ulo.tricho.us

John’s brilliant post skipped over a critical gulf-spanning technique, one that I would have thought he would have included, as he has personal experience with the approach:

Make a movie.

One of the challenges IT departments can face as they grow, especially in the library world, is muggle staff not understanding what all those geeks actually do. Often, the borders of IT responsibility could make a gerrymanderer blush, and since most IT work is done in our dank recesses, far below the hustle and bustle of the patron-filled surface world, delivering a clear understanding of who does what can be complicated by the fact that some staff may not know who these people are that, summoned by a submit button, emerge, blinking, only to immediately disappear under the table. That leads to unfamiliarity, and you know what they say about unfamiliarity: it breeds discontent. Wait, that’s not right. But it sounds good.

So, to address this unfamiliarity, we produced the IAS Television Showcase (quicktime) in the Fall of 2002, to be shown at our annual staff day. While it was intended to give a little information about what we do, I really hoped that it would help the rest of the staff feel more personally familiar with all of us. We shot it on a Friday, and I edited it over the weekend, getting a precious copy rendered and printed to tape just in time for the opening bagels Monday morning. I remember that we were missing a cable we needed when it was time for the premiere (first thing after lunch), so we had to tie a dv camera to the pole above the projector. We couldn’t find the remote for the camera, so I introduced the movie, and then stood on a chair to push play and roll the tape. Sort of a live juryrigging demonstration, if you will.

The audience loved it, and I think it really did help them know us a little bit better. That was a long time ago already, and it’s amazing how much things have changed since then. Just seeing the server room during Joe Harris’ System Spec, or some of the hot new acronyms showcased in Modern Major Geekerel, makes me slightly damp with nostalgia. The gadget rundown, somewhat obscure then, looks positively archaic now. We should do Television Showcase 2.0. I should also find the DV tape that has the finished version and capture a better copy, as Premiere eating the source file for this project was one of my last straws with Windows.

While something like this will take a little time to produce, the potential return on your time is probably far better than even the most productive bilateral committee meeting. Plus, it’s fun. Libraries should be fun. Enjoy!