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.

CPD23 Thing 13 – A Tool Needs a (current) Use to be Useful

 Installation Fatigue and Use

Yep I’ve got this so I’d better just admit it. This Thing is all about online collaboration tools – Google Docs, Dropbox, wikis.

Google Docs (bless it) is already ‘there’ I now have so much Google stuff going on, Dropbox was the usual pain to downloading to one pc, downloading to phone,  sync’ing (should that be ‘that sinking feeling’ instead?)…  There’s the whole looking through how they all work, and then there’s the it’s a week later and I’ve found no actual need that they supply for me currently.  Which is making me feel a bit guilty.

A Tool Needs a  (current) Use to be Useful (and appreciated)

So, I understand that a lot of folk find Google Docs and Dropbox incredibly useful, I’ve read through various blogs, I see that.  Just saying that for me currently I don’t need it. Now next week that might cheerily change if there’s suddenly something I need to collaborate on with lots of folk outwith my own organisation. I can actually think of things in future I’m intending doing that they might be useful for for instance. And I can think of other people’s Google Docs documents they’ve shared that I’ve accessed in the last few months and found useful on various subjects. So I’m not saying never re me creating stuff on it. Someone mentioned uploading presentations to Dropbox as alternative / added insurance to memory stick carrying for instance, that I could see myself doing…

But Wikis are inordinately lovely

Wikis I shall cheerfully admit to liking a good deal.  We have a staff handbook one for work which I don’t populate or up-date nearly as often as I probably should and it took me a long time to really use it much.  But I up-date it a lot more this year than before, and more regularly, so we’re building a proper relationship finally. And any time my Asst Lbn goes on hol for a length of time I find myself in it and glad for it as I remind myself how something works that normally she does. I also use other people’s wikis for various work purposes and like those too.

CPD23 Thing 9 – From ‘ugh’ to ‘ah’ in an afternoon through Evernote

The Moral Of The Story part 1…(!)

This is a graphic tale of Evernote. Starting in unconvinced mode, going through very definite impatience and dislike, and ending up finding it incredibly useful in the space of about three hours.

‘Unconvinced’

I’m still running behind CPD23-wise despite heraculean catch-up mode last week, on the good side this means I can bring up lots of other folks’ blogs and see what they thought as part of exploring things.  Most of what I looked at I was less than convinced by. However, there was one by The Travelin’ Librarian about using it for recipes which seemed a useful application for that person, and I liked joeyanne’s tweet about using it to bring together possible things to do on holiday. These made me think the Web Clipper at least had possibilities if I could figure out what for.

Impatience and dislike

So this afternoon (Saturday) I somewhat dutifully set about creating yet more accounts, usernames, passwords, downloading things (took me ages to figure out Web Clipper downloaded automatically if you’re on IE, kept trying to get elephants appearing on the browser which still don’t for all it works!), watching vid’s and reading get started material, sync’ing Evernote on pc and Android phone… Still with no idea what on earth I could actually usefully use it for. By this point as ‘woman with the cold’ not feeling that great to start with I was feeling royally hacked off and sighing mightily.

Coughs – it’s incredibly useful actually…

I was thinking about the recipes use and the holidays one and trying to think of what a current equivalent for me would be and it suddenly struck me.  Which is why I have two busy NoteBooks now. I’m essentially using it as a database application but for edited and annotated notes of web page extracts mostly.  So one is lots of different courses I fancy (all ancient history, culture and languages) from four different institutions, all nicely tagged by institution, mode, term, subjects. It’s wonderful, I can bring up my precise options by tags for, say, Tuesday, or evenings, or Akaddian even, on a search I can see precisely what dates day courses are or search on lecturer... I can bring up all the booking details…  All my options and logistics in the one place and searchable. The second NoteBook is ancient history exhibitions and details of venues, travel options etc, I want to get to. All of these I can easily share very quickly with friends for jointly planned visits or course suggestions. It definitely beats lots of very general bookmarks to PDF prospectuses and long emails about see page x and the course is.... I can see a third NoteBook for holidays getting added very shortly…

What else could it be used for?

Okay, I haven’t used it for a work purpose yet. But gradually I’m starting to think of a few. I suspect it might be useful for keeping training courses and suggestions together for instance. Or for new acquisition possibilities by subject.

