There have been plenty of significant and worthwhile events at Midwinter this year. The one that stands out for me in a "Wow, haven't seen that before" kind of way, however, took place in the new Networking Uncommons area today.
The event was called Battledecks. Participants in it gave impromptu 5-minute presentations. The catch? They didn't get their topic in advance, and they also didn't have their slides in advance. Today's speakers had to weave together a disassembled car, an Allen wrench, and a cat with a lime peel on its head, among other things, into their discussions of technology.
The results were entertaining, certainly. But while Battledecks may not have the significance of a speech by Al Gore, the off-the-cuff format has the potential to produce moments of surprising insight.
Battledecks competitions (two of the speakers, selected by audience applause, won gift cards) have been held at a couple of other library conferences so far. Watch for it to be held again at Annual.
Battledecks immediately followed—and held most of the participants from—"Set Sail for Fail," a moderated discussion in which librarians described programs, events, and services that failed, as well as what they learned from the experience and how the failure could be turned into a success.
"What we'd like to do is promote people to do critical thinking and analyze why things didn't work," said co-facilitator Andy Woodworth, librarian at Burlington County (N.J.) Library System. Sometimes the problem is something relatively easy to fix, like targeting a program at the wrong audience or positioning it at the wrong technological level.
"I think a lot of times in libraries that people think of their failures and try to keep them as a big secret," added co-facilitator Karen Kapperstuck, virtual branch manager at Monroe Township (N.J.) Library. But there is a good learning opportunity there, particularly when the failure is discussed. "I think that sometimes you can't analyze your own fail, but to be in a group setting where you're talking about things that didn't work, you can see things that are hard to see when it's your own."
