Once again I recently had the privilege of contributing to one of my favorite conferences: Internet Librarian International held in London in late October 2011. Within the conference theme of "The New Normal", my colleagues Michael Stephens and Joanna Ptolomey and I had the honor of concluding the activities through our final panel entitled "The New Normal Needs A New You". We each summarized key takeaways from the conference and were very pleased with the obvious engagement from the audience - check out the #ili2011 tweets!
As usual, the ILI conference drew attendees from all over the world and offered them up to the minute insights into best practices in a wide range of professional domains. In advance, I had been asked for a brief statement for Information Today Europe - see http://bit.ly/qQ4M1z. I was encouraged to see how the conference sessions and conversations bore out my thoughts - and even more encouraged to find how much it seems information professionals are preparing for new realities. Here are some views I had the opportunity to articulate at ILI2011:
►As a profession, we must expand the definition of what we do. I had the chance to advance this opinion as a panelist at the preconference SLA Europe reception: "We must adjust our
vocabulary to reflect to employers that we are superbly suited in many non-library roles - say, as policy analysts and marketing specialists - due to our skills in data, information, and knowledge management". The desire to work in traditional libraries is indeed a respectable goal; it's just that the number of traditional library jobs is dwindling fast . There will not be jobs in libraries for many graduates of information schools.
►We live in an attention economy and in a self service culture. Bombarded by inputs all day long, our potential clients may never discover the value of what we can offer them; and - worse - what they can't imagine, they can't ask for. There is a perfect match between "what they need" and "what we can do" - but the perceptual gap is huge.
►Hence our current challenge is to describe our services in ways our clients find meaningful. Our words must resonate with employers or members of a community ("what's in it for us?"). To that end, we must know everything we can about their needs and pain points - so that we can speak to them directly and with relevance, in language they understand. Some say it's a learning curve to drop the professional jargon - I say it's a matter of keeping our work particulars to ourselves. No one cares that we do content management - but our clients do care about the outcomes: "Save time by … Find job opportunities quickly by … Get homework help for your children by … [etc etc]".
►We must fundamentally examine our activities and let go of ones no longer serving the priority needs of our target audiences. It does not matter how expertly we do X … if X is not high on the list of our clients' needs!
The conference ended on a shared note that our highest goal is "knowing and reaching the customers on their terms". Nothing new here … it's just that it's a harder goal to reach nowadays when our voices are but a few among the thousands our clients hear every day in their electronic din.
My co-panelists and I would be most pleased to hear from our readers on the topic of "the new normal".
