CPD23: Thing 15 – Events and conferences: attending, presenting, organising

Ah, I appear to have fallen behind again. I have a note…

Anyway, onto Thing 15 about events and conferences. I haven’t a lot to write on this one really as so far my experience has been rather limited. I’ve never spoken at an event. At the moment I don’t feel as though I’ve done enough to make a valuable contribution, though I would like to give it a go one day. I’m in awe of all those new professionals who do speak at events and find it inspiring that others can – though it is also a little intimidating and this is perhaps the source of my reticence. I’ve also never organised an event – although I’m good at organising myself I’m not so sure I’d manage to organise others. I’ve only quite recently joined the CDG NE committee so I may have more opportunities to get involved with organising events in the future.

I do have some experience of attending events, however. I really enjoy going to events to learn new stuff, meet new people and generally come away feeling inspired and full of new ideas – all good.  I’ve been fairly lucky in getting support from my employer to attend a couple of events (including the 2010 New Professionals Conference) but mainly I’ve attended free events – including the Toon(lib)TeachMeet earlier this year. North East CILIP organises Mini Umbrella each year and this is another excellent free event. With less money available for training and development anywhere it’s great that there are good free events like this (or fairly cheap ones that I can afford to pay for myself) but it’s definitely worth applying for funding for larger events. Jo’s post for this thing is worth a read for some good tips on applying for funded places at conferences. After missing out on funding for Umbrella this year, I’m keen to try again for funding for future events and conferences.

Proving your worth in challenging times – NPC2010

On Monday I attended the CILIP Career Development Group’s New Professionals Conference in Sheffield. This was my first time at a CILIP event and I have to say I was very impressed. The programme for the day was excellent, with so many interesting and inspiring speakers. The choice of parallel workshops and the range of topics covered in the main presentations were so good that I would have happily attended them all.

The welcome presentation from Sheila Corrall was a great start to the day, picking up on many of the themes that recurred throughout the conference. Sheila spoke about how the core competencies of the library and information profession are growing more diverse as our roles change and expand. Library and information professionals are working in an increasingly networked, multidisciplinary way and we need to develop a wider skill set in order to succeed in these new ways of working. The key message was that “continuous professional development is critical”.

Eleni Zazani’s plenary presentation entitled “Bridging the gap: from employability to employment” highlighted the major challenges facing the library and information profession today. The profession is changing as a result of the current financial downturn, technological advances and new roles. We need to respond to these challenges in a positive way. She suggested that the key attitudes needed are: networking, evidence, passion and flexibility. All employers are looking for passionate and enthusiastic professionals, who are adaptable and are good networkers. Most importantly we need to be able to provide evidence of our skills and to know our own strengths.

Following this were three presentations based on the theme of “developing your skills on a shoestring”. I couldn’t attend these as I went to a workshop running at the same time. I’m looking forward to seeing the presentations when they’re available online as the tweets and subsequent blog posts about them, such as this one written by Lex Rigby, were really interesting.

So the workshop I attended was: “The importance of an online presence: entering the world of blogs and blogging” delivered by Ned Potter (aka the Wikiman). Having read quite a few information professional blogs in recent months I’d been toying with the idea of setting up my own (this post being my first foray into the biblioblogosphere – hope I’m doing ok so far…) and was really interested in getting a bit of an introduction to the world of blogging as I was at a bit of a loss where to start.  This workshop provided great advice on creating a blog, including logical steps to follow, accessibility and blog etiquette. Ned highlighted the importance of developing a positive online reputation – you never know your next employer might just Google you! He also pointed out the benefits of creating a professional blog as “you never know where it might lead”. Writing a blog is also a good way of providing evidence of reflective practice and is definitely something to set you apart from other candidates at interview.

The presentations in the afternoon session were on the theme of “attitudes that add value”. All three linked personal experiences gained from the speakers’ specific employment to the wider issue of the value of skills development and having the “right” attitude. It was interesting to hear experiences of people from three totally different sectors of the profession and highlighted the importance of identifying your transferable skills. Rachel Edwards and Ann Donovan from Bexley Public Library Service particularly emphasised the importance of gaining a breadth of experience and showed how they had achieved this through involvement in a wide range of projects. I thought their point about the importance of linking our personal aims to the corporate aims of the parent organisation in which we are working was really interesting as it’s often easy to lose sight of the “bigger picture” when you’re a part of a large organisation. Laura Cracknell and Lindsay Robinson from the Bodleian Law Library discussed the value of “traditional skills in a changing world”, in particular the skills of cataloguing and classification. They spoke of how having an understanding of these, often invisible, skills is still incredibly important in the modern library world – from providing useful knowledge at the enquiry desk to underpinning many web 2.0 technologies, such as social bookmarking and the creation of tags and categories on blogs. Personally I really enjoyed the cat and class module of my Masters and quite like the idea of cat and class experiencing a resurgence! Finally Awen Clement from MedilinkWM talked about “unleashing your professional edge”, discussing the key attitudes and attributes in the information profession. She reiterated the value of continuing professional development, professional networking, flexibility and enthusiasm, which all speakers seemed to agree are vital in our profession. I really liked the idea that an information professional should “under-promise and over-deliver” as this is important in such a customer-focused profession. All speakers were very inspiring and most of all showed that a positive, open-minded attitude is vital for success.

The closing speech from Biddy Fisher was very inspiring and highly energised. It felt like a call to action as she challenged us to “make your noise count” and spoke about how important it is to get involved, be proactive, practice advocacy and take risks to achieve success as a professional. She emphasised how social networking has changed the information profession – “professional generosity” in knowledge sharing is the key to benefiting from these new opportunities for networking.

This event has definitely inspired me to:

• Stop procrastinating and actually create this here blog – may take me bit to get off the ground as it’s been a while since I’ve written anything much at all
• Get more involved – in CILIP special interest groups and branches, through social networking via Twitter and information professional blogs (and not just by following and lurking but actually replying and commenting and generally joining the conversation)
• Attend more CILIP events and keep networking – still find the face to face part a bit hard but it’ll definitely be worth it!