Spatulas 2.0

So, I was all proud of myself for adding my name to the list of people who would be blogging at Internet Librarian 2007. Not just proud. Kind of smug, actually. Apparently there's something called Blogger’s Alley in the Exhibit Hall. I could just see myself pithily commenting on the morning's events, linking away to PowerPoint presentations. Like Roz Russell in His Girl Friday with a laptop and a latte.

Then my friend Liz, sensing my smugness from states away, forwarded me an email from Good Experience called "The Web 2.0 question - and Grandparents.com." In the article, Mark Hurst reminds us that just because we can do something doesn't mean we always should do something. He cites his experience with focus groups for grandparents.com,

Perhaps more importantly, we learned what the customers do not want, saving the company from making needless investments of time and money in the wrong features. For example, I won't give the store away by revealing that grandparents are not sprinting to set up blogs. Nor are they prone to tag photos and bookmarks.

Did I hop on the 2.0 train without even looking at the schedule? What scared me even more than realizing how easy it is to get off track by something shiny, was the fear that I'd just spent a week bragging about my new 2.0 spatula. Hurst's article explains.

I should note that many companies face some version of "the Web 2.0 question" right now. Everyone these days seems to want to build social networking into their business. I've recently observed a number of well-established e-commerce sites change their strategy from merchandising and selling products to "connecting customers with each other"... as though buying spatulas (or whatever) gets better after you create a buddy-list of fellow spatula lovers. Some sites should stick to what they know.

Do you see now why I'm just a bit more humble about my 5 blog posts? My emerging insights into the impact of customer-driven change on libraries aren't exactly going to set the blogospehere on fire. (Yet.) But I am a librarian. And I am going to go learn about things that are already impacting libraries across the country. And the last thing I'm going to want to do when I get back to work is type up all my notes, wonder why I wrote "lunch sad" on my handout, and then tell my coworkers to check out my conference report on the s:// drive!

So come on guys, check out my spatula.