AISTI Eighth Annual Mini-Conference (in alphabetical order):

Building the Social Library Online
Social software is rapidly changing the way we all work and play online. It is also opening up new opportunities for reaching out to patrons and providing library services in the online medium. Meredith Farkas, author of the new book Social Software in Libraries, explores the brave new world of social software and how libraries can capitalize on these tools to improve communication between the library and its patrons, build online communities, and better share information professionally. Farkas will define social software, describe its characteristics, and highlight libraries that are using social software in innovative ways.

Conclusion: The Eye of the Storm
With numerous technical and social changes affecting the way we think and approach our work, we need to develop adaptive strategies for the future. In this final session, James Hilton will reflect on the earlier presentations and discuss their implications for a future characterized by change and disruption.

Distributed Learning, the Generations and Reactive Behavior Patterns: Implications for learning in the Digital Age
This presentation will explore the implications of generational perspectives in distributed learning environments and the ability of students to gather use and evaluate information in a era of digital, mobile and personal technologies. In addition, this session considers student learning preferences by examining reactive behavior patterns in the instructional setting. Findings from a decade of research at the University of Central Florida will demonstrate differences in how students from various generational cohorts and learning styles react to their educational setting. Finally, the session presents the characteristics if excellent instructors form the student perspective.

Entering the Interaction Age: Reshaping Innovation Workpractices in a New Era
The focus of "Information Age" technologies was on digital content delivery; in the emerging "Interaction Age," information is more malleable, and individuals use a growing spectrum of new technologies help them interact with content and each other. Innovative workspaces today are becoming augmented-reality environments where real and digital worlds intersect, where technology needs to fit comfortably with the collaboration patterns found in dynamic co-creation, while also inspiring advanced new workpractices. Encouraging innovation in this context requires environments that support technology-mediated interactions while preserving the richness of non-mediated activities. Addressing this need, many computing technologies that were once considered futuristic are now available in product form and are being successfully deployed in a variety of contexts. This presentation will discuss important trends framing the Interaction Age, show how new forms of interactive workspaces are being enabled by current technologies, and discuss the information handling implications that are emerging as a result.

Harnessing the Principles of Disruptive Innovation to Thrive in a Changing Environment
The challenge of innovating in ways that will resonate with clients and customers, and doing so consistently and predictably, is one that many organizations face. Innovation is often regarded as a trial and error process with inherent unpredictability. In reality, there are patterns of innovation success and failure that can be identified in business history, and underlying these patterns are principles that organizations can apply to innovate more effectively. One particularly important pattern is that of "disruptive innovations," which tend to transform whole industries and create both enormous opportunities and risks for incumbent players. This session will provide a tutorial on disruptive innovation and provide practical guidance on how to apply the underlying principles to understand changes occurring in the business and technology landscape. It will also focus on specific techniques organizations can use to develop deep insight into their own customer and client needs and on how to use this insight to drive the development of breakthrough new products and services.

Information Visualization and Digital Libraries
Understanding the evolution of scientific and technological knowledge at a strategic level is a key challenge. This talk will address this issue from several interrelated perspectives, including information visualization, information integration, and digital libraries. Examples will include trends in research on terrorism and how these trends can be visualized in CiteSpace (Chen) and SearchGraph (Collins).

Innovate or Perish: Information Science at a Cross Roads
There is now a critical mass of information to support urgently needed changes in the way academic and research libraries adapt to the constantly evolving requirements of their customers. We have the choice and opportunities to survive and thrive in this new environment or to become irrelevant. What choices will we make, who will we partner with, and how will we ensure customer participation in developing services? The AISTI mini-conference is at the forefront of bringing options and choices to participants.

The Open Archives Initiative's Object Re-Use and Exchange Effort
This project (OAI-ORE) is a two-year effort funded by the Andrew W. Mellon Foundation to define and specify an interoperability fabric that promotes reuse and exchange of compound digital objects. The target application area of this fabric is scholarly communication, in which the products are increasingly data-oriented, multi-format compound resources, and where the open access movement has led to increased online availability of these products. A core goal of the effort is to work towards interoperability specifications that are fully in sync with the Web Architecture. The work of OAI-ORE is mainly undertaken by an international technical committee (TC) and a project-focused liaison group (LG). The presentation will provide up-to-date information on the status of OAI-ORE work and will also outline planned experimental frameworks that the OAI-ORE will lead starting in third quarter 2007.

The Science of Influence
How conscious are you in your communication with others? Do people understand you immediately, or are you unsure if they "got it" even after you've explained it to them? Join renowned speaker and author Matthew Ferry for an illuminating experience that will transform your ability to connect with people, be heard, and to communicate powerfully like never before. Simply being exposed to these concepts will have you transcend resistance as you learn the specific actions that have people FEEL accepted, and therefore open and available to you. This event will start with an inspiring discussion about the difference you make, and how to share that with people so they are left inspired. Simply speaking from this new context will give you the skills to create an immediate rapport with anybody at any time (even your spouse or kids!).

The Science of Influence Workshop
Matthew Ferry will lead this interactive workshop in which you will practice the exact steps to immediately create agreement with others. The more you embrace these techniques, the more you will simply be inspiring to others, and the faster others will be naturally drawn in to support and be connected with you. Spending time with Matthew Ferry will immediately transform your way of speaking, relating to others and enhancing both personal and professional relationships.

Service-Oriented Science: Challenges and Opportunities for Information Professionals
Science and engineering fields are experiencing a multi-decade transformative revolution. The "cyberinfrastructure" concept has recently begun integrating technological elements with the social components that are needed to deepen their reach. The Globus Alliance, has been a first-hand participant in many science and engineering activities that exemplify this transformation. Now, we can see the next step of the transformation: service-oriented science, where the products of science and engineering expand from static artifacts (papers, data) to include more dynamic results (online models, designs, instruments). Already, some scientists and engineers are "publishing" their computational models and engineering designs as online services, with standard interfaces that allow peers to interact with, evaluate, and incorporate these models into their own workflow. In this presentation Lee Limming will share experiences from his group's work with leading-edge cyberinfrastructure communities and offer glimpses of the expanding opportunities for information professionals in these kinds of communities.