By Roger Magnus, Roger Magnus Research
As Zoom events have become commonplace, what can we as solopreneurs and AIIP members do to make these interactions less awkward, more efficient, and more enjoyable for engaging our clients, vendors, or colleagues?
Read More →By: Barbara Hanlon Pappas
Editor’s note: Before the AIIP Connections blog, our members shared knowledge through the print and digital editions of the AIIP Connections newsletter. Issues from 1991 through 2019 are now archived on in the members-only section of the association’s website.
I attended my first AIIP conference in 2019 and decided that I wanted to be more involved with the association. I am interested in websites, so I introduced myself to the webmaster and web committee chair, Connie Clem, and asked if she could use a volunteer. During the Spring of 2020, I finished a project assisting Connie with uploading issues to the AIIP Connections Archive. It was a rewarding experience, for some surprising reasons.
Read More →By Eddie Ajaeb and Marcy Phelps
As part of an AIIP virtual event about member benefits from the Peer to Peer Support committee, we recently talked about our successful one-year mentoring relationship.
Read More →I was recently asked by someone I’m coaching for advice on how she could negotiate an increase in her hourly rate on an ongoing project, as she had initially priced herself at a low hourly rate. My advice to her was that she had a few options. She could go back to the client and tell her that she was going to raise her hourly rate, but she would have to be able to point to increased value since the inception of the project. In other words, what’s the added value that the client gets for the higher budget? What else can she do in the same number of hours that enhances the value of her contribution? Alternatively, she could chalk this up to a learning experience—we’ve all had them—and reflect on how she can position herself in the future to charge a rate that better reflects her value.
Read More →When you hear Independent Information Professional, what do you think of? Someone who organizes, shares, or disseminates information? That is true, though it can manifest in several different ways. Our members run the gamut from technologists, researchers, coaches, marketing professionals, knowledge managers, web designers, private investigators, thought leaders, and public speakers. We are scattered throughout the world, yet we are all connected by the desire to grow and flourish as business owners.
Read More →AIIP-L, AIIP’s active, private discussion list, is one of AIIP’s premier benefits and ways of connecting member-to-member. In this forum, we share tips for working on and in our businesses, including marketing, product development, technology, and much more. Following is a summary of one of the hot topics recently discussed on AIIP-L.
Topics of conversation on the AIIP email discussion list often focus on finding the best technology to meet our needs as information professionals. Recently, an AIIP member asked the group about mind-mapping software recommendations.
Several members responded with their favorite paid and free software solutions. Others favored manual “Luddite” solutions. Here are just some of the suggestions from each group:
(Note that all prices are in USD)
The first paid tech solution offered was Scapple, “a virtual sheet of paper that lets you make notes anywhere and connect them using lines or arrows.” Scapple is available for Mac only and currently priced at $18 for the product download.
A second solution that many recommended was MindMeister. “MindMeister is an online mind mapping tool that lets you capture, develop, and share ideas visually.” Notably, it is web-based rather than a product download. A limited basic plan is free, while a more robust subscription for individuals will cost $4.99 per month. Other levels of access for teams cost incrementally more.
Additionally, some suggested MURAL for online collaborative mind mapping. “MURAL is a digital workspace for visual collaboration…People benefit from MURAL’s speed and ease of use in creating diagrams, which are popular in design thinking and agile methodologies, as well as tools to facilitate more impactful meetings and workshops.” Independent info pros will most likely benefit from the Starter plan at $144/year. MURAL offers a free trial period before committing to a premium plan.
Also recommended was Miro software, which includes mind mapping capabilities. Miro is billed as an “online collaborative whiteboard platform to bring teams together, anytime, anywhere.” A free subscription to Miro allows three free boards, and packages range from $8-16 per month, billed annually.
Another suggestion was ConceptDraw. The respondent offered, “it is an integrated suite of three products: mind mapping, project management, and visualization tool (for dashboards, drawings, sketching, infographics, workflows, etc.). Nice feature: the integration of the three products let you turn a mind map into a project. Online collaboration is also provided.” Prices range from $199 per license for just the mind-mapping module to $299 for the full suite.
At least three votes were cast for the “Luddite” system: “a giant piece of paper on my dining room table, torn from the tail end of a roll of newsprint that I scored at least 10 years ago.” Giant sticky notes were also recommended as a tool for analog mind mapping. One contributor noted that “physically writing ideas down, drawing arrows, and scribbling notes all help in the creative process.” The contributor said that she feels her mental processes expand when working with physical paper and markers, rather than using digital tools and staring at computer screens. Another AIIP member agreed: “My best mind mapping is done in a cafe with paper and pencil.” Finally, a third respondent countered, “Left to my own devices, sticky notes and sharpies is where I start. I’m looking at a wall full of them right now.”
