As someone who over the last few years has come to rely heavily on Twitter.com as a networking tool, I was happily surprised to discover last night that IRL can actually be even more fun sometimes!
IRL - or In Real Life - networking is scary, much more difficult that online networking, because we actually have to put ourselves out there. So it was with no small amount of trepidation that I went to the cpd23 Thing 7 tweet-up last night. Walking towards the pub, I'll admit I was nervous.
It is only once you've arrived and started talking to people that you remember how much fun real-life networking can be. Catching up with people, sharing current news, makes all the online networking that we do more real somehow. Face to face networking reminds us about how every other part of our networking life fits together.
I was also at the event last night as a representative of a spcial interest group, namely CDG. I was pleased that I managed to chat to a few people, including new professionals, about the group and the benefits of joining CILIP. The main criticism was that if people can go to events as non-members at only slightly more cost then members, what incentive is there to join? And I'm not sure about that really. Limiting events to members would remove a revenue source and make the group more elitist, but perhaps it would encourage membership. It is a risky strategy. I took the line that if you are a passive CILIP member then it is true that you do not get the most out of your subscription. You need to be actively engaged in order to fully be a part of a professional body. Everything that you experience as a committee member, the positive and the negative times, develop you both personally and professionally. And I think I even convinced one person to consider joining a committee, so my work there was certainly done!
Many thanks to the East of England CILIP branch for organising such a worthwhile event.
Showing posts with label cpd23. Show all posts
Showing posts with label cpd23. Show all posts
Thursday, 21 July 2011
Tuesday, 19 July 2011
Online Networks, Networking and Netting an Opportunity
Thinking about online networks for Thing 6 got me thinking about the online networks in which I participate and why I take an active part in these communities. I tweet, I blog, I read and comment on other blogs. I am also an active member of Librarians as Teachers (LAT) and the LIS New Professionals Network (LISNPN) I am on LinkedIn and maintain a current profile. I do this because I enjoy being professionally linked in to the sector, to other professionals, to keep up to date with activity across sectors and to maintain an online profile.
Today I attended the LIS DREaM conference launch at the British Library. In our breakout session, a lively discussion took place on the topic of networking and sustaining collaboration. One of the questions raised concerned motivation: who is motivated to not only contribute to these online networks but also to lead the action in these networks? Any network needs motivated leaders who are able to rouse and inspire other members. Networks tend to come together due to a shared interest or area of expertise. For example, LAT concerns people across sectors involved in information skills teaching whereas LISNPN concerns people from all sectors but only if they happen to be a new professional. Are we able to communicate across sectors and stages of our careers? If we can do this, could we start to move to the next phase of cross-discipline networking?
There are formal and informal networks, online and in the real world. This got me thinking about the other networks that I am involved with, ones that don't happen in the online sphere but rather in the physical space.
I am a member of the Career Development Group committee. CDG is a network of professionals at all stages of their career from all sectors. I am a member of the German Studies Library Group, a group of library and information professionals working in some way with Germanic collections. I am an editor of CULIB, a newsletter for staff at the University of Cambridge . My conclusion is that networks are everywhere. We should not forget that, in this online digital age, not every network to which we belong will have an online space.
Which leads me on nicely to tomorrow night's CPD23 meet-up. We can network with each other in reality as well as online. True, online networking overcomes barriers of travel and cost. However, reality networking is crucial to development and must not be forgotten as an important tool.
Finally, today one delegate asked the conference how a network is expected to survive once there is no longer funding. Answers ranged from strong leadership to formalised sturctures. However, it is my honest opinion that networks do survive without funding, both formally and informally, online and offline. All we need is a group of committed individuals with vision and focus who support and inspire each other.
Today I attended the LIS DREaM conference launch at the British Library. In our breakout session, a lively discussion took place on the topic of networking and sustaining collaboration. One of the questions raised concerned motivation: who is motivated to not only contribute to these online networks but also to lead the action in these networks? Any network needs motivated leaders who are able to rouse and inspire other members. Networks tend to come together due to a shared interest or area of expertise. For example, LAT concerns people across sectors involved in information skills teaching whereas LISNPN concerns people from all sectors but only if they happen to be a new professional. Are we able to communicate across sectors and stages of our careers? If we can do this, could we start to move to the next phase of cross-discipline networking?
