PLA 2010 Leadership Pre-Conference

Much thought given to why this didn't work for me.
Comments from Leadership Task Force members were that perhaps it seemed uninformative because it wasn't new to me, but that other attendees may not already be aware of simple concept of know yourself, know your community and get a seat "at the table."

I don't buy it. I wish it were possible to survey the participants to find out if this was new information. It seemed to me that the presenter must think that librarians are living under a rock if this is to be perceived as professional level insight.

I had hoped to be able to bring something back to the library leaders in my system libraries, but the learning experience was limited to the networking done at the break out tables with peers. When we came back to the larger group to share our take on the case studies, for the most part we were all on the same page. The case study was lame, in that it wasn't even a library case study. I really had the feeling that the presenter didn't care if we got something from the workshop or not. Had any work gone into the preparation? (Was obviously canned to me.) I had the sense that he thought he was doing us a favor by showing up. Maybe he was doing it for free. That would explain a lot.

One positive note is yet to be played out. Our closing exercise was to discuss with those at our table what we planned to take away with us to apply at home. My hope is that we will have an opportunity to do some social networking with each other so that we might support one another in making sense of how to lead after the pre-conference ship has sailed.