I went to the Library APIs Breakout session today. It turned into a talk about Talis & their products & business practices. It was pretty neat

Rob Styles (of Talis) went off on a pretty neat tangent/analogy. Rob introduced us to his 3 children.

His 18 month old son is at a stage in his life where he will willingly give away anything. He goes around the house and finds things to give to others - if you ask for something he will hand it right over. He has no concept of ownership.

His 4 year old daughter is the complete opposite. She feels that everything that’s hers is hers alone. She doesn’t share and doesn’t like other people to touch her things. She has put up a wall around her stuff and stores it away from others.

Lastly, his 7 year old son knows that if he has 2 toy cars and gives one to a friend he can have much more fun than if he keeps it to himself. He understands that while he’s letting his friend use his car - it’s still his car - it’s just more fun when you share with others. At the same time he can go outside and race bikes with his friends - he knows it’s a competition, but 5 minutes later he can come inside and play and have fun.

The library vendor world is like the 4 year old. It’s an “it’s mine” world. Talis feels that it should be a 7 year old world - this is why they share their APIs and software with others. We should be able to share with our competition - because it’s no fun if we’re playing alone. The models are changing and people are realizing that they can have much more fun if they share. Web 2.0 - Creative Commons - it’s all about sharing!!

What a neat idea. I know it doesn’t have much to do with the topic at hand (Library APIs), but it was the best part of the breakout (basically because I hadn’t used any of the APIs that everyone was talking about).

[update] added picture from similar lightening talk [/update]

[update2] Watch the Lightening Talk [/update2]

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For some silly reason I thought it would be okay to record today’s session on the lowest quality - now I’m having trouble hearing them. I’ll try and get some coherent summary posts up - but I apologize to all speakers in advance if I miss an important point or don’t get it quite right - I’m lost without my recordings!!

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First of all - my teammate at Jenkins said it sounds like geek heaven We have a room with tables where we can plug our laptops in - and have free access to wireless - with special extended rights!! But you all aren’t reading so you can be jealous You’re reading to hear about the sessions.

Today’s keynote was great - and I’ll write up my summary tonight. The rest of the sessions were great too - but a bit over my head - I’m not sure how to summarize what I learned. I am feeling a bit overwhelmed right now - hopefully something will start to click soon.

Technorati Tags: code4lib, code4lib2007