Tips for Code4Lib Outsiders and Newbies
Posted on 22. Feb, 2010 by matt in Conferences, Matt's Adventures and Musings
Today is the day for Code4Lib pre-conferences. Things are already roaring ahead. A couple of items have jumped to the foreground that might not be obvious to new arrivals or to people watching from afar.
Code4Lib Twitter List
There is a code4lib twitter list. This is an aggregation of all of the tweets by people who’ve listed themselves in the 2010 Twitter list page on the Code4Lib wiki.
The Channel
At Code4Lib, more than half of the conversation in the room actually happens in the #code4lib irc channel, aka “the channel”. If you see someone giggle at something on their computer screen, there’s a pretty solid chance that they’re either laughing at something on the channel or they’re about to post a link to it to the channel. If a presenter strikes a chord, positive or negative, you can see the murmurs come up in the channel. In short, if you’re not watching the channel, you’re missing most of the story.
In a way, as a rough rule of thumb, it’s like irc is where code4lib’s intra-conference chatter occurs while twitter is where people banter with the rest of the world.
Zoia & her new Twitter Feed
Zoia is the code4lib irc bot. She lives in the #code4lib irc channel listening for any posts that begin with ‘@’. If she recognizes the command, she will perform the associated function. If she does not recognize the command, she will lovingly mock you. Conveniently, this serves as a cute nudge to any twitter users who instinctively use @… to address other users. (the irc convention for addressing other users is to preface messages with the username and a colon – ie. “mediashelf :“)
As of 10:20am EST on the 22nd of February, Zoia has her own twitter account – bot4lib. People in the irc channel can command Zoia to post things on her twitter feed. It’s not quite hive mind, but it comes pretty close to hive voice. Who said hackers are individualists?