Dinner with Dan Specht

Seafood and wine with Dan who struggled but successfully mastered eating pho with chop sticks; little more could do justice to a great dinner with many of the IDS Project, Dan Specht, Stephanie Spires, Christian Dupont (Atlas), Chuck (CCC), Jon (Nylink). Great discussions, ideas, funny conversations that don't belong in Cyril's blog; I will later include a photo of Dan for everyone's benefit.

Ed Rivenburgh (Director of SUNY Geneseo Milne Library & IDS Project) did a great job of introducing the IDS Project members, in particular, the Technology Advisory Group: http://idsproject.org/About/TAG.aspx - a fascinating group of very successful technologists from other libraries that work together to solve major challenges faced by IDS Project libraries, and sharing their solutions with other libraries. Sharing expertise in well defined projects that solve problems seems to work - albeit, it's a lot of work - no pun intended, but we are very impressed with this group (and that isn't the wine talking).

In the northwest, a similar kind of group is working with OCLC on the Navigator project. Seems like a strategy worth it's weight in gold. If these kind of inter-technology project teams work effectively, how do we support them? how do we connect the various groups? Developer networks get the programming talents talking, but team projects are distinct at crossing institutions and developing scalable successes. OK, time for sleep - thanks for dinner Dan.