iConference 2012 | Professional Development Series

Contents


Overview

As a supplement to the academic program, we are pleased to offer a number of professional development discussion panels and workshops. These sessions are open to all registered participants at the conference. Note: All sessions will be held in the Carlton room.


Advancement/Development Panel
Reaching Out to Various Donors in Tough Economic Times

Time: Tuesday, February 7, 2:30pm-4:00pm

Organizer: Kathleen O'Brien, Communications & Development Officer, Faculty of Information, University of Toronto

Panelists: Dean Hughes, Executive Director, Annual and Leadership Giving, University of Toronto; Ania Lindenbergs, Senior Executive Director, Advancement Communications and Marketing, University of Toronto; Bill Simmons, Assistant Vice-President, University Development, University of Toronto

Description: These panelists are key players in the University of Toronto’s recently launched $2 billion capital campaign – the largest in Canadian fundraising history. Join the conversation as they discuss campaign strategies and the tools of advancement to keep donors and attract new ones.

Bill and Ania will discuss the time-honored marketing formula – AIDA (awareness, interest, desire, and action) – conceptualized by E. St. Elmo Lewis in 1898, and how it has a direct bearing on how we deploy the tools of advancement – communications, alumni relations, and development – particularly in the never-ending quest to bring new donors into our respective folds. Dean will follow up with the concepts and execution of the University’s Annual campaign.

On the heels of a recently launched $2 billion capital campaign – the largest in Canadian fundraising history – the panelists want to share strategies and time proven methods in an ever-changing fundraising environment, sometimes in an economic downtown. They will discuss how the conceptual cornerstones of marketing can work for professionals in advancement/development at any time.

Return to top


Next Generation Scholarly Discovery with Microsoft Academic Search

Time: Wednesday, February 8, 10:30am-12noon

Organizer: Lee Dirks, Microsoft Research Connections, Director, Portfolio Strategy

Description: In this and the related session (below), participants will learn about two cloud technologies from Microsoft Research and academic partners that will help better support academic researchers and professors around the world. Learn about two freely available cloud services and how they can help you do your work easier, better and differently.

Microsoft Academic Search (MAS) is a freely available web service from Microsoft Research that provides academic researchers worldwide with easy-to-use tools to find, organize, and share information about papers, people, journals, conferences, and research organizations. The service is built from the data extracted from millions of papers across multiple domains and it enables users to search, navigate, pivot, filter, and visualize the content, as well as to edit the underlying data. This special session will provide a demonstration of some of the novel features that have recently been added to the search engine and will.

Participants in this session will gain an understanding of the Microsoft Academic Search service as a tool for enhancing researchers comprehension of the published scholarly literature, the relationships that exist between authors, papers, and organizations within a research domain. Furthermore, the underlying data are available via an open application programming interface (API), and this session will provide a demonstration of how this data may be used to develop new applications and as a platform for teaching concepts such as bibliometrics and social network analysis. Finally, the session will demonstrate Microsoft Academic Search’s ranking features to evaluate the top papers, journals, authors, conferences and authors within each domain, and will invite the attendees to engage with us in a dialogue about how impact and influence could be better demonstrated beyond the current citation analysis and impact factor metrics.

Return to top


Providing a dynamic cloud services for information sciences, ChronoZoom

Time: Wednesday, February 8, 3:30pm-5:00pm

Organizers: Rane Johnson-Stempson, Microsoft Research Connections, Principal Research Director; Roland Saekow, UC Berkeley Geology, Research Assistant

Description: In this and the related session (above), participants will learn about two cloud technologies from Microsoft Research and academic partners that will help better support academic researchers and professors around the world. Learn about two freely available cloud services and how they can help you do your work easier, better and differently.

