SlideShare "Rock Star" Status?

In 2007, a co-worker (Josh Weiland) and I traveled to Monterey, California not only to attend the Internet Librarian conference, but also to present at that conference. Our presentation was "How to Run a Gaming Program When You Can't Tell the Difference Between an X-Box and a Game Cube" (more about the title in a minute). Today, Josh sent me a message saying we have received notice that we have reached the "rock star" status because our slides have received over 100,000 hits. And while I am suspecting that Josh may have played an April Fool's joke on me, the notice did cause me to rethink the presentation from nearly two years ago. I checked our slides and found that more people than I would have expected have viewed our information, which means people are still using the information we originally presented. It means that joke or no joke, people are wanting to know how to successfully host gaming programs at their libraries. It means teens are going to benefit from people who, although not necessarily knowledgeable about gaming, are willing to take a chance and venture outside their comfort zones.

That's exactly what I did back in 2006 when I started the "Gaming Power Hour (x2)" program for the Evansville Vanderburgh Public Library. My gaming experience inluded Pong and an Atari that my mother bought for me (why, I have no idea). I got addicted to "Burger Time" when I was younger. So when I started the gaming program for the teens, I obviously had no clue what I was doing. I talked with a few people who were gamers (including Josh), took their advice to heart, purchased a used Game Cube and some retro games, and away we went with the gaming event. Volunteer teens who helped me set up for that first event laughed when I asked, “So where do you want me to put this X-Cube?” Then they laughed even harder when they realized that I hadn’t made a joke; I really was so ignorant of gaming that I couldn’t tell the difference between an X-Box and a Game Cube, and I didn’t even know the consoles’ names. My ignorance did not prevent me from creating a successful gaming program, however. The programs became an every-other week event and attracted as many as 70 teens—hard-to-reach teens, guy teens, and teens who became addicted to the library.

To view the slides from the presentation that Josh and I presented at the Internet Librarian, go to

http://www.slideshare.net/joshwEVPL/running-a-gaming-program-when-you-cant-tell-the-difference-between-an-xbox-and-a-game-cube.