I get to go to DTIC, yay!
I'm so excited - I love
DTIC - the folks who work there do a great job and provide a valuable service. They have an annual conference, but usually other people from MPOW go as their only conference and I don't go because I go to SLA and ASIST. I hang out with a bunch of military librarians at SLA, and I know they're disappointed that I don't attend the DTIC conference, so this will be a chance to catch up with them, too, and learn more about what's going on right now.
Susan Fingerman and I are going to be presenting Wednesday morning, from 9am-10am in one of the breakout sessions. Here's our blurb:
Online communities, specifically, Communities of Practice, are a key tool in support of information sharing. But they are not “fire and forget.” For a community to be successful and provide sufficient return on investment, it has to be carefully and thoughtfully designed and maintained. Further, when designing communities intended for scientists and engineers, it is important to take into account the research on information and communication behaviors of these groups. In this session Christina K. Pikas will discuss the information behavior of scientists and engineers, good practices for online community design. Susan Fingerman will discuss practical concepts relating to the design of Communities of Practice within an organization, and provide some real-life examples from her work at The Johns Hopkins University Applied Physics Laboratory.
If you want to go, looks like you can still register. The plenary sessions on Monday and Tuesday look awesome, but I have to catch up on work so I'll only be there Wednesday.