I like the idea of it being able to read images from photo’s and handwriting, so I’ll probably experiment with that. I’m wondering for example if I took images of completed training attendance sheets for different training events and changed the way I currently do them, could I bring up from that precisely who has attended what and when? There’s training sessions next week so I’m going to see if it would work.

I’m also thinking linking to Twitter is potentially useful, to be able to send tweets direct into Evernote, so I’ve set that up but not tried it with anything yet.

The Moral Of The Story part 2…

Is that it’s useful to look at both sides (blogs on all angles because it’s different perspectives) but it comes down to is it personally something useful to you, and sometimes you really have to dig into something a bit to know, things can occur with exploration that weren’t initially obvious.

CPD23 Thing 12 – I no longer have to be there, but I have the choice to choose to

The role of social media - Facilitating fluid interactions

Social media facilitates fluid interactions, it’s about giving more choice and convenience to interaction.  Some people migrate towards online communication, others perhaps to physical meet-ups governed by tyrannies of venue, location, time, cost.  But online has its own tyrannies of time and place. Social media is an interaction at best, but even if it’s just ‘monitoring’ it still takes time, it’s constant, and it’s reliant on the speed and type of internet access you have and the skills you have in using all the tools, keeping up to date with rapidly changing technology… And now a fair amount of people do both for different things perhaps or just shunt between very flexibly, social media and physical, but as per their choice and convenience.

The Use With Caution Bit - Online is loud (but silent)

The online chatter is loud, but a lot of it is repetitions, and created by the same small amount of people. That would be the same in a physical environment. But in a physical one you can see who’s there, how they’re reacting. Online we show the version of ourselves we want or are comfortable with and It’s impossible to know the eventual reach of a communication and who saw it. There’s a lot of volume, it can be very fast moving…

The Freedom Bit - I no longer have to be there’ (wherever ‘there’ is)

One of the prime advantages of online for me remains that it’s becoming more and more possible to attend things virtually instead of physically, or at least get a fair amount of information from events distilled to you. That might be Twitter in tweet ‘bites’ of information without much context, it might be a good blog if you’re lucky, or just maybe you can attend virtually the whole thing or it’s been recorded or streamed etc. Or perhaps there’s a webpage or tool that seeks to bring all the reporting sources together on it, link it to SlideShare presentations from, be a communal wiki for the event, etc (a lot of conferences seem to be facilitating this approach this summer using crowd sourcing through GoogleDocs for instance). There’s been a major increase in all these kinds of things in the last two years. It takes away the tyranny of place, of budget, of time to an extent, it makes the world of the event accessible afterwards.

You don’t have to choose one thing or the other - Half-way house interactions

Another interesting development is the recent burst of ‘half-way’ houses, the interface between the physical and the online and between official and unofficial.  So for example at Umbrella (physical traditional conference i.e, published curated formal programme and speakers known in advance) there was a poster session on LibTeachMeets, a workshop on mash-up’s…. LibTeachMeets and Mash-up’s are, like LibCampUK, basically calls for participators to offer up very fast content sessions under a topic (narrow or very broad) at a free event, the ‘programme’ being an evolving thing that may come out of e.g. wiki, or of offers.  Really eclectic, almost pop-up events, sustained by the enthusiasm for having one and attending, highly informal. Or at least that’s what I think they sound like from what I’ve read about, heard… Going to my first physical one in October in Brum for LibCampUK – because I’ve been curious about them for years, ‘unconferences’ as they get called. I suspect they’re all quite specific to themselves. But with the likes of libcampuk11 it was fascinating to note that a prime reason for people going was to ‘meet’ each other physically from the existing online community. The attendance list reads like ‘the online community’ / ‘existing long-term activists’ – there is crossover between the two, but they can often be quite distinct too. CPD23 is another example of this as has been noted, the new ‘online’ community it creates arranging physical meet-ups. Lots of them. Because folk in different localities just felt like it.

So many different ways to do CPD or form networks

There’s also the purely online events, things like #LibChatUK which takes place based on a topic with an agenda, is moderated, happens over Twitter, gets summarised, promoted online….  I followed the last one after the event and realised that a lot of rules don’t apply to this kind of thing. You could just join in half-way through in the way you wouldn’t enter a room physically for an event at that point for example. So, a plethora of options these days on how you do CPD, where and when and what suits you.  These supplement and add options onto existing more traditional vehicles for.

Has CPD23 changed my social media interactions / CPD / community?