ChronoZoom: Big History is the attempt to understand, in a unified and interdisciplinary way, the history of the Cosmos, Earth, Life and Humanity. Big history invites scholars of the humanities and scientists from field like geology, paleontology, evolution, biology, astronomy and cosmology to work together in developing the broadest possible view of the past. ChronoZoom 2.0 is a partnership with Microsoft Research, University California at Berkeley, International Big History Association, UNESCO and a core group of professors/researchers from around the world. It is focused on providing a dynamic, interactive cloud based data visualization tool for Big History. When completed, this project will be online and freely available to anyone interested in using it as an educator, a student and/or a researcher. The vision is to enable innovative ways of teaching Big History and empower interdisciplinary research. In this session, learn about the tool and the collaboration. Have an opportunity to create your own timeline and understand better how your ischool can get involved in helping us build out the tool and bring your content and data visualization to life. Give real-time feedback to influence the next version, this tool will be freely available and open sourced for the public usage.

Return to top


An Insider's Guide to Publishing with Impact: Insights from Emerald

Time: Wednesday, February 8, 1:30pm-3:00pm

Organizers: Dr. James H. Walther, US Publishing Adviser, Emerald Group Publishing, Inc.; Professor Michael Seadle, Dean, Faculty of Arts I and Director, Berlin School of Library and Information Science, Humboldt Universitat zu Berlin, Berlin, Germany, "Library Hi Tech” Editor

Abstract: The goals and outcomes of the event surround providing participants with tips on publishing strategies in the Library and Information Science literature and beyond. Because the delegates of the conference may be more deeply interested in other information architecture and organizational issues of the Emerald database, time can be spent on emerging trends in the adaptation and implementation of structured abstracts, List Assist, eBooks and subject collections and librarian and library school resources. Website: www.emeraldinsight.com

Learning outcomes include:

  • Background information on Emerald as a global publisher
  • What being published means to the author
  • Who is involved throughout the process
  • Advice for authors on preparing and submitting articles (trends and success strategies)
  • The review process in detail (critical trends to address)
  • How to get further involved with a publisher beyond writing
  • Trends and needs in LIS book series publishing and stand-alone titles
  • Overview of the “Structured Abstracts”, advantages and changes
  • Demonstration of List Assist and how to get involved with future bibliographic projects at Emerald
  • Presentation of resources of interest to librarians and information professionals, library school faculty and students (e.g. how library and iSchool curriculum could inform future professionals in their writing)

Return to top


Marketing Panel
Best Practices: Recruiting Prospective Students

Time: Thursday, February 9, 8:30am-10:00am

Organizer: Kathleen O'Brien, Communications & Development Officer, Faculty of Information, University of Toronto

Panelists: Richard Levin, Executive Director, Enrolment Services, Admissions and Awards, University of Toronto; Barbara Rodezno, Marketing Manager, University of Toronto

Description: Join the conversation as these panelists from the University of Toronto discuss a number of key elements essential for strategic and successful student recruitment planning and execution. Each panelist will discuss the strategy behind their marketing and student recruitment campaign. Richard will focus on the ‘Aligned Recruitment Strategy’ they developed for first entry divisions, including a number of key elements to student recruitment planning and execution. Barb will discuss U of T’s first ever integrated online ad campaign for prospective undergraduate students, and touch on the University’s fundraising campaign.

With many years of marketing experience, these panelists will share time-proven methodologies and theory with practice. In short, they know what works, and will share their knowledge and successes, while looking forward to hearing others’ experience recruiting students.

Return to top


Building the Future iSchools: Visioning, Diversity and i3

Time: Thursday, February 9, 1:30pm-3:00pm

Organizers: James ‘Kip’ Currier, Assistant Professor & i3 Co-Principal Investigator, University of Pittsburgh, School of Information Sciences; Michael Depew, Director, iSchool Inclusion Institute (i3), University of Pittsburgh, School of Information Sciences; Courtney Loder MLIS Graduate Student & Research Assistant, University of Pittsburgh, School of Information Sciences

