Week 8

  There is not as much to report this week. I completed my report on mobile technology earlier in the week and placed it into my site supervisor's dropbox. I did receive some positive feedback from my site supervisor through email, and she said she skimmed through the report and that it looked "most impressive." She also stated that she will take a closer look at it during the weekend, and if she has any problems or wants me to make a few changes, I will gladly do so. I feel quite good about the report as I followed her instructions as closely as possible by putting it in the correct format, such as starting out with a title page, and then continuing with a table of contents, introduction, observation and analysis, conclusion, and bibliography with all 96 blog posts I examined for the report. Furthermore, my observations section was done in the way she wanted in that I wrote about topics on mobile technology that was relevant to the blogs such as mobile trends, how mobile technology can change the relationship between customers and businesses, children, the Internet, education, and so forth. I focused on how mobile technology can create positive changes for businesses and their customers, but I did not ignore the negative aspects of mobile technology such as how it deepens social problems for people such as the issue concerning cyber bullying, or how it can cause techno stress.

  I believe I learned a lot about how companies can improve their relationship with consumers through mobile technology, and also about all the mobile advancements that have made significant changes for businesses and the lives of consumers. Hopefully, my site supervisor will give me more feedback about the report by Monday.

Week 7: Continuing To Work On My Mobile Report

  I worked independently this week on my mobile report for The Association of Virtual Worlds. I have not had contact with my site supervisor since last weekend, so perhaps she has been too busy to check on my progress; although she gave me up to a month to complete the report, and there are two more weeks left according to the time she gave me to finish it. Actually, I think I have adapted quite well as an independent worker and without much supervision. I feel I have done well working on my own, and perhaps that is because of years of experience as a college student. Library and Information Science is my third degree and second masters, and the work I have done for The Association of Virtual Worlds is very much like the work I have done before in college, certainly in this library science program. So perhaps I don't feel I need constant supervision. I also trust that my site supervisor will in fact contact me soon to check on my progress, and I can easily contact her at any time if I have questions even though she is busy.
 
I have collected and put together 96 of her blog posts about mobile technology dating from September 1, 2011 to February 21, 2012, and have done an analysis on many of them. I have observed and analyzed new mobile technologies and discussed how businesses and their customers can use them. My report informs them on how other industries have used new mobile technologies, and have given them ideas on how they can use these technologies to improve their business and relations with their customers.
 
Although I have not been a heavy user of mobile technologies, and only use my cell phone at the most important times rather than constantly, I am certainly learning a lot of new things about mobile technologies and all the interesting ways they are being used between companies and their customers. It is kind of a new language to me, but I have tried understanding these technologies the best I can do. 

Week 6

  This week, I started work on my mobile technology report for The Association of Virtual Worlds. The purpose of this report is to inform businesses and consumers about the recent state of mobile technologies and how they can benefit from using them. A big part of this report focuses on how businesses can use mobile technologies to not only survive economically, but to compete with one another for both consumers and skills in using the latest mobile technologies.

  I find the report challenging because it focuses on business, which I know nothing about. My first two college degrees were in history, so I have no training in business. I am literally writing about how businesses should think, develop mobile skills, compete in the workplace, survive economically, attract consumers and develop working relationships with them, and how certain mobile and Internet technologies can be used by them to benefit their business as well as their consumers. If I had majored in business, I could have probably written more interesting things about how companies can successfully compete economically, learn new technologies, and understand consumers. All I can do is try the best to understand these mobile technologies and how they may benefit companies and their customers.

  This report is intended for businesses, but I am hoping it can simply get them interested in new mobile technologies. I doubt my report will give them a full understanding on how mobile technology can affect them in the current economic, business, and technological climate.

Starting a New Assignment

  This past week I did my final transcription of an interview, and started my new project. The final interview I transcribed was one where my supervisor interviewed Hiten Shah who has done Internet marketing work. Shah discussed social media, but argued that the term is outdated. He stated that what is important is how Facebook or Google search results can reveal much about human psychology and behavior. The fact that the Internet allows us to socialize is less important than how the Internet, through what is normally called social media, can show and teach us much about human beings and how they behave. I think Shah was arguing that the Internet perfectly mimics how people behave in the real physical world. In other words, people often behave on the Internet the way they do in the physical world. Perhaps that is true on Twitter and Facebook as people interact with friends, family, and some well known Internet personalities they follow. But I do not think it is entirely true on many Internet message boards where strangers communicate and behave in ways they may not in the real physical world (such as going on the Internet Movie Database and making racist or sexist remarks they may not towards people they speak to face to face). Nevertheless, librarians could use Facebook and Twitter to learn about the people they serve and how to meet their information needs.

