Thing 12: Attending conferences

I attended a conference last year in Cardiff which I thought had a really interesting concept as it was billed specifically as a 'user generated un-conference for people interested in libraries'. Library Camp Wales was held in the Glamorgan Building on Cardiff University campus in on a sunny Saturday afternoon in April 2014.

The really interesting thing about Library Camp was that the participants set the agenda themselves. This was perhaps the part I was most apprehensive about before attending. There was no set agenda as such, we decided it amongst ourselves on the morning of the event. I recall being slightly worried about this, what if none of us had any pressing issues that we wanted to discuss? But I needn't have been concerned as plenty of interesting topics were put forward. Someone would volunteer to 'pitch' a session that they wanted to discuss and then we would vote on the most popular topics which would then set the agenda for the day.  

The event was open to anyone from any sector. It was a great opportunity to network and meet people from across a range of sectors within Wales. A few people I met there did not even work in libraries but were perhaps interested in moving into the field and wanted to know a little bit more about it. This was great and really added another dimension to the topics we discussed as we were getting outside perspectives as well. Library camp was an 'open space' event- we could come and go in and out of the different sessions as they pleased. We were also encouraged to tweet and blog photos of the day.

If you want to have a look at some of the issues we discussed throughout the day here's a link to the Storify page https://storify.com/Gemma_DS/libcampwales