Time Magazine has named Mark Zuckerberg as Person of the year, 2010.
Zuckerberg has, of course, had a box office hit biopic released this year, and the award acknowledges how Facebook has ‘transformed ‘the way we live our lives every day’.
Google and Yahoo announce 2010 top search terms
Yahoo’s Year in Review reveals that the top 2010 search was for the BP oil spill. This is the only news event in the top ten, with the other places being taken by a mixture of media and pop icons (Lady Gaga, Justin Bieber) and technology (the iPhone is in sixth place). There are some interesting top tens on Yahoo’s Year in Review blog. In a top ten of US ‘obsessions’ the political movement the Tea Party appears in 8th place, one place behind bedbugs (with the iPhone taking the number one slot). Rather depressingly the top UK search terms were ‘lottery’ followed by ‘job centre’ and, in third place, ‘weather’.
Meanwhile, Google’s microsite Zeitgeist show the fast risers and fallers of 2010 (chatroulette and iPad are fast risers; swine flu and Susan Boyle are fast fallers). Google Zeitgeist also has regional results. ` In the UK, the general election dominates the top ten news searches. In France, Cheryl Cole is number seven in the fast rising people and Super Nanny is second. Justin Bieber seems as popular in Europe as he is in the States – he is a top people search in Sweden, France and Norway. The Google microsite has some interesting graphics. Using the timeline function, you can watch interest in, for example, the football World Cup, build up before and during the event.
Online 2010 – reviews
A week on, the more reflective reviews of the Online Information Conference are starting to appear. These are fascinating of course, because everyone’s journey through a professional development or networking event will be subjective (not to mention their ‘real’ journeys and struggles to get to the physical event in the snow!). The differences in experience are even more obvious in a streamed conference. It’s impossible to attend all the sessions and the best you can do at the time is follow on Twitter and speak to attendees in coffee breaks and promise yourself to find a speaker’s presentation on SlideShare after the event.
Karen Blakeman has linked to her Online presentations on this blogpost. The LIS Research Coalition (the conference’s top tweeter) website reviews the conference and points out the inevitable. Online 2010 will forever be known as ‘The one when it snowed’. A review of the exhibition and some of the free seminars (written from a small business perspective) is available here. Tim Buckley Owen for Freepint focuses on social media. The conference exhibition is also mentioned in the gloriously named Go to Hellman blog, from a publishing/ebook perspective. Martin Belam blogged several articles about the conference, writing about linked data and putting it in a broader perspective here.
Our own review of the conference appears here (well I can’t NOT mention it can I?!).
Arts Council performs new role
The Museums, Libraries and Archives Council (MLA) is scheduled to be wound up by March 2012. Some of its key responsibilities for libraries will be taken up by Arts Council England (ACE).
The Bookseller reports today that ACE has been tasked with the management of the Renaissance in the Regions programme (which supports regional museums) as well as the libraries improvement agenda. MLA and ACE will collaborate on these programmes until March 2012.
Forking out for charity
Very many congratulations to the team at Sue Hill Recruitment (SHR). With the help of client contributions, almost £7,000 has been donated to charities that have a real resonance for SHR staff.
The breakfast and credit crunch lunch meetings are free for clients to attend but they are asked to make donations. (Writing from experience, the meetings offer excellent networking and learning opportunities and the food is always good!)
You can read more about the charities that benefitted from this generosity and effort here.
EU and me, me and EU
New Media Age reports on the launch of the new website that sets out to be an accessible resource for EU public information for a UK audience.
The website presents some positive stories of the work of the EU as well as publishing some EU ‘mythbusting’ content, some of which is highly entertaining (sadly, it turns out that the story ‘EU forces farmers to provide toys for pigs’ is untrue.
Is it that time already?
There is just one week to go before the start of Online Information 2010. Over on our main site, Sara Batts has written about the best way to prepare to ensure you get the most out of this type of professional networking events. Her article is full of practical hints and tips.
Information Today will be exhibiting in the main Exhibitor Hall. Do stop by at Stand 714 and catch up with us if you are visiting the exhibition. We look forward to seeing you there.
