Some numbers:
· 4,011 Flickr pictures (http://www.flickr.com/search/?q=ala2009&w=all)
· A Google Blogsearch says there are about 14,000 posts using the tag ala2009, but that’s not really right (http://blogsearch.google.com/blogsearch?hl=en&ie=UTF-8&q=ala2009&btnG=Search+Blogs) because it includes the Flickr pictures, comments on blogs, etc. Unfortunately, it’s impossible to get an exact count. If I had to guess, I’d say that most of the posts are recaps of someone’s conference experience, followed closely by summaries of sessions, and links to presentation materials (in that order). Some samples:
o ALA 2009: A Perspective - http://yolaleah.wordpress.com/2009/07/20/ala-2009-a-perspective/
o ALA 2009 Wrap-Up (Warning: It’s LONG) - http://bedtimebooktalks.blogspot.com/2009/07/ala-2009-wrap-up-warning-its-long.html
o Displaced at ALA Annual - http://wpmuhosting.com/displaced-at-ala-annual
o ALA lesson #2: The Power of Teh Intarwebs - http://notemilybookblog.tumblr.com/post/146623422/ala-lesson-2-the-power-of-teh-intarwebs
· 10,362 tweets using the #ala2009 tag by 1,321 authors (including the ALA Annual account and other ALA units)
o Specific statistics for Twitter:
§ tweets before: 765
§ tweets thu: 680
§ tweets fri: 1380
§ tweets sat: 2390
§ tweets sun: 2250
§ tweets mon: 1725
§ tweets tue: 589
§ tweets after: 583 (7/15-24, although tweets continue to appear so this number will still increase a little)
§ by tag:
· #ala2009 – 8517 (this was the main hashtag that we asked people to use)
· #ala09 - 415
· #alacouncil - 82
· #membership - 39
· #totebag – 265 (an unofficial snark channel)
· #unala2009 – 450 (the unconference)
· #acrl101 - 22
· #ala09_is – 8 (ACRL Instruction Section)
· #ala2prom – 26 (Library 2.0 session)
· #lib2.0 – 118 (Library 2.0 session)
· #ttt2009 – 35 (LITA’s Top Tech Trends)
· #toptech – 43 (LITA’s Top Tech Trends)
· #bigwig2009 – 13
· #clene09 - 10
· #clenets09 - 6
· #godort09 - 3
· #mobile_lib – 50 (WO panel)
· #rusaht – 6 (RUSA Hot Topics session)
o The reason I can give you such specific stats about the tweets is that ALA member Heather Devine offered to create an online Flickr/Twitter tracker for the conference a couple of weeks before the event. She finished it just a couple of days before Annual started, having done most of the work while she was on vacation. You can see it still running at http://www.flexyourinfo.com/projects/ALA2009/, and she’s going to give us the code and database so that we can 1) archive it, and 2) implement this for other conferences in the future. I can’t begin to describe how lucky we are that Heather did this, because there’s no good way to archive tweets right now, and we don’t have the resources to create this ourselves. The site got a lot of notice and a lot of hits during Annual, with Roy Tennant in particular noting it at http://www.libraryjournal.com/blog/1090000309/post/1110046911.html. I’d like to request that ALA to send Heather a letter of thanks if possible for this herculean and incredibly valuable effort.
o LJ very smartly did a daily recap of what they considered to be the “best” tweets of the day. Reading through them gives an excellent overview of the conference.
§ Saturday - http://www.libraryjournal.com/article/CA6670399.html
§ Sunday - http://www.libraryjournal.com/article/CA6670525.html
§ Monday - http://www.libraryjournal.com/article/CA6670879.html
§ Eric Hellman did an analysis of the ala2009 hashtag - http://go-to-hellman.blogspot.com/2009/07/twittering-librarians-confront.html
§ Then there was the interesting, but relatively harmless, appearance of the anonymous alasecrets (http://twitter.com/alasecrets) and alasecrets2009 (http://twitter.com/alasecrets2009) accounts on Twitter. While they were discussed, retweeted, and linked to online, those tweets didn’t spill over very much into the mainstream hashtag, and in fact, it allowed the really nasty stuff to stay out of the ala2009 space, which was good for us. One media blog picked up on it and noted it at http://www.washingtoncitypaper.com/blogs/sexist/2009/07/13/library-conference-secret-twitter-feed-proves-librarians-sexy-stern/, but that was about it. Someone shut down the original alasecrets account when it devolved into sex talk, but others had saved the tweets and posted them at http://www.scribd.com/doc/17344326/Library, and the alasecrets2009 account took over where the other one left off. LJ did an interview with the anonymous originator of both accounts at http://www.libraryjournal.com/article/CA6671858.html.
· According to Boopsie, more than 1500 people downloaded their ALA2009 application (http://boopsieinc.blogspot.com/2009/07/thank-you-ala-2009.html). I’m unclear if this figure includes people like me who accessed it on the web (Deidre, maybe you can get some clarification on that?) It garnered a lot of praise online, with a couple of people tweeting that it helped them find a session when they didn’t know where it was.
· There are also a ton of great videos on YouTube from the conference, including several of the book cart drill teams and a wonderful fake fight between Neil Gaiman and James Kennedy for the Newbery Award (http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=pAvkmkFIf24).
Some overall impressions:
- Vendors were a lot more visible online this year, and they interacted directly with attendees and online watchers.
- Online communication was an essential part of the conference experience for a larger (and growing) number of attendees. Several people again tweeted appreciation for Councilors who posted updates from the floor, and a lot of folks tweeted that they wished they could have attended. I’d say online posts and tweets about the conference were overwhelmingly positive, with only about 10-15% of them being negative, complaining, or reporting problems. The biggest gripes were 1) the lack of wireless at the hotels (although everyone did understand why), and 2) how slow the shuttles ran, making the trip between hotels and the convention center excruciatingly long (although again, folks were appreciative that Gale provided this service). When folks were snarky, in general they didn’t name names, which was a relief, and when I’d respond with an explanation, they were generally appreciative.
- Twitter acted as an announcement service, troubleshooting venue, and interactive platform for us. I think I probably read about 6,000 of the 10,362 tweets in real-time. In the future, though, we’ll need to discuss how to manage that flow and respond, as it will no longer be feasible for one person, especially someone participating in the conference, to manage that. I might be able to do this again for Midwinter since it’s smaller, but Annual is likely to be an even bigger problem. I helped resolve three separate housing issues alone because of Twitter, so we really need to consider how we’ll integrate customer service or conference services in the future.
- Overall, conversation has moved from blogs to Twitter and a lot of it takes place in real-time, which means we need to adjust how we monitor these things. For example, I knew about the alasecrets account on Friday when it started, but PIO didn’t find out about it until Sunday when one of their staff members got a notice about the blog post via a Google email alert.
- Neil Gaiman was *huge* for us. I would guess that a discernible number of people came just to see him, his signing lines were long, and his sessions created an enormous amount of buzz online. If there’s any way to have him again next year, especially as a keynote speaker, I think it would continue to be a boost for us. His tweets about librarians were also great, and he interacted with a lot of attendees that way during the conference, which further raised the visibility of his appearances at Annual.
John Chrastka should have stats from the Text-a-Librarian service, and Greg Landgraf should have numbers of views to date for AL Focus videos about Annual. Unfortunately, there’s really no way to know how much activity took place on Facebook, although I know there were lots of status updates and group posts.
Let me know if you have questions about any of this.
Jenny
No comments:
Post a Comment