I think the presentation went really well yesterday! A crazy number of people showed up — 120 at one point. So of course with that many people, the co-browsing didn’t work and I think we may have hurt a few servers trying to all hit them at once, but I was able to talk about what wikis are, how they can be used by librarians and what to consider before starting a wiki of your own. If you’re interested, there’s an archive of my talk (in MP3 and WMA) and the text chat here on OPAL’s site. Also, my presentation slides are located here on my wiki.

I haven’t done a lot of public speaking. It’s something that gives me a lot of anxiety (I usually feel like Albert Brooks in Broadcast News when I have to speak to groups of people). But in spite of the sweating and the rapid heartbeat, I really enjoyed doing it! It was great to be able to offer useful information to interested people. A lot of people came into that presentation knowing nothing about wikis and I’ve got all this information stuck up in my head, so I should share it, even if it makes me a little anxious. It feels good to be useful like that. I never really used to think I had much to offer other people in the profession, but blogging has changed that for me. If I felt that way, there are probably lots of other people filled with useful knowledge who don’t realize how much they could help other people by sharing that knowledge. Even if it’s scary to get up in front of other people (or even to give a talk from your office!) DO IT! You could really make a difference for other people in your profession.

Oh, and to the woman who asked for practical advice on how to edit wikis, I’m working on it. I don’t know if any articles like that exist, but I’ll try to find one. If I do, it’ll be in the further reading section of the wiki presentation. 🙂

It’s just nice to see that so many people are interested in wikis!