Collabforge senior consultant Darren Sharp recently returned from a trip to Canberra as an invited speaker to the National Library of Australia’s Innovative Ideas Forum 2009 (IIF).
The topic for this year’s IIF was ‘The value and significance of social networking for cultural institutions’ with a particular emphasis on social networking innovations through which online services engage with their users in the development of their content. The line up included Marcus Gillezeau (Firelight Productions); Anne Summers (author & journalist); Mark Scott (Managing Director of the ABC); Rose Holley (ANDP); Darren Sharp (Collabforge); Jillian Dellit (The Le@rning Federation); and Jo Kay (Second Life Designer).
Darren’s presentation “Library 2.0: citizens co-creating culture” explored the modes and means of community engagement through social media and how to leverage stakeholders to co-create services through user-led innovation. It also explored the concept of Library 2.0 which Casey & Savastinuk essentially define as a re-orientation towards “user-centered change”:
It is a model for library service that encourages constant and purposeful change, inviting user participation in the creation of both the physical and the virtual services they want, supported by consistently evaluating services. It also attempts to reach new users and better serve current ones through improved customer-driven offerings.
Darren’s presentation can be viewed here in its entirety:
Darren was also interviewed by the Canberra Times for a story about Twitter following his IIF2009 presentation which can be read here.
The National Library of Australia embraced this year’s forum topic by starting a blog and encouraging all attendees to use the ‘iif2009’ tag for all blog posts, presentations or flickr photos and the hash-tag ‘#iif2009’ for tweets. This helped coordinate a fantastic Twitter backchannel (See Katie Hannan’s [@katykat] brilliant forum summary using the Twitter stream) that provided audience-generated context and conversations about the presentations as they were happening live on stage.
Darren developed a “Social Networking Manifesto” to encourage the NLA through the following provocations:
- Utilise the power of a real-time social infrastructure!
- Provide access points to the Social Web!
- Start a conversation with the public!
- Be vigilant about owning your social media handle!
- Create your own community of lead users!
- Collaborate using wiki-based platforms!
This advice applies to any organisation that’s serious about engaging with their stakeholders and wider community via the Social Web.
Please contact Mark.Elliott @ collabforge.com or Darren.Sharp @ collabforge.com if you’re considering going down this path.