I think it is a bit re the interactions though it’s an evolving process.  This blog is Mighty compared to any I’ve ever started before and got two posts into (2 of them). The schedule and having ‘Things’ really helps keep the focus and momentum. I am gradually becoming less cautious about it and adding more details to profiles, linking things up more. I think I’m tweeting less than ever (!) but then this is a time-consuming process, CPD23, and blogging, in its own way, and I have very little time. It’s not changed my CPD or use of social media for, been doing that a lot for a good while now.  But I think as the programme goes on it is influencing it and changes will appear more. Has it enlarged my community? Not really. I read a lot of the CPD23 blog posts and hugely enjoy them, and find them interesting and their owners. But again I have so little time not really made contact with many, already have a fairly huge demanding network (though a different one to the CPD23 one). Will try and do better on that and make some comments, say hello, issue the odd invitation etc. Good to do to show appreciation to people for their content. Because I do enjoy, appreciate, find it interesting.  Just don’t find the time to say so.

CPD23 Thing 8: Why I know I should like calendars but don’t quite

The good thing about being a bit behind…

This week I’ve read lots of CPD23 blog posts on Google Calendar (those for, against, those who quite like but have something else already that’s more suitable) trying to get up a bit of enthusiasm for it.  The posts overall were fairly variable in their thoughts as to how useful or not it would be for them and why.  However I read about a lot of functionality that I hadn’t realised it had (especially through woodsiegirl and bethanr) - and some of that sounded rather intriguing or fun. At least enough that I decided to create myself one for a look and have a play about with it for a week.

My Concerns

Disproportionate time spent / losing focus on what’s important to actually accomplish

 I have set myself up a Google Calendar (well, ahem, actually I’ve got 7 separate ones running, and then I found myself starting to fill things in, and colour code, and….). This is when a sharp memory hit me of my teenage self around school exam time when I had a wonderful ability to make up more and more elaborate – colour-coded – study schedules that – you’ve got it – never happened so I then had to make up (groan) the ‘next gen’ version…. It was cyclical.

Too Much Horror

Frankly if I look at everything I’m scheduled to do and what I need to do at the same time you’ll find me in a quivering heap under my chair. Yes I schedule things in. But other than that I deal with surviving the day at hand and the week it’s in. I rarely look further. It’s bad for me. Concentrate on now is fine as long as I know the link is there to overall goals in it. Similarly I rarely do major task lists, because it’s just going to totally depress me and I’d rather spend the time doing something about the most pressing things on it or, if I’m having a bad brain dead no time day, doing small things from it.  The back of my head is my To Do list and it tells me what needs done and shunts between mental lists for all kinds of different things.  I actually tend to use the notes section on my phone and just jot things down for the day on the bus and then wipe what’s done at the end of the day or carry over.

I already have other things

In work everyone is on an electronic calendar system that can be shared, used to check people’s availability schedule in all meetings, book rooms, alerts, updates… So that’s what I use in work, and I can log into my work desktop from any internet connection anywhere. I also have a paper diary which is convenient for when I’m not online.  So how many calendar systems do I need or want?

Fun v Practicality

Don’t get me wrong, as a system I like it. This week I’ve created it, added lots of calendars, sync’ed it to my Android phone so I can update it locally and then sync it at home… I know various folk have said they’ve managed to sync other calendar systems they use to Google Calendar so they’re not separate entities of repeating information, but I can’t think there’s a way to do that through our firewalls. I love the alerts my phone sends me, they’re cute, but they’re not useful really because my phone is in my bag on silent, and I’m not on Google Calendar in work, I’m on my work calendar which has already sent me a reminder that I’ve seen!

Conclusion

I think I’ll keep this going for a bit longer as an experiment, but as an out-of-office calendar only with very key work things added in (e.g. if I happen to be in another geographical office all day).  I do like having multiple calendars for all my complicated strands of life through it and being able to view each one separately in pretty colours as well as integrated into one and to set headline tasks against them. I like the link to maps against location information. I like the idea of being able to link tweets into it. Out of the office my phone’s on all the time so I’ll see all the reminders and it’s easy to sync it once I’m home for editing and creating on the bus!

But I need to be very clear with myself on it, basic necessary detail only. Help, not time hindrance to getting things actually done. And if it works the paper diary stops next year, definite limit to how many calendars I want and need, two is quite enough.