July 2009

"Un-conference" on libraries and librarians

on 14-16 June 2009 in Aarhus in Denmark international conference was held Next Library, organized by the Public Library in Aarhus . At the conference I had the opportunity to participate as regional coordinator of the Library Development Program, which is part of a worldwide initiative, the Foundation's Global Libraries, Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation.

The conference was devoted to modern and innovative services of public libraries, promotion of good practice, and reflection on the future of libraries and librarian profession
. Proposed several themes for lectures, workshops and discussions:

resources
innovative library services, library
a culture of youth,
interior design of buildings and libraries, interactive library
spaces,
competence of librarians, library
and building community,
creativity and learning.

conference was organized according to the formula of "un-conference", not yet well known in Poland, but have already been conducted in our country, similar experiments (eg, Barcamp Poznań).

"Un-conference" is - very simply - "Conference", whose program is being prepared by the participants. For Next Library it looked as follows:

about a month before the scheduled start of the conference organizers have launched a community service CrowdVine platform, the site appeared Framework Programme, together with open sessions, which participants could "started building" in accordance with the stated themes of;
CrowdVine enables "social networking" and "Web 2.0 - this "support for the conference - the participants set up their profiles, posted information about themselves and began to build a network of contacts (we had to have the following options:" I want to know ... "" I am a friend of ... " "I'm a fan of ...");
following the proposal by a participant (group of participants) the topic open session the other participants were able to virtually save the session, which allowed monitoring of immediate interest in the topic;
during the conference site used to post comments, speeches and conduct further discussions on topics related to a particular session;
both organizers and participants suggested various forms of participation in the conference: speakers lectures, sessions 9-minute presentation (PowerPoint presentations and short lectures on selected projects usually or events), poster sessions, practical workshops, brainstorming, interviews, panel discussions,
possible to combine several forms of participation, such as lecture + discussion, the 9-minute presentation + poster session, a presentation of the project (in the form of video) + interviews with participants;
not embarrassing to be a passive recipient - a participant taking part in a session usually took the floor himself, he could also expect that sooner or later be taken out to answer;
during the lectures the participants having to send Comments for notebook computers in real time, and questions to the speakers for the microblogging service Twitter pośrednicwem, questions and comments to be displayed on the screen, which gave the speakers the possibility of immediate response;
prepared by the organizers of "energizing" of social games were, enforced and supported the integration and communication between participants;
presentations of the conference have been published on the site SlideShare , and pictures taken by the participants - the site Flickr.

Organizers also presented the participants with the principles un-conference. These principles are in the original language You can read the Special Libraries Association Un-Conference Wiki . In Polish, they look something like this:

anyone appear at the session is "on site" and has the right to be here;
whatever happens, this is precisely what was about to happen;
whatever begins, it is the right time to be started;
if something is finished, it is over.

Next Library Program, and the least interesting of these sessions, and projects that deserve to be taking their place in separate posts. Here I will add that the un-conference - at least in the Danish edition - is in my opinion an excellent idea to allow not only to establish contacts, exchange experiences and promote their own projects. This is what has happened during the Next Library, elicited an extremely positive with participants in a ferment, motivated to action, stimulate debate and allow a look from a different perspective on many issues related to our profession. Perhaps because it is just the conference brought together participants from all over the world (20 countries, 5 continents), but hot I recommend the formula un-conference, and I hope that in time we accept in our country.

Helene Blowers - author of the blog LibraryBytes and training program, Learning 2.0: 23 Things presents the story of "library" of the Phoenix

Speakers (Helene Blowers, Jens Thorhauge, Gene Tan) respond to audience questions and comments posed via Twitter

During his session, the drafters of ShanachieTour the DOK Library Concept Center (Delft) talk via Skype with Michael Stephens - author of the blog "Tame the Web" and a well-known proponent of Web 2.0 in libraries