Sorry about the teaser yesterday 🙂 I had just been walking around the house saying “I’m going to Africa on Sunday” because it felt so bizarre to say… and it spilled into my blog.
I have been invited to keynote the 13th International Southern African Online Information Meeting in Pretoria next Thursday. I am then presenting a workshop on the Friday.
I suspect that the lovely Michael Stephens of Tame the Web had something to do with the invitation, having talked there a couple of years ago – so thanks very much, Michael.
I am very excited to be meeting Phil Bradley for the first time, as I have watched his ongoing commentary on the changing face of online search with interest.
While it is very nice to be invited to find my own topic. it can be really hard to find something that is both unique and likely to be interesting to others. I ended up going with the keynote that I always wanted to see at library tech conferences, but ends up more likely to be a chat over morning tea in the exhibition hall. So often there are amazing, stimulating, inspiring ideas at these types of events… but by Day Two my brain is full and I am feeling rather overwhelmed and not quite sure how the really, really interesting dazzling new ideas will stay with me when I return to the office.
So, here is a summary of the keynote:
What do I do when EVERYTHING is so shiny? Personal strategies for coping with new technologies
At library technology conferences, delegates learn a lot and see inspiring speakers doing clever projects with exciting technologies … and possibly return to their workplaces a little overwhelmed and unsure how to relate this to their day-to-day practice. Factors like mountains of email, budgetary restrictions, an inflexible work environment and lack of time for training can make exciting new shiny technology projects seem aspirational rather than achievable. From a library-school educator’s perspective, leaving a conference feeling more able to use new technologies may be linked to skills and actions that are not technology-based at all. A hidden rule book, defining a core purpose, hacker ethics, produsage, skunkworks and generosity may be some surprisingly effective non-tech tools that improve your ability to make an impact with technology.
And.. they also asked me to prepare a three hour workshop, so I went with something that would explore and expand the themes of the keynote:
Futures dreaming and finding a personal technology strategy
With so many technological options and so much operational change possible in our information services, just what will they look like by 2026 ? What focus can an information professional take now to stay calm, competent and effective as they navigate these changes?
This workshop will focus on facilitated activities to answer a number of questions designed to tease out possible futures, such “what would you do in your information service if you had all the time, money and skills you needed?”. Participants will be encouraged to share their wisdom and their questions with each other so that the group can create together alternative pictures of information services in 2026. Each participant will also work toward their own personal strategy for assessing, implementing and coping with new technologies to benefit their clients and information services. Participants should leave with some ideas they can implement today to cope better with a technological future of tomorrow
In 2007 i wrote a blog post (http://inn0vate.blogspot.com.au/2007/03/branded-environment-campus.html) brainstorming what we might do at MPOW if we had the time/resources/skills to set up a ‘branded collaborative space. Your post made me revisit that. One day I should probably do a scan and see what changes have happened since then. This post led directly to an invitation to collaborate on a research paper.
Your workshop sounds great. I like the idea of having something tangible to take back from a conference. Even if nothing comes of it immediately it’s good to be prepared for when an opportunity arises.
Wow – so much of what was mentioned there has come to pass, and even been replaced as redundant (e.g. Campus Pack …).
When I was blogging regularly I remember a really bizarre phenomenon of stuff that I was speculating idly in my blog about one year being something on the main radar of MPOW 12 months later – regularly and the most bizarrely small ideas too. By the time I just accepted an idea as commonplace or even a “flash in the pan” I was constantly reminded of everyone not being on the same page at the same time. Doesn’t mean that I was super or even duper … Because to me blogging is as much about reading other blogs as writing them, I was tapping into some great ideas from some very smart and perceptive people in a way that took longer to trickle down by other means.
What I do think you post shows is how things that we take as commonplace today were once radical, interesting, edgy, out-on-a-limb ideas about which we were totally unsure…