Power of one....

People with enthusiasm, who embrace what they do with joy and encourage others, can change the lives of hundreds of people...far more than most committees do. Here's a few of them...

Fig 1. Enthuse, embrace, learn, play.

Enthuser 1 - LORI BELL
Lori always seems to be online when I visit Second Life. She was showing librarians around Info Island 10am Western Australian time this morning, yet when I just emailed her (about 9pm my time), she replied straight away. She's getting out of bed at 3am her time to show us around as part of our LINTy party.

She is co-ordinating countless projects in Second Life, creates a Real Life buzz around her project and is a hub around which many folk are empowered to try out skills in Second Life. She's part of a team but she works many extra hours and brings extra ooomph to it.

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Enthuser 2 - WARREN HORTON
Director General of the National Library of Australia, 1985 - 1999. I've been doing a bit of reading about Aurora and discovered that the foundation is self funded due to a legacy he left on his death in 2003. He believed in empowering future librarians, and was deeply involved in Aurora's inception and running until he died.

I've been reading how he scrutinized the applications and took delight in matching applicants with mentors. He was affectionately called the "Grand Poo-bah" by participants and mentors when he joined in each 5 day live-in course. He let down his guard and talked frankly about some of his best and worst decisions. He had an extensive knowledge of who was where in the library world, and apparently a talent for suggesting who should be where.

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Enthuser 3 - RICHARD RENNIE
Richard runs the Fremantle Light and Sound Museum. He's not a librarian, but a passionate ex-science teacher who won the Premier's Award for Science Communication 2006, He single-handedly runs his collection as a volunteer, in a small room in our local museum..and always seems to be there when we visit. He lets us play with his stuff collected over 40 years, talks to us about it and we leave thinking about it for days afterward.

The last few times we visited, we

• Played "Pong" on an old tele-tennis machine hooked up to a portable black and white TV
  
• Ran our fingers along a string dangling from a christmas card and heard it play a tune due to the friction of our fingers over the special bumps in the string
• Used a magnet to distort the picture on an old black and white TV set
• Wore special red and blue specs and goggled at Michael Jackson and Dr Who in 3D
• Placed our $50 notes under ultraviolet light to reveal the anticounterfeiting marks on it
• Used a typewriter - a highight for Mr4 who now wants to get one.
• Debated whether the baffles on a gramaphone really made the sound quality better
• Looked through periscopes and kaleidoscopes and stroboscopes.

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Enthuser 4 - REG BOLTON
I've previously blogged about Reg Bolton. He packed an entire circus into his suitcase and inspired and taught thousands of children that they had the power to amaze. He had a few "circus swear words" that he banned from his Big Top

"No, Can't, Impossible, Embarrasing, Difficult"

TODAY'S HIPPIE CARD: Face the situation.