CPD23 Thing 16 – Promoting to strangers

Big and Wide as the ocean

The problem as soon as you start putting capital letters on things is they suddenly start to sound important but also perhaps Scary and Intimidating. Possibly as though they’re things for other people who specialise in that kind of thing and know the ropes rather than something everyone has an interest in and a place in.

Advocacy is a bit like that, it’s become a very high profile issue in the UK in recent years as a result of various pressures on the profession, financial and otherwise. The need for advocacy is fundamental, but equally there are choices to be made on what can be done best by whom and what the resource implications are. What are key objectives? How do you know if you're meeting them? What can you actually do with the time, expertise and resource available, and what do you not do in consequence? What's everyone else doing so you're supporting each other not duplicating?

We all do advocacy already to an extent

If you just look at it as promoting and explaining the kinds of things that you do and why they matter to people other than your direct counterparts (whether that’s the wider organisation or possibly outwith it) then we all believe in it and do it in our own ways, but to differing extents. It just may not show up anywhere.  It’s about demonstrating the value (for money / resource) and the usefulness of your skills and service and what they can achieve for the organisation and being accessible and helpful to it. Every bit as important though, it’s also about supporting colleagues in other places in our own sectors and also supporting ALL sectors as being equally of value to their own communities, even if the emphasis will (naturally for a different context and / or jurisdiction) change on what the key benefits and risks are.

CILIP

I tend to mainly contribute to advocacy through supporting and helping to formulate the wider body initiatives and work of CILIP, that's what I do, other people do advocacy in other ways or through other bodies. In CILIP advocacy is about a range of on-going activities, some cross-sectoral, some sectoral, some undertaken with a range of other partners (whether internal or external), some not. Some specific initiatives may go on for some years, others may change regularly. Where the main external pressure is can change over time. A huge amount of work goes into it overall, some aspects can appear more high profile than others, some bear more obvious larger fruit or faster.  But a wide range of on-going activity is undertaken.

Commercial Law

My own specific sector, commercial law, just like all other sectors, was hit hard by the recession, and the results of it all are still easily discernable some years on. You can see it in numbers of posts, levels, budgets, service expectations etc etc.

The most recent interesting law-librarianship specific joint response to it all has been the blog On Firmer Ground which is a collaboration between lots of different key international law librarianship bodies set up to promote the value of what we do. It’s really worth a look.

Conversations and Finding An Angle

Advocacy is just about talking to people about what you do and why you it’s important.  Preferably in a way that reaches to what you know they themselves value, and that is conversational, natural and short. It may sound easy but that’s deceptive. As with anyone I have my good and my bad days, some people are more intimidating than others or easier to talk to. Telling people things they’re not interested in or not wanting to hear isn’t going to work. But giving it a punt anyway to find some kind of common angle is important. If nothing else trying to persuade others forces you to formulate the real basics of what you think is important and why, to reality check your assumptions, and to practice how you get the core idea’s and facts across. And practice on strangers, not on friends. Your friends probably believe anyway.

CPD23 Thing 14 - Citing irritation

Still slightly behind (as ever!) so bit of a Thing 14 catch-up this weekend. Not wanting to have to download and use Firefox for Zotero I decided on having a look at Mendeley.  The theory seemed interesting, I could see myself using it, various blogs seemed to like it, it appeared to download easily…

A bumpy start...

Now it might be that I’ll take to it yet.  But mostly I’ve failed to get past the sheer irritation of the fact  having downloaded it fine I need to click on an email link to verify the account.  Which I would do with pleasure if only an email to verify it would actually arrive in my InBox.  Having now triggered the website to re-send it three times since equally fruitlessly I’m basically sighing.  Partially because it’s not working and partially that the reason they need verification (having now gone looking for the explanation) is  “to make sure that the users that register on our site are human”.   It occurs to me 15yrs ago a machine wouldn’t have been trying to make me prove I’m a human being  - even if it is for the general good. So yes I’ve been through the relevant troubleshooting FAQs and it’s still not solving it. So I’ve emailed customer support and will see what I get back…

So I can’t currently use or explore all the functionality. I have loaded in various PDF’s, and so far its got them all partially wrong as automatic citation and flagged them all as needing review. Which is also a little dispiriting, even though I really like things like the notes and highlighting. But really I utterly love the idea of automatic referencing and bibliography – but only if it works faster and easier than doing it all manually myself.

Summary

Liked the theory. The practice is leaving me underwhelmed presently. But it may get there yet.

If I can sort out the verification glitch then I will play about with this more. The theory is good and useful (says woman thinking about essay due next term it should be ideal for), but safe to say we’re really not having an instant rapport as yet.

Addendum - Lovely people at Mendeley Customer Support, solved within a few hours by them. Verification achieved. Hurrah.

CPD23 Thing 15 - Sagging, Spouting and Startled Chicken

This post is going to Go On A Bit. It covers attending events, speaking at them and organising them. You have been warned…

Escaping Forth

Attending things takes more planning, deviousness and commitment than might at first be obvious. 

