So what is my plan for the day? Well it starts early with the New Members Breakfast (really soon!). Even though I have been in the field for four years this is my first MLA conference. I am looking forward to meeting other ‘newbies.’

Later in the afternoon I have three presentations I want to attend that are unfortunately all at the same time!

Right now all of these topics are very applicable to my job and several projects I have been involved with. I am leaning towards the second one, but still have not decided. Maybe I will be able to move between the presentations, just like I will be doing for the Events tonight.

Do you have a recommendation for which presentation I should attend?

Here is to a good day two and more stimulating conversations. Engage!

When the Welcome Reception opened, I was stunned by the number of displays and size of displays (again, I must remember to take pictures). The reception was a great chance to talk with vendors and catch up with colleagues. I learned that I am not a zombie and Kimberely Barker had the best team jersey (the Green Lantern!).

Dinner provided a chance for stimulating conversation with the EBSCO/MLA first time attendee awardees, judges panel, and the infamous T. Scott Plutchak. The conversation started with light talking about cooking (as I’ve said before I like to cook and it is always a good & safe conversation started) morphing into the latest library projects to the difficulties libraries face.

The project Scott is working on at UAB to use lightening round presentations (5 minutes, 20 slides) in the library is a home run idea. Many clinicians and students do not have much time, nor do many have the ability to sit through long presentations about the library. If the library is there to help then keeping presentations for introductory items is a great way to help our patrons stay current without requiring much of their time.

Scott also mentioned that he, as a presenter, determined the number of words he could say in a minute using his speaking style. This way if he is asked to present for 5 minutes, or 10 he knows about how many words can be in his speech. I often struggle with pith and talking too fast so I will have to give this a try. Maybe knowing how many words I can say at a pace others can follow will help make it easier for me to prepare for presentations.

Towards the end of the night the conversation shifted to the difficulties currently facing medical librarians in both academia and hospitals. At UAB Scott is trying to shift the librarians time to be outside the library, which is something I’ve done with working on EMR and CPOE. Melissa noted this requires librarians to branch out into sometimes unknown areas. Lisa summarized it nicely that some hospital libraries have shot themselves in the foot by guarding the physical space without emphasizing the need for the professional librarian.

It was a stimulating conversation that I wish I had a tape recorder for. On to day two for more stimulating conversations and engaged learning.

***I have met so many people and I hope I have the correct names here. It is also early!***

Ok maybe my excitement is compounded by the fact that I’ve never been to MLA… or the west coast! Thrilled to meet fellow #medlibs …..

See… Thriller face!

During the conference I will be tweeting like a mad scientist! I will also be posting on here hopefully at least 2 times a day.

So where will I be at MLA? All over the place. My Twitter feed will have the latest information for zombie stalking

Speaking of twitter, it seems Mr. Dean Hendrix has declared an all out #twitterwarz. There has already been a call to Eric to get the data going. Emily holds the award for 2011.

And the bets have started with Dean betting $50 on Emily and Maria Ascher betting $5 on me. Remember this is all in good fun.

Only time will tell who wins the #twitterwarz of #mlanet2012 and receives the claim as the star geek tweeter of 2012.

Who do you think it will be?

It took me a while to get to this post. I wanted to wait, and then time simply slipped by me. I presented  a very short segment on April 18 for the MLA Educational Webcast Leveraging Mobile Technologies for Health Sciences Libraries, it seemed to go over well.

I want to thank MLA for doing a fabulous job with the video. I especially liked the music the MLA editors added at the end. I also want to thank my fellow presenters: Kimberley Barker, Heather Holmes, Molly Knapp, and Colleen Cuddy. It was a pleasure to work with innovators in the medical librarian field. I also want to thank the committee who selected the presenters.

Finally, just to make sure my disclaimer for the presentation was clear… I was not paid by NLM or NN/LM (except I did receive a few awards from SE/A NN/LM) to discuss their services. Although if NLM or NN/LM wants to send me a check then that is fine too.

I appreciate everyone’s assistance, I am glad the presentation was well received, and relieved it is over. Why?

Well, I redid the presentation several times. Have you ever watched yourself present on tape over and over again? Yeah, I am not a big fan of it either. I enjoy presenting, but I prefer to present face-to-face in a live session. It is so hard to really gauge the audience when you present virtually and it is impossible to gauge the audience when you tape the presentation. I almost redid the whole video right before it was due… but I finally let go, and let it be. Yes I stumbled a few times. The important thing is to keep going. I keep reminding myself of this every day. Just keep swimming, just keep swimming, swimming.

While the presentation was well received, I did have some questions at the end.

One of the questions/suggestions during the presentation was if/how I connect the use of apps such as cooking apps to medical information. I have done this before. For instance, if I am presenting to a group of diabetes educators then I point out Food on the Table. 

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Food on the Table helps people plan meals based on what is on sale and will even help create meals for health issues, such as diabetes. It is available for free. I have demonstrated this to educators to show patients who have computer access how to use it, and for those who do not it is still a valuable tool for educators. It helps them show patients how to create meal plans and some will even create a few to provide to the patients. Providing patients with easy meals to follow, using items that are on sale (within budget), and going over the nutritional information is great at helping diabetic patients eat healthier.

This is just one example. I have a few others and will be demonstrating a few in upcoming posts including how to get rid of the paper recipe book!

