interpretation software is needed to correctly render archival material on the web
  • there is a whole subtext of permission to use here
  • how do you use software over time (decades, centuries) when companies go out of business, go bankrupt (and the judge won’t give you access because it’s an asset)
• Guaranteeing backward compatibility is a good goal, but not practical over hundreds of years.

Surfing the Self Archiving Web

• Multiple, alternative resolution targets (shouldn’t matter which is chosen if the system works right)
• Note: static media of newspaper and magazines and books are snapshots of a ‘work’ in time. We have editions. People can see the work as it existed at that time and something similar might be valuable for the web and digital objects.

Desirable Properties

• Auto-archiving upon publication?
• could auto-archiving be a service for which you sign up? How would it be funded?
• Registration of rendering engines (and permissioning system?)
• Auto-malware filters
• Fidelity levels
  • everything works
  • surface display only (no links)
  • other? e.g. can see there is a video, but don’t have software or rights to render it so user can only see part of the object
• Once archived, is a page an indelible and unalterable instance? Could it be useful in a court of law?
  • could different levels of fidelity have different uses, e.g. an official version?
• Is there an ‘official records’ side effect of making Self Archiving web work?
• Can such a system work for encrypted content?
• Can access to parts of the archive be access controlled
  • e.g. release after 25 years?
  • what about a separate archive of encryption keys?
  • could metadata be added to trigger access?
• Is there a role for containers?
  • all information needed to do rendering would be held in one container
    • Google is doing this for the Android Framework
• Apps?
  • What is their role in the structure above?
  • How would they be shown/displayed in 25 years?
  • Would an index of information for apps help render them?
  • archive of apps
  • digital dioramas
• Digital vellum could be an ad model + a subscription model + a service model

We discussed the right to be forgotten in a digital archiving space

• In order to wipe something out you have to remember it because you have to know it in order to get rid of it (another mind blower!)

Listen/watch the video of the whole conference for more detail and more information.

Resources:

Cory Doctorow’s presentation
Tim Berners-Lee’s Solid project
Twitter hashtag #DWebSummit
Tweets about #DWebSummit video

I spent the last day and a half at the Decentralized Web Summit.

My head is about to explode. Seriously.

This conference was so out of my normal scheme that it really shook things up for me. I don’t think that it will blow my life into a new stratosphere or anything, but I know about things that I didn’t know about before. I have heard of things that I don’t understand and I have participated in a cultural group that is really different from the librarians, knowledge managers and content management people with whom I normally interact. It was an eye opener.

The conference was held at the Internet Archive, which owns an old Christian Science building. The former sanctuary (or CS equivalent) still has the pews, but houses the servers that run the Internet Archive, was where the presentations were held.

The majority of the attendees and presenters were male, but there were a few females, including a few female presenters. Tons of t-shirts, only one suit (that I saw), beards, boots. The new uniform.

If the building had been bombed, the history of hte Internet would have been wiped out, not because the IA servers would have been destroyed (they are backed up offsite), but because most, if not all, of the fathers of the Internet were in attendance: Brewster Kahle, Sir Tim Berners-Lee, Vint Cerf (he wore the suit), Cory Doctorow, Richard Sullivan, etc. I was in awe of these guys. I remember when they were were working on making the Internet more open. And here they are again, working for the same thing.

The first issue I had was that I had no idea what a Decentralized Web was. A day and half into the conference, I am still not 100% sure. Wendy Hanamura, the Partnership leader at IA suggested:

• Open
• Private
• Secure
• Free

She suggested and this was reiterated later, that these values should be ‘baked into the code”.

Resources:

Cory Doctorow’s presentation

Tim Berners-Lee’s Solid project

Twitter hashtag #DwebSummit

Internet Librarian is one of the best conferences I have attended. It is small, focused on technology and the Internet. In the past it has been to the point and interesting. I heard Liz Lawley speak there and became a huge fan of the possibilities in workplaces around gaming. Of course, HR has not adopted any gaming techniques and the idea is now somewhat out of fashion.

