EDITORIAL
Quotables
by Dick Kaser
Time does not always permit me to report fully on all the highlights of the meetings that I have attended and the people who I have interviewed between editions. This month, I would like to share some notable notes from my travels and encounters in recent weeks.
On Enterprise Empowerment
“To be successful, organizations need to take a different approach: one that considers information as a critical business asset not as an afterthought. Those organizations that are able to achieve this transformation will consolidate their market position and weather the current economic storm better than those who don’t.”
— Ramesh Harji, head of information exploitation at Capgemini UK, during a speech at Enterprise Search Summit in New York
On User Engagement
“To optimize the user experience, you must consider all things that come to bear when the user interacts with the system: utility, aesthetics, findability, usability. … Web analysts are good at crunching numbers but not so good at making decisions not directly derived from the data. There is a gap between the data folks and the usability folks. … CM managers need to be user experience designers.”
— Lou Rosenfeld, information architecture expert and founder of Rosenfeld Media, during a speech at the J. Boye Conference in Philadelphia
On Extended Reach
“Big Media gets it. Housing videos on any site is great. But you need to get them to places where people are. … Facebook, Twitter … half a billion people use those services every month.”
— Alex Calic, vice president of network development at Clearspring Technologies, Inc., during a speech at the New York Video Meetup
On Personal Boundaries
“Because I’m a public figure I’ve had to draw the line. I’ve been very reluctant to go with social sites. I have no objections to them. But you have to draw your personal line, if you want to preserve some semblance of privacy.”
— Retired Gen. Colin Powell, former U.S. secretary of state, during a speech at the SLA Conference 2009
On Why Librarians Are Hot
“We keep reading librarianship is the hot career, but then people are losing their jobs. Where does this come from? So, we need to make these jobs so hot that every organization wants one. You’ve got to have an information professional.”
— Gloria Zamora, SLA president, during a private interview at SLA 2009
You can find more recent highlights on our editors’ blog at www.infotodayblog.com. Join us there during July for coverage of the ALA convention in Chicago. |
