Professional Development Event reflection -- An Evening with Neil Carrington

For the end of semester 2, we attended an eats and greets event with a motivational speaker named Neil Carrington. It was the end of semester, and I remember us all being pretty tired from constant assignments, and a few of us were still completing them. Still, we turned up.

The motivational speaker first stated he'd used his techniques on famous Rugby players and a few cherry-picked celebrities. He didn't speak as to whether they got anything out of the session, merely that they'd attended. I've found these things to be hit and miss. You can either take a lot from motivational talks or see them for what they are -- pep talks that cost money.

Nevertheless, the motivational speaker gave us some interesting activities, made us work with others (I remember meeting an interesting person from another library that I forgot to return the pen of), and just in general learning things like selling yourself, proper networking, and the value of the self.

I did enjoy this motivational speech. It was inspiring, we wrote down stuff which is always nice. But I feel like motivational speeches happen in echo chambers. You listen to positive and upbeat strategies for how to be confident and conduct yourself thusly, but I find most of it isn't taken away when the speech is concluded. Even now, I remember barely any of the strategies employed. In a way, this kind of positive talk boils down to 'sell yourself!' and 'network your strengths!' and everything else is just snake oil selling.

I'd much rather a motivational speaker explain why it is that we don't feel motivated at times, scientifically, and again, scientifically, how we can be motivated. Because there are so many strategies from these self-proclaimed 'motivational speakers' that amount to very little for most, and for some, enamoured by the confidence of the speaker, it sinks in.

In terms of my professional development, I felt this had little effect. I mean, you can talk all you like about giving your speech to Rugby players and celebs, but if the speech itself has little lasting impact, there's not too much point.

Evidence of Professional Work -- Assignment 2: Wiki & blogs

The skill of reflection (as shown in this assignment and on this blog) is one that's needed to see both qualities in one's self as well as in helping others on a reference desk. I also learned the value of teamwork on this assignment, how to meaningfully contribute, and why some people simply won't contribute anything meaningful at any opportunity.

Portfolio reflection -- Web 2.0 Wiki & Blog assignment

Evidence of Professional Work -- Assignment 1: YouTube presentation

I thought this presentation was a great example of my public speaking skills, which are required on a reference desk. My confident demeanour has been required many times in my job on the reference desk. And considering this presentation also has excellent insights about social media policy between both the State Library of Queensland and the National Library of Australia.

Professional Development Event Reflection -- An evening with Helen Partridge

Late in first semester I attended an evening with my university peers that was hosted by Helen Partridge, our course coordinator, and consisted of three speakers discussing their careers and giving us advice.

The first wasn't at all memorable. I remember the cheese and crackers more than any of the content in that speech. The second speaker discussed their work in a medical reference library. She mentioned it being difficult work, and not many users came through reference desk. I thought working in a medical-type library wouldn't suit me, as medicine had never been of big interest to me.

It was the third and final speaker that I found great disagreement. She pushed that we should join LinkedIn, and while it is required in this course, the idea of networking with this site is one that in hindsight (since writing the post extolling its value on here), LinkedIn is a terrible platform for this. LinkedIn invades privacy and forces people to spam all their email contacts with multiple emails inviting them to use the service (my father has been guilty of this, signing up and absent-mindedly clicking something to be sending out multiple emails to colleagues and family friends) and there have been accusations that LinkedIn sells people's data for recruitment purposes.

I just disagree with some of these web 2.0 concepts being pushed at these talks. Sure, LinkedIn is useful as a space to keep a resume (however that space is limited, and you can't customise the resume as much as you'd like to) but it's not the be-all and end-all of networking. You still need to attend events like this one and speak to people, grab a few wines and make a few pitches. I can tell you I didn't get my job using LinkedIn. As well, LinkedIn displays to the owner who viewed their resume, which while interesting to see which employers care, is also a breach of privacy to those having a look at other profiles. For reference, I accidentally clicked on a resume of someone I'm not friends with anymore. They now know I've viewed their profile, and there will be some tension based around that.

Social networking is excellent online, but it needs to happen in real life too. And I feel at some points in both this speaker's talk, and the course in general, this idea was left to the wayside for the latest Twitter thing, or LinkedIn profile.

Media monitoring -- State Library of Queensland

I've followed the State Library of Queensland's tweets and Facebook posts for the past year and what's stuck out at me is how much insight they have into using social media to engage. Now granted, I do have some idea as to what happens behind the scenes, as I did an internship in their marketing department for a month back in 2012, in their transition to their new All Yours tagline, and complete restructuring of site design and image, but even then, I didn't expect a change so rapid and uplifting.

Before this time, the State Library of Queensland seemed like every other run-of-the-mill library's limp attempt at social media. They'd rarely engage, and when they did, it would be auto-updates of events, and with social media hidden (if used at all) in the online landscape of their pages. Now however, with the reinvention soon after the establishment of The Edge department, they have both a Twitter and Facebook, and the same for The Edge. And they make avid use of their collections, deviating from the standard 'here is an event -- book now'-style cop-outs being given by so many organisations that miss the point of social media -- engagement of the audience.

The State Library grabs photos out of their collections and posts them on Facebook and Twitter, inviting users to guess the locations and events shown, or taps into current events and posts something historically relevant. In one of their best decisions (and a project I loved doing at my time there), the State Library of Queensland joined Historypin and have their collections uploaded with geo-mapping on the Google Maps infrastructure.

The State Library of Queensland are on Flickr, and allow use of their collections online to save users needing to go to the library itself to find images for personal discovery or use. With the photos being uploaded to Twitter, State Library of Queensland have also tried to get engagement going through hashtags. The most recent, #thisisqueensland, tapping into an ongoing discussion of different photos that represent our state, is proving to have much traction.

I attended an event called "Makerspaces" (discussed elsewhere in this blog) and SLQ were tweeting about it, and in addition, SLQ employees were joining in discussion on their own Twitter accounts. I followed a few, and participated in discussion, and they responded to my tweets, without me directly mentioning them. This shows that even the employees themselves 'get' social media, and are willing to engage outside of the standard and 'official' accounts.

The State Library of Queensland has proved to be a leading library organisation in the use of social media in Australia. Its integration of both Facebook and Twitter as core outlets for giving users access to its collection is an example that should be taken up by any library wanting to be forward thinking and looking for ways to be a part of the digital future.