BeanWorks

With a little help from the DrupalEasy folks in Orlando, the Miami and Fort Lauderdale groups are finally putting on a Drupal Camp! (Thanks Mike Anello, for giving it the final push!)

Nova Southeaster University in Davie is hosting the event on Saturday, October 22. Admission is a only $10 — if you are anywhere in South Florida, come!  There are corporate sponsors, but consider chipping in $40 to be an individual sponsor.  Details are at the Drupalcamp website.

For the Drupal wary:  there is a Beginner’s track, using Drupal 7, the easiest Drupal ever!

For experienced Drupalers, there will be plenty to chew on, such as drush awesomeness!

If you are somewhere in between, trust me, you won’t be bored.

What started out as a 3-4 month hiatus to do an intranet site redesign, is now winding down after 6 months.  After the first couple months when it became apparent no progress was going to be made, I regrouped and put together a different, motivated but novice team. It’s been a little over three months since that team started on the project, and the results are impressive.  Although we could go live with it, I decided to do some “beta testing” on our unsuspecting end-users.  That has been enlightening: there may be some revisions in store before we finally get this baby to bed.

The terms usually associated with Drupal are “steep learning curve.”  I was the only one in my organization who even knew what Drupal is, although some seemed to have a vague concept of “content management system.” But I recommended we go with Drupal over other options because of (1) it’s potential, (2) the growing and active group of libraries with Drupal, and (3) because it’s the CMS I was most familiar with.  Looking back, I’d have done some things differently (isn’t that always the case?), but I would still choose Drupal. We haven’t fully taken advantage of all Drupal’s potential, but that’s only because I decided to hold off development of more advanced features until after we completed the initial project.

I was fortunate to have 2 others who were eager to learn and undaunted by Drupal’s complexity.  In a little over two months, with 1 1/2 days of one-on-one training and many many hours of phone conferences with them, they understand Drupal better than I did after two years of playing with it. This is a good thing, since they will likely be the ones left with the task of maintaining the site over the long run.  But we needed more than us three to migrate the content from the previous site, so I recruited 4 others, 3 of whom were apprehensive about approaching technology at this level.  One had a Technical Services background, and provided us with the taxonomy structure we needed. Two added content directly into special content types I set up, and one tracked down copyright-free pictures we needed.  It was an interesting exercise in project management: finding the team members we needed by dividing the tasks by skill level required, configuring Drupal to be easier to use for technophobes, and by approaching prospects individually to ask for help on a limited scale.

About half way through the project, as I struggled with trying to get the site to display the same in IE7 and Firefox, I shifted gears and decided to do the layout completely in CSS.  Actually I was shamed into it after a query to the Drupal library group.  I finished those changes just about the same time everything else fell into place.  And it works just fine in both browsers, thank you!  But we had been designing with the assumption most end users would be using a set screen size and resolution.  This week we discovered those assumptions were way off.  The good news is that we have found a lot more real estate to work with.  The bad news is that while things aren’t broken, the site doesn’t look quite the way we envisioned.

There may be some more tweaking involved, but there are now two others who have enough experience to do the tweaking.  Life is good.  Now to get back to the digitization project.

Google has entered the tech support arena: http://www.teachparentstech.org/watch The short help videos are slick, and they’re appealing, at least to the target audience: a younger generation that is very tech savvy with parents or grandparents who are not.  One of my sons came across them and asked if I thought they would be helpful for his grandparents, who are in their 80′s.  I went to investigate.

The Tech Support care package is a set of quick videos intended to make using Google products easier.  It makes sense.  You have a product.  You do a market analysis.  Where can you expand? In technology, an obvious place to expand your market is the older adult population, which is the fastest growing segment of the population.  But there are problems with that market segment (see my Connecting the Disconnected series of posts, as well as the Computers, Older Adults, and Libraries page).  So Google, in a style very reminiscent of Apple, has created some help videos for basic computer tasks as well as for using Google products.  They are short (good idea), to the point (good idea), and friendly (good idea).  Some are good, some are fails.

The first issue is: how basic is “Basic”?  On the assumption that this is intended for someone who at least uses email (after all, the front page of the site is an invitation to email these helpful videos to the one you think needs them), how much existing knowledge does that presume?  Looking at the set of 6 basic videos, the following knowledge and skills are expected:

• How to use the mouse, including the right and left buttons (or right and left side of the mouse).
• How to click and drag
• What the various special function keys are (such as the Control Key or Command Key) and where they are .
• How to browse a computer’s file structure.
• What a computer file is, and what the different types of computer files are (such as jpg, pdf, docx)
• How to use email, including attaching files.

How reasonable are these expectations?  I fall back on the standard evasive answer:  That depends.   I have developed a lot of computer training and taught a lot of people how to use computers.  They have ranged in age from thirties to nineties.  They have had varying levels of computer skills across all ages (although, in general, the older they are, the less computer skills they have).  For those who had no experience with computers, my goal was to teach them how to use the internet, and how to use email.  Once they reached that level, I could teach them more advanced things like bookmarking web sites, basic computer skills and file structure, and sharing photos.  Some of these videos presume more skills than I did even for the next step beyond the new user level.  For example, files and file structure, and email attachments were elements in our more advanced user classes.

