I’m all in for Elizabeth Warren because life in the US shouldn’t be like Snakes and Ladders — your lot in life shouldn’t be so heavily determined by luck. In the USA if you get bad luck (born poor, bad school district, get sick, get laid off, get arrested, etc) it is really really […]
Higher education in the UK has been defined by a succession of assessment frameworks; National Student Survey, Teaching, Research Excellence and Knowledge Exchange Frameworks. Turning the quantitative focus of these exercises onto the management of universities, Mark Erickson, Paul Hanna and Carl Walker present the findings of a survey of staff perceptions of senior management … Continued
The Machine Learning + Libraries Summit Event Summary is now available as a downloadable report on labs.loc.gov. This document includes more detailed information about the conference proceedings. It broadly summarizes recurring themes of discussion and compiles the outputs of the small group activities.
The DMPTool, which as of February 2020 has supported 44,415 users and 266 participating institutions, currently maintains thirty-eight templates for twenty-two different federal and private funders. It is no secret that funder requirements and subsequent application and data management guidance … Continue reading →
This is my third guest blog post for Stanford Libraries’ Digital Library Blog at the invitation of Cathy Aster, a Product and Service Manager in Digital Library Systems and Services (DLSS) at Stanford University, who was my assigned Conversation Partner in the inaugural 2019 cohort of the Authenticity Project organized by CLIR/DLF and the HBCU Library Alliance.
We’ll be running an unconference at IDCC again this year and have over 75 people registered for the event. Some of you have definitely been to an unconference before, but for others it is bound to be a new experience. This blog post provides an introduction on what to expect and how to get the most out of it.
What is an unconference?
An unconference is an unstructured event which is scheduled on the fly depending on the needs and interests of people on the day. The idea is to allow the attendees greater flexibility to shape the programme so they get something useful from the event. You can run group discussions, work together on creating common resources, provide tutorials and share the issues you are facing in a safe space to get advice and support from peers.
Attendees have found the unconferences we run really rewarding. It can be scary as you don’t know what will happen, but I’ve found that bringing people together and helping to facilitate discussions is enough. There is so much knowledge in the community at large that just having time and space to share questions and concerns and get insights and reassurance from others is incredibly valuable.
How do this work on the day?
On the day we will begin with pitches to create a programme. You can see some photos of how we did this in Melbourne. The audience will collectively decide which ideas to go with and when to schedule them to best suit most people’s interests.
Session will either be run by the proposer or another volunteer if the person who had the idea is uncomfortable leading. DCC and DRI staff will also be on hand to help. We’ll ensure up-to-date information is provided online once the programme is set and assist people to find the relevant breakout rooms. You decide what structure and format to adopt. These could be:
Coffee will be available all day and you are encouraged to approach the event casually. Obviously, you will get the most from contributing to breakouts, but if you’ve had enough or discover a different topic of interest which you want to discuss, by all means drop out of sessions and do your own thing.
Where can I contribute?
You can start to share ideas now if there are particular topics you want to discuss or see covered. We will also have a board at IDCC so ideas can be shared during the conference. Don’t worry if you can’t think of anything ahead of the unconference but have an idea on the day. Pitches can be made during the event too so there will always be an opportunity to contribute your ideas.
What are the rules?
There are no major rules and this can make people uncomfortable. It’s for you to determine what should be discussed, when and how. All we ask is that you are respectful to colleagues and provide a constructive and creative space for collaboration. Some tips are provided below: