Library unconference for Western Australia
I’m involved in planning a library unconference for Western Australia, hopefully at the State Library of Western Australia and hopefully in the first half of the year. You are welcome to join in - you don’t have to work in a library. You can just be library-curious.
The Yarra Plenty folks look like they had a ball with theirs a couple of weeks ago. Michelle and Genevieve were there.
Uploaded to Flickr by YarraPlentyLibrary on 2 March 2007
Topics covered on the day were:
- Web 2.0 = library 2.0?
- Wikis
- RFID in libraries
- Literary blogging
- Information literacy : overcoming fear
- OPACS and mashups
- Library education
- Young people social networking
- Virtual services universal? /sharing resources
- Second life tour
- Re-engineering reference, IM and virtual reference
- Library 2.0 : 23 things program
- Tagging reader recommendations : creative tools
- Convincing stakeholders of our worth
For our planning group, defining success was really interesting. We’ve decided that if people come away inspired and think that the time spent was valuable, then the event will have been successful. We’re not basing success on the numbers of people who turn up, or the money we make, or how orderly the proceedings.
The unconference wiki contains this information so far:
- About unconferences
- Possible themes
- Date and Time and Venue
- How should we Define success?
- Facillitator
- Food
- Still to decide
- Bright ideas and suggestions
You can subscribe to the RSS feed for changes to the wiki or to the unconfwalib google group to receive unconference planning emails.
Though I think...
How has the planning been going? Lots of meetings?
Hehe. Just one f2f, and then things slowed a bit. I’ve just put a pop up chat box on the front page of the wiki, so we can start meeting virtually.
Oh man! I wish I was in WA and could take part (unless you’re interested in distributed planning).
I’ll add this to the unconference section of LISauthor too.
Well, Ryan Deschamps from Canada just signed on as an organiser (adding a “if you want me”), so someone closer would be welcome I’m sure ;). It’s not totally random, I’ve referred to a couple of his excellent blog posts about implementing L2 measures - even no-tech ones.
You may be interested in this reference for the LISauthor wiki. It’s a collaborative book about how to do an unconference.
http://www.unconference.info/wiki/index.php?title=Book
Good on you Kathryn - you’ll have a great time! I think your CSFs are spot on - we saw ours as a personal learning opportunity - it was a bit hard for people to give up the idea there had to be “outcomes” and “followup.” I never saw it that way, it was about experiencing new ways of learning and interacting with peers - and we had 2 meetings! (someone’s gotta organise the food and drink…)
You’ll find that the people that come will make it work - I look forward to following your progress
cheers
Christine
Ok, if Ryan and Fi are willing to pitch in, I’d better! Just stuck my name on the list too. I spose I ought to join the email list also. (I loathe email lists…)
Christine, I’d like to pretend I understood the CSF abbreviation…but I did have a giggle when I googled it and checked wikipedia.
We’ve had one meeting so far, so we must be half way there.
Thanks for your encouragement and being the trend setter. It makes it so much easier for us. People looked very engaged and absorbed in your photos on Flickr, just what we’d like to achieve.
CW. Oh, the sacrifices we make in the name of 2.0 !
It was certainly an engaging day. Being a comparative (and noisy) outsider, I was really impressed by how eager people were both to listen and to speak up, and I’m sure the Open Space format was a major factor in facilitating that.
Thanks for the link, Kathryn, I’m sure your uncon will be a blast. Loved your presentation slides on SL. I know more about it now than my kids do, hehe - one of them watched the Four Corners doco the other night to catch up.
Fiona, it looks like you will have to get your peers together in NSW and get one up yourself - I’m sure it won’t be far away though.
i.e. ‘It ‘ being the Uncon in Melbourne and ‘one’ being an Uncon in Sydney. Sorry to be imprecise there.
Open Space format seems to be a key, Genevieve. I hope we find someone who can do it well here.
I was wondering why you were talking about the SL slides, then remembered that Michelle had used them in her unconf session. I guess I have already been part of an unconference :).
I thought the Four Corners program wasn’t too bad - it even showed the inside of a large library on Cybrary City. It didn’t mention the educational possibilities for SL, which would have made it even more interesting.
Open space is excellent of course. I’ve also seen World Cafe modelling to go along with the Open Space format too.
It depends on what you want out of the day (and how long you want to spend doing it)!
Ryan. When I first looked at unconferences, I thought they were merely “anything goes” arrangements with a bit of butcher’s paper in the middle of the room. Now I’m really interested in alternative meeting/facillitation structures.
I spent a fair swag of time involved in women’s activist community as a young woman , and we used alternative non-heirarchical participative structures all the the time. It’s nice to see this coming back into my life.
OMG! I’m so psyched you are doing this! I was JUST starting to look for information on how to do this - I can’t tell you how amazing your timing is! THANK YOU, THANK YOU, THANK YOU!
I have never been to an unconference yet and don’t think I could possibly try to pull one together without having experienced it - I understand the idea and the way it works, but no idea HOW it actually happens or what actually happens!!! YOU ARE AWESOME!
Hi Amy. I hope you noticed that this is from around this time last year, not 2008
The wiki I point to is the one that we ultimately used for our Library 2.0 on the Loose” unconference in August last year.
You may have seen on twitter that a couple of nights ago I set up the ” Library Unconference How To ” wiki. It still needs to be populated, but it’s a start.
Oh, right, right! LOL! But it is the HOW TO wiki that I do mean!
Thank you!