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.