How to organize workshops and seminars more productive

[Vimal Kumar V.]

I am writing this piece for drawing the attention of library professionals who are going to organize workshops, seminar and other related events. Recently lot of announcements of such programmes received through popular online discussions forums. Most of the announcements contained minimum information and had no provision to know more about the programme. Library professionals are missing the opportunity to attend professional development activities due to the lack of getting proper information. Getting professional training and knowledge enhancement through various programmes are important for professional development. Library professionals who are involved in organizing continuing education programme deserve appreciation. Organizers should care to capture and disseminate the knowledge emanated in professional development activities. In most of the cases, no facilities arranged to capture the talk and seem no related activities after the programs. Here are my humble suggestions to make the career development programmes more worth.

1. Create a workshop/seminar website. If no technical help available, make use a blog service for this purpose. Blogs are suitable for fast and frequent content updating.
2. Provide maximum details in website. Organise information under various heads, e.g. Registration, Paper submission, Accommodation, etc. Schedule the sessions as early as possible.
3. Avoid displaying entire brochure in picture format in website. Huge brochure file will take time to display the content.
4. Make use Open Conference Systems (http://pkp.sfu.ca/?q=ocs) to automate conference activities.
5. Announce the seminar/workshop at least 30 days before. It will help the working professionals to obtain permission from authority and make arrangement for travel.
6. Remember to give programme website link in discussion forum posting.
7. If organizers have no plan to publish submitted papers, make arrangement for archive papers in institutional or any public repository (e.g. http://eprints.rclis.org)
8. Make available workshop kit online after the event.
9. Arrange facilities for post conference discussions.
10. Record key talks and publish it online using streaming audio/video services (e.g. youtube.com)
In this way, library professionals not able to attend the programmes can access the content of the seminar/workshop.

I invite your feed back.

[Dr. Badan Barman]

Thanks for your post. I just want to draw the attention of the reader of this post to another post entitled "27 Things To Do Before a Conference".

[prahaladaraomungara]

i agree with burman but before attending any work shop /course one should be prepared to attend. The participent should prepare him self with little knowledge about the topic/s what it is dealing etc. so one should do some home work before attending/some more immediately and follwed by maximum after the event to full benefit of the event. Again it all depends on the interest of the participent only