There are formal and informal networks, online and in the real world. This got me thinking about the other networks that I am involved with, ones that don't happen in the online sphere but rather in the physical space.
I am a member of the Career Development Group committee. CDG is a network of professionals at all stages of their career from all sectors. I am a member of the German Studies Library Group, a group of library and information professionals working in some way with Germanic collections. I am an editor of CULIB, a newsletter for staff at the University of Cambridge . My conclusion is that networks are everywhere. We should not forget that, in this online digital age, not every network to which we belong will have an online space.
Which leads me on nicely to tomorrow night's CPD23 meet-up. We can network with each other in reality as well as online. True, online networking overcomes barriers of travel and cost. However, reality networking is crucial to development and must not be forgotten as an important tool.
Finally, today one delegate asked the conference how a network is expected to survive once there is no longer funding. Answers ranged from strong leadership to formalised sturctures. However, it is my honest opinion that networks do survive without funding, both formally and informally, online and offline. All we need is a group of committed individuals with vision and focus who support and inspire each other.
Monday, 18 July 2011
RSS and All That Jazz
This week in the cpd23 programme, we are covering Thing 4: current awareness.
I really don't have much to say about this one. I actively use Twitter.com in order to keep up to date professionally and I also follow some celebrity-type people. The debate as to whether a Twitter presence should be purely professional or whether it should show our rounded personalities has been had many times and will probably continue to be a topic of hot debate. For me, I walk a middle line. I tend to keep things professional but I am not averse to having an exchange with a fellow professional about their cat's odd habits. Twitter is primarily a way to keep up with breaking news and events within our profession.
RSS feeds have been a staple part of my professional life for many years now, although I tend not to use them for websites of personal interest as I enjoy browsing in my leisure time. Professionally, the amount of sites, journals and blogs that I try to keep up to date with would only be possible through RSS feeds. It is a great invention. We can pull everything together into one reader. We can even categorise our reader to make it even more useful. And yet, I still have 400 unread items in my RSS reader. Whilst it is indispensable to have the technology to gather everything in one place, there is still the problem of having the time to sit down and read everything!
Pushnote is something to which I'll return at a later date.
I really don't have much to say about this one. I actively use Twitter.com in order to keep up to date professionally and I also follow some celebrity-type people. The debate as to whether a Twitter presence should be purely professional or whether it should show our rounded personalities has been had many times and will probably continue to be a topic of hot debate. For me, I walk a middle line. I tend to keep things professional but I am not averse to having an exchange with a fellow professional about their cat's odd habits. Twitter is primarily a way to keep up with breaking news and events within our profession.
RSS feeds have been a staple part of my professional life for many years now, although I tend not to use them for websites of personal interest as I enjoy browsing in my leisure time. Professionally, the amount of sites, journals and blogs that I try to keep up to date with would only be possible through RSS feeds. It is a great invention. We can pull everything together into one reader. We can even categorise our reader to make it even more useful. And yet, I still have 400 unread items in my RSS reader. Whilst it is indispensable to have the technology to gather everything in one place, there is still the problem of having the time to sit down and read everything!
Pushnote is something to which I'll return at a later date.
Wednesday, 6 July 2011
I no haz Brand, I haz a presence
The concept of "brand" to me conjures up many things, none of which I would like to apply to me as a person. I have an online presence, an online space. Whilst I understand the concept of having a stable "brand identity" across all platforms used, I can't say that I feel it is necessary.
We are all people who have at least two sides to our personalities: our professional self and our personal self. Some of us are mothers or fathers, we are all someone's son or daughter, we could be a Brown Owl or a hockey coach. We all have different interests and different obsessions. We watch television programmes, we consider ourselves to have a political position, we read books, we travel to different places, we like different colours - I could go on. The point is that we are all different multi-faceted people who cannot be reduced down to a brand which attempts to encapsulate our entire personalities in two or three concepts. And I do not want to be. Of course we have to be careful and mindful when we post anything online. We can do this whilst retaining our complex individuality.
