I think it is fair to say that our annual Autumn Gathering was an enormous success. All the delegate places were sold and there was a fantastic buzz about the Carnegie Conference Centre in Dunfermline all day. The office staff did a magnificent job in organising this event and in putting together a really interesting programme with great speakers.
The Autumn Gathering has established itself very quickly as one of the most vibrant events on our professional scene in Scotland and this year it very much lived up to that reputation. Our day opened with Biddy Fisher who provided an excellent philosophical overview of information literacy and gave us much food for thought. It was a great way to kick off the day.
The programme was very carefully crafted so that there was something for everyone, regardless of which professional sector or background you come from. That is the hallmark of a good event as far as I am concerned. In the parallel sessions the focus remained on literacies and, judging by the volume of tweets and the informal feedback, people came away stimulated and with many ideas to apply in their own organisations.
In the afternoon, we heard from Hannah Gore from the Open University on their incredibly dynamic platform, Social Learn which, again judging by the chat afterwards really caught the imagination of delegates. Afterwards three more parallel sessions and I took myself off to hear Thomas Connelly speak about the John Gray Centre (no surprises there then).
Our day was rounded off in spectacular style by Dughall McCormick who gave a wonderful presentation on literacies in a primary education context about the importance of teaching kids how to be really savvy in an online environment. This was delivered brilliantly, with much humour but with many serious messages. Some brilliantly funny videos were included including one about a poor individual whose exploits in setting light to his farts went viral (bad choice of words there) online. Never before have so many librarians been so enthral led by flaming farts as today. Dughall was brilliant and he has won himself many fans in Scotland today.
So, overall, I think we can be justifiably proud of our Autumn Gathering and as Dughall predicted say it was the best ever.
No comments:
Post a Comment