Description: Building the Future iSchools will be a highly interactive event that encourages continued audience participation. The format of the event will be a mix of presentation and discussion, including brainstorming exercises and an outline of visioning processes. Audience members will engage one another in an abbreviated visioning process to design an iSchool of the future, providing ideas and suggestions from their personal and professional experiences. In the second portion of Building the Future iSchools, panelists will discuss the concept of ‘manufactured diversity’ in regards to academic and non-academic organizations. Audience members will be asked to analyze and judge existing organizational diversity statements. Panelists will then reveal which organizations have received high rankings for diversity and inclusion efforts according to credible diversity-related institutions. Additional discussion will highlight the linkages between diversity and the iSchools, prompting the audience to consider why the iSchools are uniquely suited to serve as the academic champions of diversity. The final portion of the event will be used to introduce the iSchool Inclusion Institute (i3). Panelists will outline the program’s goals, objectives, and progress to date. Program benefits such as increased domestic recruitment and diversity among student and faculty populations will be discussed. Among other notable long-term benefits, panelists will discuss how i3 seeks to build mutual respect between academic programs within iSchools and improve financial stability of applicant pools. Current i3 Scholars will be in attendance to expand upon their experiences and offer their insights and perception of the iSchools and the information field. Website: www.ischool-inclusion.org

Return to top


School Services Roundtable Discussion
Helping iSchool prospects, applicant, students, and graduates speak cogently about the iSchool concept

Time: Thursday, February 9, 3:30pm-5:00 pm

Organizer: Wesley Lipschultz, Manager of Student Services, the iSchool at the University of Pittsburgh

Description: Central to the vision and goals of the iSchool Caucus is the idea that member schools have a “collective identity” that evangelizes the “purpose and value” of the information field with a momentum that does not recede until “the iSchool Movement has spread around the world, and the information field is widely recognized for creating innovative systems and designing information solutions that benefit individuals, organizations, and society.” Over the last five years, the University of Pittsburgh has seen a growing stream of interest in the variety of disciplines of which our iSchool is comprised, yet a recent informal survey of our current undergraduate and graduate students revealed that less than 10 out of 100 respondents could offer a viable definition of what an iSchool is.

The purpose of this 90 minute roundtable discussion is to initiate an ongoing collaboration between administrators at the iSchools to develop common communications and strategies to effectively convey our collective identity and the purpose and value of the information field to prospects, applicants, students, and alumni/ae.

The output of the roundtable will be shared in a wiki which will then serve as an ongoing shared forum to help Caucus members to:

  • begin to actively recruit new students based directly on the iSchool concept (as opposed to recruiting students for disciplines that happen to fall within an iSchool)
  • teach students about the iSchool concept outside of the classroom (at orientation, through informal discussion groups, brown bag lunches, etc.)
  • provide new graduates with iSchool concept talking points to share as they begin to develop their professional identities
  • grow a base of alumni/ae who identify with the iSchool concept.

Return to top


Communications Panel
Branding and Communicating Strengths with Media: Individual vs. iSchool Caucus

Time: Friday, February 10, 1:30pm-3:00 pm

Organizer: Kathleen O'Brien, Communications & Development Officer, Faculty of Information, University of Toronto

Return to top

Panelists: Michael Kurts, Assistant Vice-President, Strategic Communications and Marketing, University of Toronto; Laurie Stephens, Director, News and Media Relations, University of Toronto

Description: Join the conversation as these panelists from the University of Toronto discuss various ways that strengthened the U of T brand through strategic positioning of stories and research with the media, garnering millions of impressions and worldwide media attention. For example, get the scoop on how the media team pitched a newly discovered prehistoric snake by comparing it to the size of a bus, which resulting in major media coverage. They also advised Ron Diebert (who is a keynote speaker at the iconference) to hold a webcast press conference to manage international media interest around his study on cyber spying, which generated more than 2,500 stories worldwide.

Get an inside look into how the Media Relations team positions stories, gets coverage, and tries to ensure each faculty stands out on its own, while enhancing U of T’s brand and world-wide reputation.