Hosting

Thanks to my involvement in the Career Development Group I am gaining confidence in event planning. This started when I volunteered to help plan a childrens book themed fundraising party, there was a team of us so no pressure on an individual and most importantly it was fun, this has inspired me to take on more serious events. I recently hosted CDG National Council meeting and am planning this years sponsored walk.

National Council
What I found was that this was far easier than I had anticipated. The only things I had to do was find somewhere to have the meal on the night before the meeting, find a room to have the actual meeting in, the chair takes care of booking hotel rooms, and be available for any travel questions.

I identified 2 mid price range and 1 cheap restaurant, one Italian, one Chinese and a Wetherspoons, this offered variation and most people will find something they like at an Italian restaurant, Chinese can be a bit tricky and Wetherspoons is fairly varied so will suit most tastes. The group decided on the Italian and off we went, I counted the number of people attending the meal and booked a table for that number, couldn't have been easier. After the meal people went their own way and I went home to make sure I had a copy of everything I needed for the meeting.

The library I work in has a number of rooms of various sizes, I found a small sized one (only needed for 16 attendees) which had a window (very important if you're sitting in the same room all day) and booked it months in advance to make sure we got it.  To make the day more comfortable I bought a small selection of refreshments - a box of biscuits and 2 cartons of juice (apple and orange) and had a pitcher of water available. Again, so simple, why had I not offered sooner? Mostly because I didn't have the confidence, I didn't know what it involved and that put me off. The day went well and I would be happy to volunteer to host National Council again, assuming it still exists after the CILIP rejig of SIGs.

Sponsored Walk
So far this is going really well - the walk has been decided, the travel arrangements investigated and the mid-walk refreshment point plotted into the walk. I have started designing a poster to display in staffrooms so that we can start fundraising and get volunteers to take part and will add a piece on the CDG divisional website promoting the walk. Once that's finished all that's left to do is the walk itself, oh and collect the sponsorship money!

One of the best parts of being a member of the CDG is that you can volunteer to do new things, I would never get the chance to plan meetings or events through my job, CDG lets you do as much or as little as you are comfortable with. I also get the support of more experienced members who offer advice and suggestions to make the learning process as quick and as easy as possible, but with CDG it is support rather than having someone force their way of doing things on you.

Attend everything!

Thing 15 is about attending and presenting at events, and all the benefits associated with this.

Attending events
I am a great fan of attending events, I love being current and getting to meet potential contacts. I love the group discussions and all the chances to interact with new people, once the shyness is over that is! One of my favourite events is the Mini Umbrella put on by North East CILIP, this offers the opportunity to go around the stands before and after the presentations plus all the presentations done mainly by local people. At one of these events I make a fantastic contact who helped me through all the technical jargon of my MSc dissertation on library websites, he actually introduced me to the semantic web and what it could do for libraries. I would strongly recommend to attend every one you get chance to go to. That being said, cost is obviously a factor, not just the cost of the event but the cost of getting there and possibly accommodation, I have been fortunate that my employer has paid for all my work related training and Mini Umbrella is free to attend, but I have also had to pay to attend events which don't fall into my job description and are more for information about developments in the field.

Speaking at events
At this point in time I can see the advantages of speaking at events but think this is a bit out of reach for me, I did my dissertation on public library websites yet I work in an academic library so I have stopped researching that area, other than that I don't actually research anything here and I'm not in a position where I would be asked to do so. So for the time being speaking at events seems something to look forward to in the future and hopefully nerves won't get the best of me.