On play and dithering perfectionism

Jessamyn used the term “dithering perfectionists” on Twitter last night in reference to a library she was in. It resonated strongly with me this morning probably as I have spent the week trying to convince colleagues that they are allowed (nay – required) to play with our WordPressMU installation

I think that it is dithering perfectionism that we are trying to get away from in our 23 things explorations and the “library2.0″ movement. As librarians attention to detail and perfectionism are highly regarded traits. But perfectionism that stops us from exploring and trying new things out is hand in hand with fear of failure, leads to dithering perfectionism and hinders innovation and growth.

In Helene’s 23 things programs the trait that is desired is playfulness. A desire to try and tinker and learn from mistakes and not worry about getting things right or perfect.

We all know rationally that without the possibility of failure there will be no innovation. And I am certainly not the first one to point this out in the biblioblogosphere recently. The trouble is knowing it rationally does not overcome our inate dithering perfectionism. We need to practice our play regularly.

This is a test

Its a test but you may be interested in what I am doing. (I hope – otherwise I am spamming you poor readers.)

I have installed the WordPress plugin Feedwordpress into my work WordPressMU installation and activated it for a little subblog I have imaginatively called “Sue’s Test blog”. I cannot link you to it – its firewalled.

I have added the feed from this blog to it to test whether its working- but of course I have to post something. I wouldn’t add other feed I have no control over or no rights to resyndicate.

If it does work I could add my feed from my sharing folder to it – sort of a lifestream.

I will let you know.

[UPDATE] It sort of worked. It has a really wierd bug that every post that starts with an “A” gets truncated to just the “A”. I am not the only one reporting the problem but the developer doesnt seem to be around at the moment. Its not critical.

I am also working on getting LDAP authentication working which is much more critical and much more problematic. I would be keen to hear from anyone with a working LDAP authentication to a WordPressMU installation.

Dinner with librarian bloggers

Had a lovely dinner tonight with flexnib and her M, sirexkat, and exploded library who was visiting Perth for a conference.

Exploded library with iPhone. We were comparing notes.

Sirexkat and Flexnib

Sirexkat was taking a movie of us discussing three questions about librarianship today

We talked librarys and gadgets and blogging of course.

The great news is that I get to do it all again in November with free range librarian. I hope that I will not be a TOTAL fan girl and will talk sensibly.

This is not just about my social life. Its also by way of a part 2 review of my iPhone blogging experience.  I have discovered that, although handy, the WordPress application that I used to do my earlier post is pretty basic. It is fine to do a quick post with a photo or start a draft. It is not immediately obvious to this noob how to add a link especially since the IPhone does not support cut and paste. Apparently they are working on adding comment moderation. And the application is open source so I will expect many further enhancements.

Iphone blogging

This is a test but it is mind blowing if it works. I am posting this from my phone. Imagine if you will the consequenses when (not if) this becomes mainstream.

The photo is my hubby practising.

[EDIT] There was no edit option so I have hopped back on the lappy to expand. The photo was also taken with my phone. The whole post took a matter of a few minutes to write, take the picture and load. The consequences that immediately come to mind are for journalism. When a good proportion of the populace have a blog and a web and camera enabled phone any event can be immediatley recorded and published. Actually I wouldn’t need a blog. I could just have easily posted something with a photo to Facebook or Twitter with better effect as more people read my streams there.

Wordle play

I love visualisations so how could I not resist a play with Wordle? The tag cloud above is from my delicious bookmark tags. The seemingly obsession on Twitter is not only because I am addicted but I have been collecting research for a paper.