  The new project I started this week is a report on mobile technology, which is designed to inform members of The Association of Virtual Worlds about mobile trends, and any news related to mobile technology. So far I have cut and pasted into a Microsoft Word Document all my supervisor's blog posts about mobile technology. In the next couple of weeks, I will be doing an observation and analysis of all the major mobile trends, and will do a conclusion and support it with references to the blog posts.

Week 4

  This was the final week of transcribing interviews. The purpose of transcribing interviews was to give me an understanding of virtual worlds, the virtual worlds industry, mobile technology, 3D immersive technology, and the general purpose of The Association of Virtual Worlds.

  This past week I have transcribed interviews with June Herold who discussed how younger business people can help introduce virtual technology to midsize companies, and Jessica Butcher who discussed how to help customers and businesses gain a greater understanding of new technologies. Basically, they focused on how to introduce new technologies to not only businesses and their customers, but to our culture. The interviews remind us that we have much work to do with introducing new technologies to information professionals and libraries.

  Next week, I will learn about how the news aspect of The Association of Virtual Worlds works, and will be putting together news related blogs for their customers.

Update for Week 3

  With the exception of a couple more interviews to transcribe, I am almost reaching a new level in the internship for The Association of Virtual Worlds. Later in the week, or perhaps the following week, my job will be to collect and put together blogs written by members of the Association. I will be putting them together in a particular order, most likely by date; although my supervisor will explain more about this task during our next telephone meeting.
 
The two interviews I transcribed this past week were more on the corporate perspective. One was an interview with Matthew Warneford who specializes in virtual products that will help companies market, advertise, and promote their business. The other interview was with Scott Kellner who has helped companies set up virtual environments to enable people to have live chats and forums with professionals, to help people learn about foreign or third world cultures such as those in Africa, and to allow business professionals like sales people get together and learn about new products. Warneford and Kellner in other words, help companies set up virtual environments so they can become knowledgeable and skilled in the latest products, and thus be competitive in the workplace.
 
I do like the idea of libraries using virtual environments to allow librarians to communicate and collaborate with the public, and also librarians using virtual environments to work together on all aspects of their business from discussing and creating library policies to collection development. I worry, however, that many libraries may not have the budgets for virtual environments. In these harder economic times, libraries have more important things to worry about such as developing and managing their collections, meeting the specific needs of the communities they serve as inexpensively as possible, struggling to hold onto their staffs considering all the layoffs that have occurred in recent years, and maintaining an environment and facilities that are user friendly and enable the public to easily navigate through the library and find the information that meets their needs.

Christopher Zeidel- February 10, 2012

Blog Post for Week 2

  My supervisor, another intern, and myself had a telephone conference at the start of the week. The conference was meant to discuss the week's assignments, in which I was given the assignments to transcribe two more interviews for an upcoming book by The Association of Virtual Worlds, and a brief discussion about what we interns are hoping to learn from this internship, and why we wanted to intern for the Association of Virtual Worlds. I wanted to intern for this organization because libraries can use virtual worlds, 3D technology, and all technologies discussed in the two interviews I transcribed during Week 2 to connect with the populace.

  The two interviews I transcribed were one where my supervisor interviewed Brenda Young, and the other in which my supervisor interviewed Al Caudullo. The Brenda Young interview was about how to integrate technological innovations into corporate business, and the Al Caudullo interview focused on how to integrate 3D technology into business.
 
  Brenda Young has a company called The Marvay Group, and she does consulting in marketing, social media, strategy development, and innovation incorporation. Her argument is that companies, or anyone, need to embrace mobile technology to get ahead in the world such as using smart phones and IPads to communicate with their customers and work with others within their companies or organizations.

  Al Caudullo makes 3D documentaries and argues that companies should use 3D technology to give customers ideas and feelings about how things work. For example, a restaurant could allow people to view 3D versions of whatever food is on their menu to simply get them interested in the food and give them appetites for it. At one point during the interview, Caudullo described an incident in which people in Bangkok's Chinatown District viewed 3D images of fish, and developed cravings for real fish. Another example would be that apartment owners could give people 3D tours of apartments so they know what the apartments look like inside before deciding to move into them.

  I imagine that librarians could give people 3D tours of a library's collection and space, so they know whether or not the library will meet their information needs. Furthermore, librarians could connect with library users and other librarians through mobile technology to strengthen a library's place within the community. Library's are of course using this technology, so I find interning for the Association useful since it is most likely that I and future interns will have to use such technology as librarians; assuming that libraries can fit 3D technology into their budgets.

Christopher Zeidel, February 4, 2012