As you can see, we have lots options for mind mapping software, all ranging in price and functionality – both digital and analog. Most users would agree that it depends on personal preference and seeing what works for other AIIP members.
Carrie Hunsucker helps executives make their business decisions faster and more efficiently. She and her associates provide research and decision support to start-ups, non-profits, and CEOs of growing businesses.
By Liz McLean, Knowsaic
Your local AIIP peer network could be one of the most effective strategic and marketing tools you have ever used. Here are a few of the reasons why:
Even though face to face ‘local’ AIIP gatherings have been overtaken by COVID-19 protocols, our need for instilling optimism and a sense of purpose through our local trust network of shared experiences and relationship building increases.
AIIP members have long valued the benefits of this trust network that exists organization-wide. Because we weren’t able to gather in person for our annual conference in April as planned, we missed meeting one another in person to form or reinforce connections with folks who have skills that overlap or are complementary to our own, or get to know those who cover service areas that we don’t. Now, it is more important than ever to reinforce relationships at a regional level too. When we grow trusted network connections, it is a natural instinct to want to refer our colleagues to a business opportunity if it seems to be a promising match for another’s expertise.
The common geographic element of groups like this can be a shared experience that serves as a springboard for some casual “get to know you” conversations. Even through uncertainty, connecting with other local AIIPers who speak our language can reassure or steady us, or surface some good old fashioned ‘hey, I thought of you recently when…”
Having a trusted referral network is what most successful AIIPers will tell you is marketing gold – their key to ongoing and lasting success. You can’t really develop that trusted referral network if you aren’t engaging with one another on a regular basis to see who’s overcoming what challenges, who is pivoting, who is trying something you’ve wanted to try, or who wants to try something with you to practice first before going live. Your local AIIP peers can be your sounding board, your cheerleaders, and your amplifiers. They can inspire, cajole and learn from your experiences as you do from theirs.
Put your growth mindset into action. Take the initiative to get everyone together consistently. Look for opportunities to keep the conversations going. Invest energy into making fun and unique virtual get-togethers that you would want someone else to create for you. Find icebreakers or games to learn more about one another beyond the shared experience of being a solopreneur. Share what’s worked for you and what you now see in hindsight as a lesson.
The local networks that you cultivate now and over time will enrich your professional growth and business development in a sustainable and impactful way.
Liz McLean, principal, and founder of Knowsaic, uses her Library Science and Knowledge Management expertise to connect people and organizations to the know-how and know-who to learn and innovate for greater mission impact.
The Roger Summit Lecture Award is funded by AIIP Past Presidents to bring an inspiring and stimulating speaker to the AIIP Annual Conference. Roger Summit, the founder of Dialog—a pioneer in online information retrieval—and a longtime AIIP supporter, has inspired AIIP members with his demonstrations of self-renewal and continual learning. The 2020 recipient of the award, Joyce Ward, rolled with the punches after our conference was cancelled due to COVID-19 and delivered her lecture virtually on May 5th, 2020.
Joyce has 30+ years of experience in knowledge management and information retrieval technologies. She served as a VP of Enterprise Products and director of Content Classification at Northern Light, a product manager and director of Taxonomies and Semantic Enrichment at LexisNexis, and most recently as a senior ontologist and content specialist with the Amazon Search Knowledge team. She shared her deep expertise with AIIP members as she reviewed the role information professionals have played in bringing excellent search results to users of search engines.
Joyce recognized the role Roger Summit played in her own career as Dialog revolutionized research and led her into the world of taxonomies. She shared that search has evolved greatly and now produces more relevant results for complex, ambiguous queries. Joyce adds that, thanks to the information professionals working in the background, search results have a high level of precision despite complex data sets, ambiguous search queries, and algorithms that favor quantity over quality.
Information professionals advocate for the users through their understanding of the users’ vocabulary and what users see as good answers. We also look for patterns to improve search results.
Information professionals provide the machines with structured knowledge—classification schemes, taxonomies, rubrics, and blacklists, for example—which are used to develop models for improved search experiences Human classifiers are always better than machines, and precision in search results is directly due to their expertise.
Information professionals are experts who integrate diverse collections of content and map metadata to build filters that refine large data sets into relevant results. Their work ensures result sets are more than merely lists of “hits” and they are organized to make them more relevant to users.
Joyce suggested that there are opportunities for information professionals who are interested in taxonomy and ontology. There will be a new generation of search that is “accurate, intelligent, and well-mannered” and that will need the deep understanding of structured knowledge and subject expertise that is the domain of the information professional.
Phyllis Smith is a partner in ITK Vector Inc. in Ontario, Canada. She is currently developing her “encore career” working with empty nesters who want to reflect on their own life experiences and share them through stories and photos.
