SXSW Days Two, Three, and Four

March 12, 2014

For those that have never been to SXSW Interactive, the first thing to know is that it is massive! There are over 15 conference locations, 500 sessions, and 30,000 attendees. And that doesn’t take into account the unofficial events, the lounges, and the parties. Basically, it’s a conference on steroids. It’s easy to get overwhelmed and easy to find a connection, new idea, or free drink around every corner. What is hard is trying to boil my experiences and interactions down into a few blog posts, but I will try.

First, the serious stuff. If you are interested in privacy and our civil liberties (and if you’re not, you should be), please take some time to listen to the talks given by Julian Assange, the founder of WikiLeaks (video, 1:01:57), and Edward Snowden, the former NSA contractor who released information about the agency’s surveillance of Americans (video, 1:01:22). Both of these men are living in asylum and chose to present virtually at SXSWi in order to speak to tech professionals and those that can create the tools to make a difference. As a librarian and a citizen, I found both of these talks to illuminate my understanding of survellance, privacy, whistleblowing, and technology. You can find recordings of these conversations here:

Next, the serious stuff with a fun twist. Much of the work being done by library professionals at SXSWi involves bringing greater awareness of the 21st-century library and the connections between the work that we do and the tech world. Brian Bannon, commissioner of Chicago Public Library, spoke on a panel with a marketer and a programmer about creating and sustaining innovation in large institutions. Urban Librarians Unite, an activist group out of New York City, sent founders Lauren Comito and Christian Zabriskie and their Volunteer Library Brigade book cart to do street activism about libraries, including spontaneous storytimes for folks standing in one line or another. And the #sxswLAM team, coordinated by Stacie Ledden (Anythink), Mel Gooch (San Francisco Public Library), and Cindy Fisher (University of Texas Libraries), asked people to tweet at their local public library in order to get a free drink coozie. Much of this advocacy took place at a booth on the exhibit floor sponsored by library vendor Innovative Interfaces, Inc. and coordinated by Joe Murphy, who provided the space for library folks, including ALA, to have a greater ability to have formal conversations with participants.

And finally, just the fun stuff. If you are a fanperson, there are a ton of celebrities at SXSWi. I had an opportunity to see George Takei, Adam Savage, and Kevin Bacon, all speaking in various sessions about technology, social media, and connectivity. Others saw Nicolas Cage, Rosario Dawson, Cory Doctorow, Snoop Dogg, Lady Gaga, and Kristen Bell, who premiered her Veronica Mars movie here). There are also fun, interactive experiences like the RVIP, a roaming karaoke bar on an RV, which is a great way to meet folks and talk about libraries. (See Ann Awakuni’s post about the interactive exhibits at the Gaming Expo and Create space.)

SXSWi has something for every library professional, and I hope these blog posts are giving you a taste of the diversity of experiences we’re having here. In my next post, I’ll talk about a few of the sessions I’ve attended that have really impacted me and given me great ideas to take back to my library and colleagues there.

MARY ABLER is a public librarian currently employed as an Innovation Leadership Program Resident, a joint project of the Los Angeles Public Library and the Library Foundation of Los Angeles.

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Rachel Hendrick writes: “Students and library vendors are pushing AI adoption in higher education, but there are very few resources that help librarians and scholars separate the wheat from the chaff. Luckily, we here at Choice love a good assessment rubric. (In fact, we made a PDF of our assessment rubric.) Even the least tech-savvy of us can use a very simple AI literacy framework to think critically about whether an AI application is worth your time.”

Choice 360 LibTech Insights, Nov. 13
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Rowana Miller writes: “In my experience, many young library-goers identify as storytellers but not writers. These are the kids who draw Captain-Underpants-style cartoons, who craft meticulous Minecraft universes, and who plot elaborate Dungeons and Dragons campaigns, but who believe that ‘writing’ is limited to 5-paragraph essays. But when children draw the connections between their natural storytelling proclivities and the written word, they can become self-motivated to develop the communication skills that will help them for the rest of their lives. Libraries, I believe, are uniquely positioned to help children make this connection.”

ALSC Blog, Nov. 15
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ALA has reopened its search for an executive director in partnership with executive search firm Isaacson, Miller. The search will be led by a steering committee comprising ALA member leaders. The selected candidate will succeed Interim Executive Director Leslie Burger, who was appointed in November 2023. “We are excited to embark on our search for a new executive director,” said ALA President Cindy Hohl. “This leadership position is critical as we navigate the years ahead. We seek candidates who have knowledge of the library community and the urgent issues we face.”

ALA Communications, Marketing, and Media Relations Office, Nov. 14
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Emily Weak writes: “Something I always hear from hiring managers is that they want to build a resilient, diverse workforce. Sometimes we say we want a resilient workforce, but what we mean is that we want staffers who are willing to go above and beyond, or to do more with less. These concepts are deeply entrenched in librarianship, but I think we’re beginning to see how they can cause problems. Instead of trying to hire people who will do more with less and who will thrive amid adversity, let’s think about resilience as an organizational feature.”

American Libraries column, Nov./Dec.
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Elisabeth B. White writes: “How can librarians ensure their instruction materials are as accessible as possible? One way is through Universal Design for Learning Guidelines, a set of best practices to improve teaching and learning and create inclusive and equitable educational experiences for all students. The guidelines include three principles that instructors must provide via multiple means: engagement (the ‘why’ of learning), representation (the ‘what’ of learning), and action and expression (the ‘how’ of learning). However, to create a truly equitable educational experience, school library workers need to consider accessibility principles as well.”

American Libraries feature, Nov./Dec.
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Elisa Shoenberger writes: “The comics I grew up reading were those in the newspapers, and they were called the funny pages for a reason. In time, I began exploring the wider world of comic books, covering a wide variety of genres from superhero comics to horror. But I do have a fondness for the seeming simplicity of one to four-panel comics in the newspapers and webcomics for humor. For this list, I’ve put together my tribute to the funny pages. Most of the comics are short form comics, but a few are longer narratives.”

Book Riot, Nov. 11
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Jay Peters writes: “Bluesky gained more than 700,000 new users in the last week and now has more than 14.5 million users total, Bluesky COO Rose Wang confirmed to The Verge. The ‘majority’ of the new users on the decentralized social network are from the US, Wang says. The app is currently the number two free social networking app in the US App Store, only trailing Meta’s Threads. Instagram-bootstrapped Threads, which recently crossed 275 million monthly users, is still significantly larger than Bluesky. But the independent platform has seen a lot of growth in recent weeks.”

The Verge, Nov. 11