CPD25 Thing 5 - Interacting with Conferences – reflecting on Umbrella (CPD23 Week 5)

First the very very slight cheat!

Partially as a slight cheat on CPD23 Week 5 Reflection (which was CILIP Umbrella 2011 week so I was kind of busy elsewhere), and as I’ve done nowt on it for weeks (coughs – been busy, honest guv) and partially for anyone who didn’t get and would like vicarious content from a splendiferous  conference (in full knowledge it’s usually me reading Conference I Wasn’t At tweets after work while making dinner!)… I enclose a general rumination (i.e. a somewhat specific use of reflection!) followed by Lots of blogs on the conference sessions I attended. Any inaccuracies down to my not scribbling fast enough at the back!

I’m thinking in this post about how we interact personally with conference and how the level of interaction – I would suggest – has a great deal to do with how much we enjoy it, get out of it, where it comes in our personal lists of best conferences.

So how many ways can you interact with a conference?

I’m just back from Umbrella and that’s a really good example for me. Umbrella is the big CILIP multi-day multi-strand biennial cross-sector conference which shares responsibility and programming between CILIP and its Special Interest Groups. It started in Leeds, had a good few years in Manchester, and the third one at Hatfield (Univ. of Hertfordshire to be more precise) is just ended.

So how have I interacted with Umbrella down the years and how did it impact on me?

Programme Development

Session Planner

My first experience of Umbrella was being asked to jointly develop the CDG programme back in Ye Days Of Old when Groups could have up to seven solo sessions over conference to deliver. Hugely to my then alarm and trepidation. It kind of started a trend of sorts. After that I created and delivered lots of courses and conferences jointly or by myself on all kinds of things in lots of places. Still do to a minor degree, just keeping occasional hand in for fun.

Chair'ing

I’ve Chair’d a few sessions at Umbrella, though not for a good few years now. Chair’ing sessions is really rather fun in a running around like a half-demented fly kind of way.  Done my fair share in other places since. It’s almost like a parallel simultaneous experience the back end. But it meant a free day at Umbrella so was much enjoyed.

Speaking

I’ve only spoken at Umbrella once, and that was fringe event after the end of the day’s programme so doesn’t hugely count. I have strong memories of CDG birthday cake of extreme difficulty to cut so might must have been 110th anniversary year I think! Unless I’m mixing up AGMs.

Publishing

In my journal editing days this meant clobbering (nicely, persuasively!) Speakers to do journal articles for me to publish based on their sessions for those who would otherwise not have an opportunity to get any of the content.  This year this blog seemed an opportunity to make available an awful lot of content, to anyone who searched for it, much more quickly.  I thus scribbled continuously and at great speed through every main content session I attended and then typed it all up here after.

Loitering in the Exhibition(!)

I have also done the attending various meetings that take place on site before Umbrella and adding on a day attending the Exhibition but not Umbrella per se (and it’s astounding how much you can get out of just a day at the Exhibition which is free talking to people, doing the Poster Sessions, the exhibitors).

Full Attendee (whee hee)

And I’ve done two glorious attendances at full full Umbrella courtesy of SLLG and CILIP respectively. And I do adore Umbrella. I love the sheer variety of it and the fact I can go to lots of sessions on all kinds of different things and find relevance. It’s a bit like a sweetie shop full of options. And that's just the programmed content and doesn't even begin to explore the social side.

Online

These lovely days it's perfectly possible to get lots out of conferences you're nowhere near physically through online networks for the event (e.g. the spruz one for Umbrella), the Twitter traffic, Groups and speakers posting presentations, crowd sourcing options, people blogging sessions. Which now includes me!

Practical outcomes

And what comes out of Umbrella? Well I can think of one biennial conference that started with a dinner conversation between me and a (then) complete stranger there, and a day course that I developed after getting the idea for at Umbrella. Those are practical things I suppose. Mostly what I get out of Umbrella is motivation from wonderful variety, lots of things to listen to, people to meet, and just a very positive refreshed feeling. Which is worth its own weight. The trick with Umbrella is to talk to everyone and make sure at least half of them are strangers. Works perfectly.

Addendum....

Some weeks after looking back at this post I know that the concrete thing I took away this time that I'm doing something about was a decision to have a play about with an awful lot of new technlogy tools I hadn't yet. The combination of Umbrella and CPD23 have been good timing as a lot of that are specific tools-based which is the bit of it I don't do as much of programme-wise.


Addendum no. 2
Adding another way to engage with Umbrella, I did the Keynote for CILIP NE Mini-Umbrella 2011 in glorious Newcastle and got to catch up with a lot of friends I haven't seen in a long time. Really good afternoon.