The two-day Intelligent Information Symposium in May 2012 in Sydney featured workshops and keynote speakers on topics related to the future of libraries and information professionals. Day 1 included workshops on preparing for multiple futures and disruptive forces that may impact libraries by 2018-2025. Day 2 consisted of keynote speeches on engaging customers online, failing productively to drive learning, and envisioning post-print libraries, as well as intensive sessions on social media strategies and connecting clients to resources. The conference explored challenges and opportunities for the field.
3. Day 1: Workshops
• First ever annual conference.
• Three different workshops to choose from.
• Preparing for Multiple Futures – Taken by Steve
O’Connor.
4. Preparing for Multiple Futures.
Be aware of multiple futures
• Perception is more important than reality.
• Value that is not valued is not valuable.
• Patrons do not need Librarians as they once did.
• Organisations capabilities define it’s disabilities.
• Strategic planning. Not just planning for one future.
5. • In order to see futures, we need to be outsiders
and to have an Outside-in view.
• Suggested read Social Psychology rather than
library/literature magazines for an outside view.
6. Disruptive forces
According to Future files by Richard Watson
• Extinction summaries:
• 2018: Libraries, Blackberries, video rentals
• 2020: Copyright
• 2025: Desktop computers, blogging.
• If libraries are extinct, is the librarian extinct?
7. • Percentage of information delivered into the
library: Print - Digital - Web
• What is the plan for the next three years?
8. Basically a huge afternoon.
• And the conference has barely begun!
• Day 2 was even bigger!
9. Day 2
• Keynote, Intelligent Sessions and Panel day!
8am – 4pm
• Plenty of great catering and chatter in between!
10. Keynote 1:
Engaging customers in an online world
Karen Stocks, Google/Yahoo Australia
• Youtube is HUGE and very super cool.
• 10.8 million Australians watch online video.
• 79% of all internet users
• 10 hours per person uploaded
• Currently a THIRD of all web traffic and estimated
to be 90% by 2014.
11. • 500 years of video watched on facebook. 700 videos a
minute on twitter.
• Sharing is viral and has no frontier.
• The cost of production is trending to zero.
• Entertainment is not the only reason for using youtube.
Information is also an important factor.
• Great content can come from anywhere.
• Life is for sharing.
• Suggested viewing for examples: Youtube Symphony
Orchestra, Life in a Day – A crowd sourced documentary
and Khan Academy.
12. Keynote 2: Failing in the right
direction.
• Taken by Kate Carruthers and Nic Hodges
• Learning doesn’t happen from failure itself but
rather from analysing the failure, making a change,
and then trying again. Over time this gives you a
deep understanding of the problem domain. –
Michael Hunter – Fail Fast 2005
http://blogs.msdn.com/b/michael/archive/2005/0
8/17/failfast.aspx
• http://www.slideshare.net/carruthk/failing-in-the-
right-direction
13. Making the impossible, possible.
• Failing often, failing fast.
• Social media does not mean just facebook, or
mirroring our online and offline connections.
• Out of social networks came the WWW. (IRC,
ICQ, BBS boards)
• Online projection of our offline self.
• Social media returning to a collective mindset.
14. • Social creation platforms: Wikipedia,
soundcloud, quora
• Social curation: Pinterest, tumblr, svpply
• Social funding: Kickstarter, pozible, bandcamp
• Social Data: data.gov.au, kaggle (making data
science a sport), digital public library of
America, Harvard library motivation lab.
15. • Issues: Authenticity, too much information, sea
of content, rights of use, trust, privacy.
16. Intelligent Sessions
• These were great, fast paced 30 minute sessions and
there were 9(!!!!!!!!) to choose from!
• I attended:
• ‘Information experience’ in social media spaces:
Emerging research and what it means for the
information professionals.
• How to get started on your social media strategy.
• Connecting clients to your resources – any way you can.
• No masses of slides here, or notes.
17. Keynote 3:
Libraries in a Post Print world.
• Taken by Joan Frye Williams
• Big changes are afoot and no one is asking for
permission.
• It’s not clear whether print is dying, but there is
an excitement for things not possible in print.
• There are factors we can’t influence.
• More people associate libraries with books now,
than ten years ago.
• Access not ownership
18. • But there are factors we can influence.
• Rethink:
▫ Just in case inventory control
▫ Circulation as a measure of usage.
▫ Timeliness measured in days
▫ Collection centric accountability.
▫ Quality = control.
• Libraries should be all things to all people.