CPD Thing 15: Attending, presenting at and organising seminars, conferences and other events

Thing 15: Attending, presenting at and organising seminars, conferences and other events . Oh dear. My favourite. The article looks at attending events. Why you should attend. What you get out of it. What you get out of it.
This then looked at Jo Alcock's article on this idea here.
Next, was speaking at events. Again, why? How? What you get out of it? Also presentation tips are included. There's also a link to Ned Potter's article on this.
Organising an event? Librarycamp and unconference etc.
I would point out that something might be added how do you find out about events? I check Nesta and the RSA are two area's I look. I also keep an eye on cilip website.

How to arrange going to an event

I will going to the Marketing Libraries Outside the Echo Chamber‏ tonight.
I thought I'd point out a few things you should do before going to an event.

1. Make sure you have a place booked for the event.
2. Make sure you know where the event is. Check maps and transportationon how to get there.
3. Make sure you get the day right. Which I didn't when I walked to City Business Library last night.

Oh well. At least I know where it is now.

LISNPN London meetup 01.10.10

As I can't make the New Professionals Information Day, i'm going to the meet up after at the College arms. I tried to get a friend I worked with previously at a public library, and she was worried that the event is all about talking about libraries. My email response?

yup. we just talk about our collections and shushing policies.

I think I put her off. Anyway, many others going tomorrow?

RSS for library jobs

(Found via here). Whilst reading this blog post I discovered the LIS New Professionals Network. In this new resource I discovered an excellent Yahoo Pipes device that searches for Library jobs in the UK.

How to make stuff

Wikiman's blog has an interest post entitled Just Do It (yourself)… free tools to empower. So for those who want to know how to make a poster, podcast or video, check it.

Echo chamber? All I hear is good news about libraries

Recently Wikiman had an interesting blog discussing the echo chamber within libraries.

Plenty has been talked about the image of librarians and libraries etc, but how do we go about addressing the misconceptions on a wider basis? At the moment, I reckon a very (very) crude representation of library advocacy might look a little like this:

The point being, the library skeptics aren’t really being reached, and many of the excellent ideas we have are going into the echo-chamber of our own Information Professional community.

This maybe true but recently all I seem to hear are positive things about libraries and librarians. For example, Librarian by Day has a post entitled Librarians Play a Vital Role in 21st Century Literacies which points to two papers one from the Report from the Knight Commission:

Recommendation 7: Fund and support public libraries and other community institutions as centers of digital and media training, especially for adults.

And a white paper from the MacAuthor Foundation

If anything, these traditional skills assume even greater importance as students venture beyond collections that have been screened by librarians and into the more open space of the web. Some of these skills have traditionally been taught by librarians who, in the modern era, are reconceptualizing their role less as curators of bounded collection and more as information facilitators who can help users find what they need, online or off, and can cultivate good strategies for searching material.

These seem to show were succeeding in some area's at least.

These along with Marilyn Johnson's book This Book is Overdue seem to represent libraries in a positive light. Johnson's book is getting a lot of deserved coverage (i'm half way through it already) from a wide audience.

But then, I don't think we are aklways that good in praising ourselves or selling ourselves at times.

Library advocacy in a digital age

Woodsie girl and wikiman have been discussing how to create library advocacy and the dangers of the echo chamber.
Woodsie girl says on her blog:-

Following a conversation on Twitter this morning, me and thewikiman (@theREALwikiman) are trying to find out if anyone has any good ideas for overcoming the “echo chamber” effect in library advocacy. It’s easy to spend time preaching to the converted, but how do you reach people who don’t use the library, aren’t interested in what you have to say and don’t think you have anything to offer? Any thoughts, please tweet using the hashtag #echolib, or leave a comment here. We’ll be blogging anything interesting we find out.

Well, I had an idea, which maybe good or most like not. I am presently reading Charlene Li's Book Groundswell. In it she discusses how Mini was sold in the USA, whilst Honda and Volkswagen were entering the market in the mid 2000s. This would have eaten into there market share as there product was older. Trudy Hardy, who was in charge of mini marketing wanted to increase or retain market share. So was she did was she listened to mini users, sent out items only they were allowed to recieve along with other idea's (read the book). Anyhow, what she did was she listened to her present users and made them feel unique. Uniqueness and listening are both highly important in any organisation business, but if we make our present users seem unique then there word of mouth will gain us patrons. Its not an original idea, but it's my thoughts on it.