There is the ‘spotting what you want to go to in the first place’, usually followed by ritual devious thinking about how to actually get there – will employer pay (if so how link it in business-wise to justify), can you get a bursary of some sort (and if so do you want it enough to ask for it for ‘this’ thing and not something else later), do you pay it yourself, can you work out some deal (e.g. offer to be a venue in return for a free place).  There’s the whole logistics of how you achieve leaving work and getting there and back for it – is it organisational time, is it your time, is it a mix, where you stay and how, have you remembered business cards that are up-to-date beforehand (usually not!). 

An event a good time beforehand is a lovely prospect, immediately before it’s total stress, during it should be – and this is the important bit – a time for relaxed reflection, thinking things through, being sociable, talking to everyone and anyone regardless, having a gab, gaining knowledge, revitalising motivation and willpower and belief.  A good event is a truly shiny wonderful thing that will live on in the memory.

Afterwards is a tricky bit from a practical viewpoint because you go back and you get subsumed in everything you pulled yourself away from in the first place to attend.  If you don’t write it all up fast it’s going to vanish.  And preferably do it somewhere it’s available for your own and for others direct benefit who didn’t get to go, and just reflect back on it.  Applying things learned at events is also difficult in a way, you have to really decide to do it and make time to do so otherwise it may as well all have been a beautiful dream in its own mini-universe. If nothing changes as a result of anything you went to then that’s not good.  You also need to make time to do something with all those business cards and scribbled email addresses you’ve assembled and follow them up before a) you can’t read them and b) you can’t remember who they were and why you took it.

There’s more investment in being a punter at something than might first appear. But oh it is glorious and lovely.

Spouting Forth in Real Time

I’ve done a fair bit of this down the years.  There are things everyone can do very easily, like watch other people and events and get to know about speaking styles, room layouts, IT, what suits different contexts, audience sizes, subjects and timing’s.  You’ll know instinctively what you like and what you shy away from, what suits your own style.

The most important thing is to have a coherent spine of what you’re going to cover in your brainstem and have a mind to the length (it needs to fit) and the audience make-up (it needs to be relevant and hold their interest).  You might get your full time allocated, but look where you are on the schedule, figure out if you’re likely to be squeezed.  Ideally have a spine of what you want to say in your head that you can improvise around to tighten things up or talk more on.  It’s always nice if there’s a clock in view that’s accurate that you can see over the audience in a natural way, that way you can keep yourself on time. The better you know the topic and the more confident the more you can just spout forth in real time without hugely fixed dialogue. Just talking to people, keeping it low-key, being conversational works fine, long as you’re sure you’re projecting enough that everyone can hear you. Also making it clear there’s a web link to the full thing at the start you’ll give at the end helps, so folk aren’t scribbling madly unless they so choose, and there’s no mass of paper handouts.

Speaking at things is a lot of fun in a slightly not quite paying entire attention till your own bit is safely done and dusted type of way.

Running Around Like A Startled Chicken

Again, something I used to do a great deal, being involved in organising courses, events, conferences. Do it rather less now.

The most important thing about this is that the economics of it have to work whether it’s  free at the point of delivery  or charged for.  You have to know what your realistic break even number is and what’s in place if you need to postpone or pull the event. So you need to start knowing what you’re broadly intending, what it will need, and finding an readily accessible venue (geographically and internally) that can supply as much of the incidental needs as well (IT support to food) and what numbers you’re likely to get and it can accommodate for a price you’re willing to pay for it. It also helps to go for gaps in the market subject-wise and things that you know will attract an audience, if it’s something you also know about then wonderful, because otherwise you’re going to have to learn – the basics anyway, enough to put together an event around it.  Pulling folk in to speak from your own network is always a good option and often the best one, so the wider and more varied your network the better, it gives you more options, more favours you can pull in.  Start with the structure, broad costs, and timing’s and then allocate broad sessions and potential speakers against it. Are the speakers experts, well known in the field locally or internationally, easy to deal with, what costs would they come with, are they good speakers, what are their travel logistics, IT needs etc.  All things that need considering when deciding who to approach and try to persuade. Once you have a final idea of total costs you can calculate break-even number, figure in profit margin if you’re being that hopeful(!), and decide on pricing. Deciding who to try to persuade into some sponsorship to keep it all as low-cost as possible can also be fun. Advertising and promoting works formally to an extent, but word of mouth is always a lot better, so it’s about finding folk who know people that would be interested and will they promote it to their friends and colleagues for you. And you want to keep it simple. Inevitably it won’t be.  Very large spreadsheets full of names, organisations, what sessions attending, food choices, who’s paying, whether paid…. Inevitable. 

Early turning up on the day itself is always advisable, if you’re suddenly going to find half of it is now a building site, or the technician with all the access codes has vanished, or the laptop they’ve supplied is in german only, or the internet connection doesn’t want to work or a speaker’s trapped in a closed down airport… all these things you want to know and sort round before the early birds arrive.  This is when parallel universes start, technically you’re all in the same place, organisers and delegates / speakers, actually there’s two simultaneous realities running.  The front of house and the behind the scenes. Ideally delegates and speakers will know nothing of any behind the scenes traumas.

After the event there is usually a very great deal of sagging in a communal heap in the corner or running for the train or bus.

Organising is hugely time-consuming, can be fraught, is certainly exhausting.  But it is addictive and you make friends for life.  It also means if you want an event on x and it doesn’t exist you just create and run it.