Announcing the Conversants Conference

Call for Participation and Collaboration

Announcing “Conversants 🙂 A Participatory Conversation,” a new idea in professional development for challenging economic times.

We invite you to join the movement to create and share information through worldwide coordinated conversations. Library communities and organizations are uniquely poised to employ the latest collaborative resources; the conversations that result from these collaborations hold great promise for students and practitioners across the information professions. Sharing knowledge and expertise via these collaborative conversations as part of a united effort is both beneficial and necessary, so we invite you lend your voice and join us in this unique event. Become a Conversant!

This effort is spearheaded by R. David Lankes with support from the Information Institute at Syracuse University, librarians and library students.

Theme: Participatory Librarianship

Save the date: Session Proposals are Due April 16th and Ongoing Virtual Sessions will begin April 30th, 2009. A Hybrid Event will take place at ALA in Chicago.

Call for participation:

Virtual sessions will be coordinated through the conference site, but can take place anywhere on the Internet. Blog posts, Second Life presentations, FriendFeed rooms, videos, etc., are all encouraged.

We need participation in the following two areas:

Proposal submissions

We will be soliciting involvement at many levels of participation. Some ways that you can contribute include:

Papers – Traditional long-form papers will be considered for publication in Conversants, an online open-access journal. These papers will use CommentPress to allow participants to comment upon and discuss the paper on a paragraph-by-paragraph basis.

Events – We are also seeking time- and/or place-based events that can be archived and shared. Examples might include a SecondLife presentation, which can archived as a streaming video and shared with participants, or a podcast of a workshop or discussion that took place at a physical library.

Cases – Do you have an example of something that you did at your library that worked really well? Or that flopped spectacularly? Share your experience with your fellow Conversants! Creativity in format is encouraged.

Posters – Present your research, tackle an idea or controversial topic, or present conflicting viewpoints of a current event. Everyone is welcome to submit poster proposals, but library students are especially encouraged to participate at this level.

Postings – Blog postings, open Facebook posts, etc., that will carry a conference badge (that links to the conference hub with an associated conversation).

Conversations – All Conversants will be encouraged to participate in the conversations that will be happening throughout the event. In addition, special “water cooler” threaded conversations on a topic or issue of your choosing will be encouraged. Proposals should include an overview of the topic, starter questions, and a core of at least 5 people to seed/start conversation.

Conference Facilitators

In addition to the above, in order to ensure that this global conversation goes smoothly, people are needed to assist the core group in the following ways:

Technical support – Assist with the managing the Conversant web site, which will include pointers to the various conversations.

Participant support – Create tutorials, pathfinders, publicity, etc.

Reviewers – Review and qualify papers and posters.

Session moderators – To act as hosts or conversation facilitators.

Please send Proposal submissions and Conference Facilitator offers to:

[email protected]

For Proposal Submission, please include “Proposal for Conversants” in the subject.
For Conference Facilitators, please include “Facilitation for Conversants” in the subject.