I like Internet Librarian, because I meet other people who are smart, articulate and thinking about the way things could be in libraries and working with technology to realize dreams.

IL 2015 session

This year, after a few years’ hiatus, I am speaking again. This year, I am taking a detour and speaking about vendor relations. I am passionate about this subject as I sincerely dislike the negative talk and disrespect often heard in library circles. Come and hear me speak on Monday October 26, 2015 at 3:15.

Register and take a look at the full schedule. See you there!

A number of questions occurred to me as I sat through the Dreamforce sessions, mostly based on my experience working with clients or at law firms.

1. How does all of this advanced sales type information relate to law firms?

Well, I don’t think it does. Lawyers refuse to think of themselves as salespeople or to think of their services as something to sell, even though being a rainmaker is clearly a salesperson and their services are something for which they want to get paid. From the little I know about Salesforce products, I believe they could be used in a law firm. Knowing each touch a client receives would give the partner for the client a good sense of how the client is being treated. If the partner has clients without any ‘touches’ for a period of time, then s/he would know to find something to send to the client to remind the client how valuable they are to the firm. This is where library staff could assist.

2. Are legal services disconnected episodic events? If so, how does that relate to the relationship based aspect of selling legal services?

If a client is involved in an ongoing legal matter, s/he will have more contact with lawyers than s/he would like. However, for other legal services, such as estate planning, they may be one time or disconnected episodic events. Years might go by before a change in a will or trust needs to be made. Still, the law firm should want to let the client know s/he is important. If the law firm or partner relies on anecdotal information, it is harder to keep in touch. Lawyers are busy and can easily forget a happy client. The law firm should want their client to get to the ‘Advocate’ section of the customer journey.

3. Is the cloud aspect of Salesforce a problem for law firms?

Most law firms are lax about security, don’t read license agreements carefully and don’t require users to change their passwords frequently. In light of that, probably not, but for some law firms the cloud is a problem as companies providing the cloud services allow themselves to share information, via their license agreements, with others.

4. Is the customer/client at the center of law firm transactions?

Most of the speakers at Dreamforce talked about how the customer was at the center of all transactions at Salesforce. Most of the Salesforce executives who spoke reiterated their commitment to customer happiness. I don’t think the same is true at law firms. I think the partners’ money is at the center of law firm transactions. I don’t think money is a bad thing in commercial enterprises (you wouldn’t be reading this if I did), but I do think that happy customers bring in more money.

I was shocked that 3 hours of the conference was devoted to mindfulness. It was an excellent part of the conference even though it made me feel sleepy.

The reality is that we all feel stressed, at some point, by our jobs. Having tools to use to calm down is valuable. Many times, we seek out these tools outside of work and our co-workers think we are weird for what we have chosen. That a company as large as Salesforce.com thinks mindfulness is important really made me pay attention.

All of the speakers were outside people, so I don’t know if the C-Suite uses these techniques, but devoting time to them is a commitment. I can see how they would think it is important, because more calm means fewer adverse interactions between colleagues. Happy workers = higher productivity.

Marc Benioff says that the business of business is to improve the world.

The definition of mindfulness in this conference included:

• Exercising compassion
• Paying deliberate, careful attention moment by moment (be here now or paying attention on purpose)
• Developing awareness, mental clarity and insight
• Exercising compassion

All of the speakers agreed that the above were the basic tenets. Tara Brach (an American psychologist and proponent of Buddhist meditation. She set up an Insight Meditation Community in Washington, D.C., a “spiritual community” that teaches and practices Vipassana meditation. Wikipedia) furthered this defintion by adding that mindfulness is an evolutionary strategy that maximizes human potential.