I have an online presence, yes. But a brand? I don't think I have got a brand. My blog's template represents my love of inky colours, however it also represents the fact that only these colours were available in this template on Blogger. My twitter name was chosen because I really like the name Lottie although no one calls me that in the "real" world despite my attempts to encourage people to use it a few years ago. It never caught on - it just sounded odd in reality. My various professional profiles all tend to say the same things about my professional interests. My Facebook is my only truly personal space online where I shed my professional skin and communicate solely with friends. My cat however is mentioned everywhere as it is impossible for me to separate any facet of myself from his presence (he would get grumpy and pull a LoL-cat pose...)
So essentially these are my feelings about brands. In theory, I can see why it is a helpful idea. Yet the reduction of the complex individual to a couple of specific traits troubles me. I'll stick with my online presence.
We are all people who have at least two sides to our personalities: our professional self and our personal self. Some of us are mothers or fathers, we are all someone's son or daughter, we could be a Brown Owl or a hockey coach. We all have different interests and different obsessions. We watch television programmes, we consider ourselves to have a political position, we read books, we travel to different places, we like different colours - I could go on. The point is that we are all different multi-faceted people who cannot be reduced down to a brand which attempts to encapsulate our entire personalities in two or three concepts. And I do not want to be. Of course we have to be careful and mindful when we post anything online. We can do this whilst retaining our complex individuality.
I have an online presence, yes. But a brand? I don't think I have got a brand. My blog's template represents my love of inky colours, however it also represents the fact that only these colours were available in this template on Blogger. My twitter name was chosen because I really like the name Lottie although no one calls me that in the "real" world despite my attempts to encourage people to use it a few years ago. It never caught on - it just sounded odd in reality. My various professional profiles all tend to say the same things about my professional interests. My Facebook is my only truly personal space online where I shed my professional skin and communicate solely with friends. My cat however is mentioned everywhere as it is impossible for me to separate any facet of myself from his presence (he would get grumpy and pull a LoL-cat pose...)
So essentially these are my feelings about brands. In theory, I can see why it is a helpful idea. Yet the reduction of the complex individual to a couple of specific traits troubles me. I'll stick with my online presence.
Monday, 20 June 2011
CPD23 - Things 1 and 2: why take part?
Why am I taking part in cpd23? Well, there are many answers to that question. After the success of cam23 last year, where we all learned about new tools and developed our links with some really interesting people, I am keen to see the same success again but with a specific focus on continuing professional development.
CPD is something that we should all do and that we should all make time for. It is our responsibility, no one else’s. If we engage with the profession, we get so much more out of our careers and we see how far we can develop if we push ourselves. The sense of community last summer was incredible, an entire online blogging presence comprised of Cambridge librarians who all know the issues we face. This summer, I hope we can retain the sense of community by having a CPD focus with people from all over the world! The one thing that unites us all is our genuine desire to develop ourselves professionally. I hope that this will shine through.
I myself am a New Professional (capital N, capital P!) I am also New Professionals Support Officer for the eastern region (via CILIP’s Career Development Group) – look out for our great events (shameless plug!) I am currently working towards Chartership and as such I am leaping on to CPD opportunities! I hope that we will get a real sense of community through diversity during cpd23 - by engaging with the profession through CPD, we enrich the profession itself and develop ourselves in the process.
Blogging is definitely more interesting and rewarding when we engage with the blogs of others. I sense that my blogroll is going to get a whole lot longer this summer!
CPD is something that we should all do and that we should all make time for. It is our responsibility, no one else’s. If we engage with the profession, we get so much more out of our careers and we see how far we can develop if we push ourselves. The sense of community last summer was incredible, an entire online blogging presence comprised of Cambridge librarians who all know the issues we face. This summer, I hope we can retain the sense of community by having a CPD focus with people from all over the world! The one thing that unites us all is our genuine desire to develop ourselves professionally. I hope that this will shine through.
I myself am a New Professional (capital N, capital P!) I am also New Professionals Support Officer for the eastern region (via CILIP’s Career Development Group) – look out for our great events (shameless plug!) I am currently working towards Chartership and as such I am leaping on to CPD opportunities! I hope that we will get a real sense of community through diversity during cpd23 - by engaging with the profession through CPD, we enrich the profession itself and develop ourselves in the process.
Blogging is definitely more interesting and rewarding when we engage with the blogs of others. I sense that my blogroll is going to get a whole lot longer this summer!
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