As an aside, Gmail was one of the email services we tested on the new user groups.  It did not work out well, because (1) Google kept changing the service and interface, and (2) it was too confusing for a typical older user to figure out.  I tried to contact Google about creating a user interface that would work for older adults.  Obviously, I didn’t get their attention.

So the videos really aren’t all that basic, except to technologists who find the featured tasks unbelievably mundane.  But how useful are they to their intended audience (the older adult who already has some computer skills)?  Again, it depends:

• How old is the recipient of the “Care” package?  The older the person is (generally, 55+), the more they need explicit instructions, using discete steps. The visuals are nice, but sometimes they move too fast and skip over steps.  Also, the language is often not explicit enough for an older adult.
• How experienced is that person with computers?  This question is actually tied to the next one.  Older adults do not tend to keep up with changes in technology as much as their children/grandchildren.  But generally, the more experience they have, the less difficulty they have learning new, related skills.
• What operating system, and what version of the operating system, is that person using?  Because older adults tend to not update their skills (learn why here), they are usually using an old computer and operating system (it was not uncommon to have students in my classes who were using Windows 98).  The changes from Windows 98/2000/xp to Win7 or OSX Snow Leopard are intimidating to an older adult (again, generally, 55+).  These videos assume the recipient will be comfortable using one of those operating systems.  That is a big assumption.

Bottom line: If the intended recipient of these cute care packages is under 55, and has some experience using a recent operating system, the videos will likely be both handy and useful. If the recipient is over 55 and/or is not using a recent operating system, a few of the videos would be useful:  How to Create a Strong Password, How to Know if an Email is Real, and most of the Search Information videos.  Also note, there are a lot more Mac-centric videos than Windows.

Would it work for my parents, in their 80′s, who have been using computers since the first Apples came out, and currently have Snow Leopard?  Actually, no.  They would have difficulty following most of them, and for the rest, they wouldn’t see the point.

In the not too distant past, I was manning the reference desk, listening to a man say he had to come to the library to use the computers because his laptop was so badly infested with viruses that he had to throw it away.

“You threw it away?” I asked, incredulously.

“Yeah, it’s worthless now.  I can’t use it.  I’m just going to throw it away.”

Realizing he hadn’t actually thrown it away yet, but was willing to, I glibly asked if he’d throw it my way.  He looked at me incredulously at the same time I realized there was probably some intervening ethics involved.  So I said, “Or, I could show you how to make it usable again so there will never be another virus on it.”

He was still incredulous.  I assured him it can be done.  He wanted to know what he could do for me.  I told him “Never tell anyone about this,” forming a mental image of what would happen if he went out and told all his friends, or worse, wrote to the director about what I’d done for him.

He came back a couple days later, but didn’t have the laptop with him.  I hooked him up with a copy of Keir Thomas’ Beginning Ubuntu Linux, and a newer version of the CD included in the book.  He was still somewhat incredulous.  He left the book, but promised to come back the next day with the laptop.  Unfortunately, I didn’t see him again after that. I’m still wondering whether the original story was true, or if my comments prompted him to find someone to clean up the laptop for him.

I’ve since left that job.  Sometimes I miss the interesting world of public libraries.

Somehow this post got lost in the drafts folder.  But since it’s an enduring topic, it’s still current.

A friend has some advice for library administrators:  The Top Ten Things Library Administrators Should Know About Technology.  It’s not a new subject, but it’s a topic that is being discussed openly more and more.   One gets the impression administrators are actually beginning to realize computer technology is not only not going to stand still, it is moving on at a dizzying pace that demands attention.

Now Roy Tennant is one of those icons in the library technology world who is worth listening to.  But technology geeks sometimes write in a language which makes the eyes of library administrators glaze over (been there, done that, got the T-shirt).  So I offer here a translation service for the first four items in Roy’s excellent post.

1. Technology isn’t as hard as you think it is.

The tools available for getting websites up and running are much easier than a few years ago, and it’s getting better each day.  Some things are still complicated (like writing software), but basic services don’t require that knowledge.

2. Technology gets easier all the time.

Installing special software used to be hard.  Today there are pre-packaged programs for complex software programs that make installation a snap.

3. Technology gets cheaper all the time.

Even if you pay a third party to store your web site and make it available on the Internet, the cost of what you can get today is much less than it was even a few years ago, and it keeps getting cheaper.

4. Maximize the effectiveness of your most costly technology investment — your people.

Hardware is cheap (all of it).  The expensive part of technology is knowledgeable staff.  Don’t make it harder for your expensive staff when the tools are so cheap by comparison.

The rest don’t need translating.

These really are points that need to be made again and again until administrators start feeling more comfortable with the technology side of library services.  The problem is, are any administrators listening?  Really listening?  Roy has a larger library audience than I have   Maybe there will be a few who will read and take heart, especially since LISnews posted it as news.