I’ve asked everyone who went to conference to report back on their experience – tell the rest of us what excited and inspired them.
So I’ll start first.
On Sunday – I went to the first meeting of the Association of Public Library Managers. This organisation has taken over from the former Metro Net. It is very exciting to be a part of this and to feel the energy and focus of the group. There is a real committment from the membership to work collectively and collaboratively toward goals that benefit the entire public library sector. The leadership team led by Su Scott at Waitakere libraries is full of energy and enthusiasm.
There were lots of good ideas debated by the group and several of these will hopefully get underway in the first year; potentially including political lobbying to get legislation for public libraries enacted; a marketing campaign / programme for all to use and a variety other possibilities where working together can enable the sector to achieve things that individual libraries could not.
Next I saw an inspirational lecture from Mason Durie – vice Chancellor of Massey university on transformational leadership. He talked about looking to the future, informed by the past but looking ahead and seeing what the possibilities might be – He made reference to various figures/events from New Zealand’s past such as the kingitanga movement, Sir Edmund Hillary, etc. who didn’t do things as they had been done in the past but created new futures.
Fiona Rigby and colleague Lewis talked about Digital New Zealand and all the exciting developments that are happening there, including tommorrows launch of the Coming home project as the exemplar of what the digital new zealand project is all about.
Lastly I saw Dylan Horroks presenting on Graphic Novels – very interesting and entertaining, especially for me as I have little knowledge about this genre.
The conference venue was great and there were loads of colleagues from around the country as well as loads of vendors and suppliers.