Ms. Brach added:

• friendliness, not judgmental-ness
• learning to pause, stop, settle
• take criticism without resentment

We were reminded that it is easy to say “I don’t have enough time” and enable those few words to become an inner mantra and affect our entire lives. The question to ask is how we each can live true to ourselves not based on the expectations of others?

The biggest inner stressor is a sense of deficiency. It shows up as perfectionism, self judgment and a chronic sense of not enough. These lead to:

• inability to relax
• fear of taking risks
• inability to be intimate with people

One thing that resonated with me with Meng’s talk was his insistence that if you have health and fitness, everything changes. I know this to be true. I know it is hard to fit workouts and eating good food in, but it makes a huge difference. He also discussed the benefits of mindfulness in the workplace, of which there are 3 elements:

1. Learning to create a calm and clear mind

• By being able to calm the mind in a crisis, you look like a leader. People want calm in crisis and most cannot be calm.
• A calm, clear mind gives you choice, power and freedom

1. Self knowledge and self mastery

Changes “I am angry” to “I am experiencing anger” which is the acknowledgement that your emotions are not you. Your thoughts are not you and and you are not your thoughts.

1. Create useful mental habits

• kindness, which means, for example, that when you see a person your first thought is “I want that person to be happy” You do this because of habit, but a habit move up through you to make you a happier person.

I don’t suppose you can get away from a discussion on mindfulness without talking about meditation. I am not a person that feels I can meditate, but Meng made me think of meditation in a way that makes me think I could do it. Not the weeklong silent retreats…yet, perhaps. His definition of meditation makes sense and is flexible: “meditation is whatever you do that helps you shut out the noise.”

He also said that:

• we should gather people around us who are on the same path and that magic will happen.
• Sharing and caring for another human being is a gift you give to yourself. This made me think of moms
• Perfect your capacity to be present with an open heart as opposed to trying to perfecting yourself

One basic meditation strategy that I could do is taking 8 deep breaths and let them out slowly. It is a start.

In my first post on Dreamforce, I briefly mentioned systematic engagement and some of the ways it works in the sales related/retail world and how it could work in a library setting. I wrote:

“Consider that your customers have a journey (the customer journey),

which is comprised of the following lifecycle:

• Acquire
• Sell
• Onboard
• Engage
• Advocate”

I can’t really get these concepts out of my mind. I feel strongly that libraries need to consider all options when setting up marketing programs to increase traffic.

Acquire: how would a library acquire new patrons? What is the best way to get the word out?

Sell: how do librarians ‘sell’ their services. First of all, librarians need to get over the word ‘sell’.

Onboard: if the library doesn’t have the app they can get the patron to download, what are other ways to get people on board with using library services? Sign up for a training session? The least you can do is send them a welcome email. If your organization is hosting a volunteer event, invite everyone to that.

Engage: respond to the user/patron after each transaction. In a corporate setting, I think that talking to people in the cafeteria and the elevator could also be considered engagement. It is important, now, to connect with the customer/patron.

Advocate: this is the nirvana, because your patrons are selling for you. The list above is daunting, but if you can get to it, you earn your reward, because your customers will start telling their stories about your books, your products and your services.

Systematic engagement does mean that you have to review and respond to each mode of communication. Phone and email engagement are not enough. What are people saying on social media via their mobile device? How did they respond to your advertising campaign; do you need to reply to cranky tweets? Where are the emails from the website going? Do communications from all the devices, which can communicate with each other, the web, etc all get through?

All of this tells me that the key is engagement. How do you engage with people? Personalized engagement works better than scattershot general engagement. Salesforce’s new product, Lightening, helps companies make people feel like they matter as individuals and are part of something. While not all libraries or information organizations might not they can afford Salesforce products, there are ways to start the process of personalized interactions without the product. You have to think creatively.

Tell the story of the relationship with the patron, e.g. keep track of interactions. Of course, public libraries have to be aware of privacy, but libraries and information centers in commercial enterprises can track interactions and use it to market to their customers.