Whether your a vegetarian, vegan or just love food or just have wanna grab lunch then join us Tuesday at Cafe Flora! Cafe Flora is in the MLA restaurant guide in the outta the park section but well worth the trip. Eco-friendly and serving creative vegetarian cuisine, it’s no wonder Cafe Flora is one of Seattle’s premier vegetarian restaurants.

A group of us are going off site for lunch. So far us includes myself, Kimberly Barker, and Laura McLellan.

We will leave from the convention center (probably by taxi) Tuesday at 11:30, and be back by 2pm. Let me know in the comments if you want to attend or send me an email so I can get a head count to call to reserve a table.

*Note this is a meet-up invite and not sponsored by a vendor … which means no free food or drinks. Maybe next year?

Posted from Diigo. The rest of my favorite links are here.

Posted from Diigo. The rest of my favorite links are here.

Five Leadership Lessons From Jean-Luc Picard

This has multiple meanings as I am presenting today on Leveraging Technology with Molly Knapp. For those who join us you will see even more irony/coincidences.

1. Speak to people in the language they understand.

Librarians struggle with this. We often talk in librarian and medical lingo that not everyone understands. While my husband has a good grasp on EBM (he even has a little cheer foe it!) after listening to me drone on about it for hours… I have to remind myself not everyone has the same understanding.

2. When you’re overwhelmed, ask for help.

This can be difficult. I have found myself overwhelmed on plenty of occasions. As a solo hospital librarian I think I live in a state if overwhelment (Yes I made up a word). The key things I have always done is to keep my supervisor informed, explain exactly what has me overwhelmed (often with graphs & data or the pile of mail on my desk), visual tools really help, ask for help but realize I may not always get it and prioritize not just my work but my needs. I’ve talked before that it’s not procrastination it is prioritizing to the last minute.

I will say that having open conversations with your supervisor is the most effective strategy. There are a few things in the works right now for me to help shift some of my workload and put my skills where they are really needed. Remember as librarians we have tons of value…. we just have to show other people and shifting some work may be needed.

3. Always value ethical actions over expedient ones.

“There are times, sir, when men of good conscience cannot blindly follow orders.” ~Picard

“leadership situations, there are a number of temptations to do the wrong thing to make yourself look better, whether that’s cutting corners to beat a schedule or gaming numbers to make your results look good.” (Knapp 2012) Integrity is what matters most.

As others have discussed before it is all about the Cod of Ethics (EagleDawg and David Rothman)

4. Challenge your team to help them grow.

“But to be an effective leader, you need to shake them up, so that when your team faces harder crises, they’ll be more resilient and effective.” (Knapp 2012)

It takes a team to godly go… no one can pilot a starship by themselves. Ok maybe Data could and others have tried but none succeeded very well (Trek talk. Note to self refer to item #1 above… lingo!).

5. Don’t play it safe – seize opportunities in front of you.

“Seize the time… – live now! Make now always the most precious time. Now will never come again.” ~Picard

I have been called a ‘spit fire’. It was by my AHIP mentor who said it was a good quality of mine. I am often known to leap in with both feet and live for today (at least I try to). I still think it is important to look before you leap and be willing to accept the consequences.

What do I mean? Well if you take on teaching EMR sessions, training physicians, rounding, etc then you must realize it also comes with hard work and some sacrifices. Just remember it is ok to put yourself out there. If you have skills to help your organization then please promote yourself and then be prepared for the ripple effects.

How do you see these 5 leadership qualities apply to librarians or you?

I will be presenting with some of the outstanding leaders in the field and hopefully I can keep up!

Nikki posted about the MLA approved hashtag for the conference #mlamobiletech

If you are tweeting please use this hashtag. Also if you post a question please put ‘Q:’ at the beginning to help corral all the questions.

I will be tweeting (@alisha764) and will try to respond to questions as I am able. Answers will have ‘A:’ at the beginning. On second thought I am a little too nervous so can someone just tell me when it is over? Not to mention it is scheduled for central time which just keeps throwing me off! See you in 30 minutes!

Michelle lists all of the important details for the webcast, which can also be found on MLA site, so instead I plan on posting about how & why I got involved, and my geeky humorous bio?

How did I get involved. I was asked by Gabe Rios who was interested in the work I’ve been doing at my organization with the iPad and EMR. How did Gabe know? Well this blog and Twitter.

People actually read my posts! This only encourages me to post more.

For the bio in MLA I took a cue from David Rothman and Bart Ragon and injected a little humor and a little less mini resume. Why? Well I have this information posted on LinkedIn, here in this blog, and many other places. A short bio is also included as part of the presentation slides.

Really when you get down to it the humor is just the geek in me. Ok maybe I added a little drama to it to bodly go where not many #medlibs have gone before (if you watch tomorrow this wil make sense…. Hopefully).

What will this geeky feature include?  I will specifically discuss some of the activities I have been involved with at my organization including the EMR & mobile apps series. As a solo hospital librarian I could not let the opportunity to discuss how hospital librarians can get involved. So I spent about 3 minutes of the 5 minutes (actually I went over the time, so it is really 6 minutes) talking about getting involved and how this can be done.

So join me and the other presenters (Heather, Molly, Kimbreley and Colleen) to learn more about leveraging mobile technology for medical libraries.