Chaotic convening

A few years ago, I ended up becoming the Convenor of my professional group. Now, this wasn’t because of outrageous ambition or a wild desire for power. Nope: it was more along the lines of “somebody has to do it, and you look like you won’t break too much expensive or important stuff”. My predecessor was wonderful: very organised, professional, and efficient. I think I can say I took that as a challenge not to live up to…I am definitely more of a Chaotic Convenor.

This is how I convene a meeting*:

  • Fumble about with the paperwork, and realise I didn’t print out the agenda and previous meetings minutes.
  • Sheepishly ask if anyone has spare copies/steal another Committee members copy while they aren’t looking, and protest innocence and surprise when the missing papers are discovered.
  • Select which pretty colour of gel ink pen to use.
  • Ask what I’m meant to do.
  • Start going over the minutes of the previous meeting.
  • Ask if that’s what I’m meant to be doing.
  • Meander off point in an epic manner at any random point.
  • Decide it’s time for a snack.
  • Sing along to music seeping in from outside.
  • Scribble semi-comprehensible notes everywhere.
  • Descend into gossip occasionally.
  • Ask whereabouts we were in the agenda, because I lost track.
  • Be mildly cheeky to the quieter members of the Committee to provoke them into joining in.
  • Eventually discuss all the things we needed to discuss.
  • Nominate anyone but myself to do the work needing to be done (I am developing this into a fine art).
Now, if anyone wants tips on how to convene in a manner as excellent as mine, I am available for lessons.
But you’ll have to arrange the date.
And location.
And can you book the room?
Oh, can you also print out some spare copies of the agenda?
Wait a minute: what day was it again?

* This may, or may not be an entirely accurate account.

I renamed myself…now I’m a dumpling.

So, for various reasons stated previously, I decided to shoogle the blog about a bit, and I finally decided on what I think you can agree is perhaps a somewhat random name. It doesn’t have a hint of law or libraries in it, but then, quite often, neither do my posts!

The name does have some little bit of reason behind it: it’s part of the lyrics to a Jimmy Logan song my Mum used to sing to me as a child…and I’m pretty childish myself 😉

So, this is my first post as a Dumpling! 😀

My previous contact email address will still work if you have that, but old blog links won’t, so feel free to update your bookmarks if you have any 🙂

*waddles off in a dumpy, dumplingy manner*

Thank you for going to events…now stop talking about them.

I like Twitter – it lets me (virtually, and often eventually, physically) meet lovely people. I’ve made contacts and friendships in the UK and abroad with information professionals in all sectors, programmers and coders of all types, lawyers and barristers in all fields, government staff of all types, teachers, au pairs, historians, housewives, artists…Through the ability to interact on Twitter, I’ve had help on many occasions to source hard to find materials, or been able to ask people with experience in other fields for advice.

But what I have really grown to hate is the people tweeting Every Single Point made at these events. When you tend to follow a lot of people who work in similar sectors (unsurprisingly for me, that’s librarians), you also find a lot of them go to the same events. And that means that you have a LOT of people tweeting exactly the same thing, sometimes differently worded, continuously during talks. The useful content of each tweet usually is low – the tweeter needs to use up characters to include the hashtag, punctuate to make sense of short points, and often there’s a need to include the initials of the speaker, all of which cuts some of the space available for information. When there are parallel sessions running at an event, you usually get different people tweeting about different talks, at the same time and with the same hashtag: very confusing! What also adds to the fun is when other people not attending feel that a point made in a tweet is so exciting, that they instantly retweet it, meaning you have both the tweet, and the immediate retweet clogging things up.

What I would much prefer is that they paid full attention to the talks (rather than trying to compress Big Ideas into 140 characters within 30 seconds of them being uttered), took personal notes, and then, if they really want to spread this information further, they use the information they noted down to write a blog post. I’d far rather read and comment on an overview of the important points of a talk, with the writers views on the event included, at a time that suits me, than be flooded by a stream on the day. A blog post allows discussion over a longer period of time, and allows those not able to monitor the tweets at the time that they are posted to be able to be part of the discussion. It also allows reference back to the discussion, rather than it being a throwaway five minutes which is soon lost to oblivion on Twitter.

I’ve tried exploring ways to block tweets using certain hashtags when the volume of them from events has become overwhelming, but as a protected user, my options for filtering out information via hashtag are limited – the resources I have been pointed towards either don’t work for protected accounts, or involve me unfollowing people. If I’m using a programme to automatically unfollow a dozen people, what are the chances that I’ll remember to refollow them? Not high. And doing that also would mean I would have someone who was following me and able to access my tweets, without me being able to speak to them. Not to mention the annoyance for the person I unfollow if they’re protected, and have to allow my ensuing request to be allowed to follow them again. So, no, not really much I can do about the tweet floods. Other than ignore Twitter during the period of certain events.Which is quite frustrating, as it’s such a useful tool.

Yes, I know a lot of people feel like they’re almost-attending a conference if they can follow the stream or hashtag, but to do that and interact you need to be following it in real time…which means that you if aren’t able to go to the event in the first place, and therefore are presumably currently working, where are you going to find the time to “virtually” attend throughout it?

Four Go Mad in Tayside

Oh yes, the life of a law librarian laydee’s not all frantic researching, and running as fast as you can, just to stay still. No: sometimes we’re unshackled from our desks, and allowed to roam freely in the open air.

So, today, me and three other law librarians will be gleefully running out of our offices after work, for a road trip to Loch Tay, to do crazy things…like edumacating ourselves on some history at the Crannog Centre, sampling traditional Scottish health foods such as fish and chips, wandering around in the woods (we’re not going to mention the Blair Witch, mmkay?), and, if we’re feeling really brave, and confident enough that each of us know which direction to point in, perhaps some archery…

I believe there will also have to be lashings and lashings of (perhaps somewhat alcoholic) ginger beer.

And I solemnly swear that none of us will be allowed to put any books, CDs or DVDs in alphabetical order.