Bibcamp 2013 Day 1

Finally in the land of the prezel.
The 6th edition of the legendary German library unconference Bibcamp takes place in the Franconian capital of Nuremberg wich is famous among other things for their tasty prezels. At least 5 different tastes of prezels among them a chocolate covered sweet one, thats what haven must be like. But enough of the prezels.

Nearly 150 librarians from all over Germany, Austria, Swizerland and Italy organized a professional program of 14 Session on Day 1.
Among them such intresting ones as “fail nicely” about how the Germans should overvome the angst of failing. You see in Germany we have no culture of failing, so in the library community we only have successful projects or the ones which must not be named aka the failed ones. But we could learn so much from our mistakes.
Another Session spareked a discussion about new technologies in libraries and how to facilitate the inevitable change process so that no librarian is left behind. Again the main motive of resitance was identified as angst. The fear to to loose ones tasks which had been perfected over the decades, for wich one is beeing valued. The fear to change as irrational as it might seem to the restless New Professional must not be underestimated. One interesting solution could be the appointement of an comfort manager to make the change process as smooth as possible for everyone. On the other hand I want to share an off the record qoute: “innovation must hurt”.
One of the later sessions adressed the issue of open innovation in the way of an interactive workshop. First the participants together with the moderator defined what the concepts of “innovation” (implement new, different or refine products, services or structures) and “open”(participation of users, non users, potential users, investors, external experts, internal staff as well as openess toward the outcome and thinking outside the box) ment in the context of the library. By adhering to the model of innovation as the intersection of the users desirability, technical feasibility and economic viability a brainstorming followed on how to come up with ideas for innovations in an open way. In the last part of the workshop the participants constructed a conceptual workflow on how to implement an open innovaton process in a library, guided by the moderator as a certified innovation manager. The workflow includes a not to large (10-12) group of people as defined under the “open” definition wich for a not to long period of time (10-20 min.) brainstorm a lot of ideas and then voting for the best ones (3-1) followed by a testing of a simple prototype of the ideas on the intended user group. To conclude: this was one of the most productive sessions on this day do to the demanding workshop concept and an engaged audience.
The first day of #bib6 ended in casual discussion with lots of pizza and beer.
Until tomorrow