OR2012: Being there when you can't be there

This was my first real experience of 'attending' a conference without actually going to the event. In previous years I have been aware of the Open Repositories conference, but because it's always taken place in a foreign country attending it has never been a realisitic option. This year OR2012 took place in Edinburgh, so I was paying more attention to the build-up than in previous years. Initially I was planning to attend in person, but being 7 months pregnant meant I was less than keen to spend a week at the other end of the country.

So whilst a colleague went for a couple of days in my place, I still wanted to know what was happening. Which inspired me to look online to see what was going on. During the week, the best ways to keep abreast of what was happening (at least for me personally) were to keep up with the Twitter feed and read the live blog posts. These are both social media platforms I'm used to using, and not having to learn a new platform was a big bonus! I have to say a big kudos here to the conference organisers for putting all this together, along with a bunch of other social media options. Not all conference organisers are so proactive.

I was amazed, and quite pleased, to find that doing a search for #OR2012 on Twitter, and following the comments as they appeared, turned out to be my preferred way to follow the conference. Because it works like a conversation, you get access to the parts of a conference that you'd usually miss out on by not being there - namely the conversations around the talks, rather than the talks themselves. You can usually catch up with the talks themselves via e-mails or future blog posts after the conference has taken place, but not attending conferences means you miss the immediate reactions from attendees. With Twitter, this doesn't happen on quite so significant a scale. You can even ask questions of the attendees, and get immediate answers (I have to admit that, for me, this was a step too far for my first experience like this, but I like that you can. I did retweet some of my favourite tweets though)!

Interestingly, it was the live blog posts that I found least useful. I'm a relatively avid blog reader, and tend to find posts helpful and a good way of keeping very up-to-date with the latest developments. But live blog posts take away the element of reflection, and/ or explanations of how people have put certain things to use, that I find to be their most useful qualities.

Of all the OR2012 live blog posts I've read so far (there are a lot and I still have 5 or 6 to read from the last couple of days), I did find the one on Name and Data identifiers (a Weds 11 July session) most useful. I think this was primarily due to the fact that I already knew most of the information, having read about it previously - and, in one case, participated in one of the projects (if nothing else, the post acted as a reminder that I need to chase that particular project and see where things have got to, because I've heard nothing since March...). But when it came to the final talk on creating citable data identifiers, which I have less knowledge of, I still got a little lost. I found a more reflective post, written by a UKCoRR member after he left the conference on the Wednesday, much more readable and meaningful.

One final thought on keeping up with conferences in this way - make sure you give yourself the time to do it. My decision to keep up with this conference online was pretty last minute, and it took up a lot of my working week. Luckily I was able to do this as it wasn't a particularly busy week at work, but if something major had come up I would easily have fallen behind with what was happening. Just because you're not travelling away from the office, this doesn't mean you don't need to ensure you have the time to 'attend' it. Obviously this is less of an issue for a day-long event, but OR2012 is a big, week-long conference - the biggest annual one for repository folk that there is. Because of that, there's a lot of information to take on board. Just keeping up with tweets alone took up a significant part of my day, especially mid-week (when the majority of the talks happened). All this is proven by the fact that I still haven't finished reading all those blog posts yet!

So that was Open Access Week...

...and I'm totally exhausted!

We ran a whole range of events this week, from drop-in sessions at all of our four campuses, to a lunchtime event on open access, to running a competition for the person who adds the most full text items to the repository in a week, to posting an interview a day on the UWE Research Repository blog.

It was hard work, and I'm glad it's over, but there were also some pretty positive outcomes so I think it was worthwhile.

We've had 85 deposits to the repository, 52 (approx. 60%) with full text attached - a significant amount more than in a normal week. My pessimistic side says this has something to do with academics being told to add their publications as part of a REF review that's happening over the next couple of months - but I'm going to choose to believe that some of it, at least, is down to our promotion!

As a result of the lunchtime event, we've been invited to go a couple of departmental meetings (which are rapidly becoming faculty-wide meetings) to give talks on open access, which is great news for us. Jackie Wickham from the Repositories Support Project came along to our event as a guest speaker, and she's written a great blog post summing up the key points, and providing a link to her slides.

Although the drop-in sessions weren't especially well attended, there was one very positive outcome - I've now been given a film to upload to the repository by a researcher in Creative Arts. It will be our first movie in the repository, so I'm keen to get it on there - but that's just one of the many jobs for next week...

For now, I'm off to not think about repositories or open access for (most of) the weekend!

23 Things for Professional Development: Thing #15

So, on to events then. Before I started in my role as Repository Manager, I didn't really attend that many events. It was only really the big ones that held any interest, and usually on more of a general level. These days, I always seem to be getting ready to attend an event of one kind or another...

I guess it's the nature of the job I now do. Repository staff are, generally, fairly isolated within their universities. I'm lucky in that there are now two of us working on the UWE Research Repository, but for a year or  so it was really just me. So attending events is one of the best ways (along with mailing lists, blogs and all the other social media out there) to get to hear what other repository staff are thinking about, and doing. And it's often the only way to get to talk to them face-to-face. I almost always come away from these events with new ideas, motivation - and the sense that I'm not the only one experiencing this, which is a very nice feeling! I'm lucky that my organisation is very pro staff-development, and rarely says no to me when I request to attend an event. I'm also lucky that many of the events put on for repository staff are free, so all that needs to be paid for are the transport costs.

Of course, repository events aren't the only ones I attend. Other events I attend are often ones arranged by a really greatm pro-active local group called AULIC (Avon Libraries in Cooperation). These events mean I get to learn about other types of libraries and things going on out there. After all, working with repositories all day can result in something of a one-track mind!

I think my best advice when attending conferences would be to go in with an open mind. I've attended conferences because my boss has told me to, believing them to be of little use. Then it turns out they've been very, very useful. Conversely some that have sounded perfect have had little in them to keep me interested. Obviously you need to assess how useful you think an event will be before you decide whether or not to attend it, but once you've decided it's worthwhile (or someone's decided it's worthwhile for you), give it a chance. Don't write it off before you arrive! Other than that, try and talk to somebody. When I first started attending conferences I found this really, really hard. I've gotten better at it, but it does take guts to go over and introduce yourself to a random stranger. Commenting on the weather/ tea/ biscuits is perfectly acceptable, and chances are the person you've just approached will be very grateful that you did, as they're not talking to anybody either.

I've not yet spoken at a conference, and I have to say that I find the prospect pretty daunting. I still feel that there a lot of people who know much more than I do about the topics at the conferences I attend, so I still have a lot to learn. Having said that, if/ when I get involved in a project that other people want to know more about, I'd be happy to speak at a conference and share what I'd learnt. Basically, I'll speak at a conference when I feel I have something worth sharing.

I am, however, slowly getting involved in organising events. They've all been small-scale enough not to give me too many sleepless nights - basically they've just involved sorting out events running at my university. Earlier this year I helped to organise a CILIP Chartership event, and it wasn't actually too tough. This was probably because I wasn't involved in preparing the actual event. My role was purely a logistical one, for example I booked the rooms and car parking spaces etc. This was quite a nice way to ease myself into the world of event organising. I'm now in the process of organising an Open Access Week event for the end of October. This will be somewhat more involved, as (along with the rest of my team) I'm going to be arranging speakers etc. for it. I won't be presenting, but I will be running around a lot I imagine. It will be a fairly small-scale lunchtime event, just for researchers and staff at the university, so will, I hope, be another good way to ease myself into the world of event organisation.