CPD23 - Thing 15: Attending, presenting at and organising seminars, conferences and other events

Hello CPD23 readers, can you believe we’re at ‘thing 15’ already?  Only 8 things to go until the end of the program – this course as certainly flown by for me - I’ve really enjoyed it and learnt about some great new tools and resources along the way.

Thing 15 focuses on events and attending, organising and presenting at these.  Having read through the Thing 15 blog post it gave me a flash back in time, as in a previous life (job role) I facilitated various meetings as part of my job role. This ‘thing’ asked us to think about our experience of attending, speaking at or organising professional events.

In this previous role I organised regular monthly meetings for the management structure and in addition facilitated various one day conferences for a wider group and a regional 2-day event based at Center Parcs too (unfortunately I was far to stressed to benefit from the fun of the pool, rapids and other recreational activities!)  My advice – plan!  That old adage of “fail to plan, plan to fail” certainly applies when organising any event, whether it’s a meeting for 8 or a conference for 50.  What else did I learn? You can never have too much coffee or water, don’t try to hold two break-out sessions in the same room, don’t be offended if people leave before the end and take a spare extension lead! 

In my current role I plan and take a training session for our Sunday staff – very often a half day session and a quick run through various information sessions we’ve held for staff with more hours over the preceding months. Yes this may be an information sharing session primarily and I can read from a PowerPoint (great tip on embedding fonts into a PowerPoint presentation in the thing 15 post – thanks) but I need to be confident in the information I’m presenting and having a foundation knowledge and understanding of what I'm presenting is fundamental – just reading from a script will always get you caught out!

Early on in my library career I was asked by a colleague to speak at their ISG event on my thoughts on the future of technology in the library service, or something like that – not a topic I felt too comfortable with then, now I’d feel much happier!  This event was a great learning curve as I hadn’t (I felt) prepared enough, my PowerPoint looked too basic and I felt like I was rambling through the whole presentation – note to self, prepare and get to know your topic!  Colleagues have told me it was better than I thought, but if you don’t feel happy yourself with it you’ll never believe it went that well!

In March this year I joined the CILIP East of England branch committee and have taken on the role of joint web editor.  This has helped me with my ‘online presentation skills’ and in October I’ll be assisting with the facilitation of the Critical Success Factors for Effective Personal and Organisational Change event, which will hopefully help me improve skills further and learn from a professional facilitator.

I could probably ramble forever on this topic, so one final tip – listen to feedback (good or bad), take it on board and learn from it – I did and I honestly feel that with each presentation I give (whether to a small group of councillors or colleagues, or a training session) I improve in some way….