What does #makeithappen mean? Taking action.
Action is something that you do.
Doing is different than saying. We can write, talk, make statements, chat, dish, diss, blog at blog.8bitlibrary.com or any other blog…but it’s never a substitute for action.
In librarianship specifically, I hear lots of talk. Some of it is negative complaining about the state of things. Some of it is positive ideas about how we should move forward.
Neither of those are #makeithappen. #makeithappen is saying “I want today to be Teen Library Day in my town”, then calling the mayor, and getting it officially on the books as [Insert Town Here] Teen Library Day. #makeithappen is not just THINKING outside the box, but DOING outside the box. Like having librarians influence global gaming discussions that otherwise would have been completely out of the realm of libraries. Or having local professional athletes chill in the library.
Talking about something is a stepping stone to action, but in the end, no amount of blog posts here or anywhere will amount to #mih. However, we want this blog to be the #makeithappen blog, a place to show off pictures and videos or things people have #mih’d all over the country, to provide inspiration to all in their own efforts to #makeithappen. Have you made something great happen in your library? Please email me so you can show the world; I can be reached at jp at porcaro dot info
#makeithappen never gives up, ever.
#makeithappen is professional AND personal. In many ways, it is personal first: envision what you want in your life, and then stop imagining and #mih, because the reality is so much better than the fantasy.
#makeithappen is climbing 10,000 mountains before breakfast.
An 8bitlibrary.com contributor linked me to this a few days ago. I know it is harsh, but climbing 10,000 mountians is way harsher than any web comic:
The secret to #mih: work really really hard.
And although we define “make it happen” in twitter-hashtag form, we all agree that nobody can #makeithappen on twitter. The real work that needs to be done is through toil and sweat and hard work, even in the library.
#makeithappen is saying “Hey, let’s help people develop video game collections”, starting up a website about it, and becoming the most influential web resource for video-games-in-libraries.
Failure, of course, is a big part of #makeithappen as well. Video Games can be a great example of this: you toil through failure after failure, repeating the same tasks you fail at, sometimes failing at the same thing for hours or days. And then you win. You fail until you win. And #makeithappen is not stopping, because once you’ve jumped one hurdle of failure, you’ve got 100s more to jump. This is why video games are the perfect fit for the #makeithappen philosophy: keep pushing through failure until you win, because luck won’t get you anywhere, experience will, and the only way to gain experience is through failure, not success.
#makeithappen is also about priorities: like, knowing when to stop writing about it, because you have to go to work to DO SOMETHING. Which I am about to do.
8bitlibrary.com‘s own JP Porcaro (me) & Justin Hoenke, as well as our friends/colleagues/movers&shakers Ed Garcia and Jaime Hammond will be speaking on “Make It Happen in libraries” at the New England Library Association Conference in October 2011. Please come out and share the #mih mojo with us.