Collective intelligence
Well, finally back from ALISE in Boston. This time was much better than my only previous ALISE in Boston, which was very stressful because of my last-minute decision to job hunt while I was there as a Garfield dissertation award winner. So this year, since I was neither recruiting nor being recruited (except that as a member of our search committee, I was casually talking to people who might be interested in becoming our new director at Oklahoma when Kathy Latrobe steps down next fall), I could relax and enjoy hearing the brilliant Tom Malone from MIT talk about the “genes” for collective intelligence, have fun with Scott Nicholson’s account of “the game” of becoming a global YouTube celebrity, see some fascinating posters (especially those by doctoral students of Howard Rosenbaum and Barbara Kwasnik, as they both tie loosely into my own research areas, so I was delighted to see exciting new work), chat briefly with several deans and directors that I know (such exalted circles I move in these days!), applaud Connie Van Fleet as she received her well-deserved ALISE “service” award, and give a presentation on “Practicing Strategic Relevance” (based on my CI course), which went pretty well and got some very useful comments from the audience. The highlight, though, was getting to meet Dr. Edna Reid, who does “terrorism informatics” and was there basically to recruit LIS grads as government intelligence analysts. I’ve admired her research for ages (she did seminal papers on “terrorism from below” and “terrorism from above” which I have always tried to use as a model for “practical” theoretical contributions), but I’d never met her in person. So that was an unexpected thrill for me!
I had to leave before Dr. Reid spoke. Did she give a presentation? I
Hello, yes, she did, though it was very informal: she was basically asking LIS educators to point interested students towards the hundreds of current opportunities in government intelligence work right now, and giving tips as to how to successfully navigate the hiring process, as all the jobs do require a security clearance. You might want to contact her via LinkedIn: she has some great material there also.