Monday, January 23, 2006

SLA Leadership Summit - Final Thoughts

Friday night Joe Kraus & I joined Debra Bailey & her husband for dinner at a Tex Mex restaurant in Houston Heights. We then got a tour of some of the interesting architecture of the Museum District and a tour of the library at Rice University (which is currently under extensive renovation). We ended the evening at The Chocolate Bar.

On Saturday morning, I attended the open session of the Board of Directors meetings. It was a continuation of the Wednesday meeting, and was mostly reports from the Task Forces - you can read the reports at the SLA website. I only heard through Alliance & Partners report as I had to leave to catch my shuttle to the airport.

There were 2 other bloggers at the conference - the blogging section of SLA's IT Division blog and Marydee Ojala, editor of Online Magazine on the Online Insider blog. Check out their blogs for other perspectives of the Summit.

Friday, January 20, 2006

SLA Leadership Summit January 20, 2006

Unfortunately, due to a combination of housekeeping turning down the volume on the clock radio in my room and some medication I took for a headache last night, I missed the first part of today's sessions.

I got to hear the last half of the member forum to discuss issues being considered by the board of directors. Dav Robertson reported on Sue Johnson's effort to raise money for Muhammad Yaquib Chaudhary.

DC SLA is asking for your financial support for our colleague, Muhammad Yaquib Chaudhary, Library Director of the University of Azad Jammu and Kashmir. The entire campus was destroyed by the the Kashmir Earthquake in October. (see http://www.ajku.edu.pk/ ).The amount we can raise from individuals, chapters and divisions in SLA will be primarily a symbol of our personal support to him, but it would let him know we care and realize what he is facing. We expect he will use it to move what books and library shelves can be salvaged to Islamabad, where he has been personally tasked by the President of the university to find temporary quarters for the university, and living quarters for staff and students.


If you have any questions or concerns please contact Sue Johnson, Sueojohnson@hotmail.com; or 301-299-8268.

This session also included a brief report of SLA's involvement in the United Nations World Summit on the Information Society (WSIS). Janice Lachance attended the Summit in Tunisia in November 2005.

The next session was the Division Cabinet meeting. One member asked about the delay in getting membership rosters in a timely manner. John Crosby reported that due to changes in staff, they lost the capability to do certain reports and there were some delays in getting other information out. SLA will be bringing in a new database administrator, which should fix this problem. Daniel Lee reported on the Technology Review Advisory Report; that task force will be doing an inventory of technology used to support divisions and cabinets. After this meeting, I got a chance to meet Mangala Krishnamurthy, a PAM-er and member of our International Relations Committee.

We then had lunch, where the Board of Directors Candidates gave brief speeches. PAM member James Manasco is running for Chapter Cabinet Chair-Elect - he mentioned Liz Bryson & PAM's welcome at the first SLA conference he attended. Online voting for board candidates will begin January 23, 2005 and end on March 3, 2005 at 5:00 PM EST. The slate of candidates this year is excellent. Be sure to vote!

After lunch, we had a session on fundraising, one of the responsibilities of office for Division officers, a report on the SLA Public Relations Committee, and a session on the Value of Membership by Jill Calabria, the Director of Membership Marketing. PAM members will not be surprised to hear that networking and learning and the two benefits of SLA members most frequently mentioned.

Thursday, January 19, 2006

SLA Leadership Summit January 19, 2006

The Thursday Summit began with an excellent keynote address by Doug Lipp. As the former head of training at Disney University, he had excellent examples of creative strategies for leadership, teamwork and service. He is the author of Even Monkeys Fall From Trees. His keynote address discussed obstacles and opportunities to sucess. He described the importance of walking in the shoes of our clients and coworkers, describing his experience as a Disneyland street sweeper, pirate on the Pirates of the Caribbean ride, and as Tigger.

The second part of his talk was on the "Magic of Exceptional Leadership", discussing the balance of leadership, teamwork and service needed for successful leadership. What I found most interesting was his description of the various balancing acts that work for success - art and science, quality and quantity, skills and attitude, and maintenance and risk taking.

The afternoon session was a choice of two breakout sessions presented by Leadership Outfitters. They were the trainers at least year's Leadership Summit, and I was looking forward to this. I went to "The Triple Whammy: Change, Communication and Conflict". This was an interesting session, with several brainstorming activities related to the 3 themes. It included a few communication techniques for working with the 4 types from the Effectiveness Institute - the controller, the analyzer, the stabilizer, and the persuader. Joe Kraus attended the other session, but I haven't had a chance to ask him what he thought of it.

The day ended with a very nice reception hosted by the Texas chapter at The Downtown Club, a very nice site on the 49th floor of the Shell Plaza, with good food and a great view of Houston. We got a chance to see PAM's own Debra Bailey at the reception.

Wednesday, January 18, 2006

SLA Leadership Summit January 18, 2006

My day at the Summit started this afternoon at the open session of the Board of Directors Meeting. Nothing earth-shaking here (except for Dav Robertson's report of the Natural Disasters Task Force, which included some information on an SLA member library was destroyed by the Kashmir earthquake last fall - see the IPANDANET blog for details). Other reports included brief updates by the Baltimore and Denver program planning chairs, the acceptance of the 2004 SLA Audit report, a report on the SLA Board succession process (as SLA transitions to a January-December calendar), and a report by the Research Now Task Force. The Board meeting is scheduled to continue on Saturday.

I then attended the SLA Baltimore planning session. SLA expects this conference to be as big or bigger than Toronto, both in terms of number of attendees and in the number of sessions (13% more sessions). I also had time to verify a few details with other conference planners on some of the sessions we are cosponsoring. The Maryland chapter is working on a updating their Baltimore 2006 website with more information for Baltimore conference attendees, and has a blog they will be using to post more information for Baltimore attendees.

Finally, I attended the Denver conference planning session (while PAM Chair-Elect Joe Kraus is our official planner for the conference, I hope to share of the lessons learned I've made during the Baltimore planning). This conference should be interesting - I heard some interesting ideas being floated by the various science divisions, including sessions on avalanches, nanotechnology, open access (a perennial favorite) and I heard something about beer (I believe they want to take advantage of some of the 80 different beers brewed in the Mile Hile City). The Denver conference is June 3-6, 2007.

SLA Leadership Summit 2006

I will be blogging the SLA Leadership Summit in Houston.

The Summit starts with an open session of the Board of Directors meeting this afternoon.

Later this afternoon, our Chair-Elect, Joe Kraus, will be attending the Denver Program Planners sessions and I will be attending the Baltimore Program Planners session.

Laurel Kristick
Chair, Physics-Astronomy-Mathematics Division