Organising a Conference: Beyond the Horizon

 

By Claire Eastaugh
Student and New Professional Representative, CILIP NE Member Network
Research Assistant Information Specialist, Newcastle University
MSc Information Science Library Management student, Northumbria University

Back in September 2020 I wrote a post for the blog Nothing Ventured, Nothing Gained – Becoming a Student Again. In it, I described the stress and uncertainty of changing careers and going back to school, but if you don’t try you won’t succeed. Well, that sentiment stands true when it came time to organise the Beyond the Horizon conference.

The conference took place on Monday 17^th May 2021 in the afternoon. That was a couple of months ago and honestly, it feels like its taken me that long to realise its happened and that I can sit and reflect on it: lessons learned and all the does and don’ts.

This is a big event for the CILIP North East Member Network and Liz Jolly, the Chief Librarian at the British Library, was lined up as our Key Note speaker. And that’s it. With the COVID pandemic lockdown in place the committee agreed the conference would be virtual instead of at The Common Room in Newcastle and would take place in May. Volunteers were requested and I saw this as a good opportunity to work with fellow committee members and produce a key event in our calendar. This was during our October committee meeting and it was seven months until the event. This is an extremely tight timeframe to organise an event and there were obstacles and challenges to contend with that we didn’t foresee.

At first, I was one of three committee members to volunteer, unfortunately due to work and personal commitments, two had to withdraw from the BtH organisation committee. Mike Dann, Academic and Research Libraries representative stepped in to assist. This all took place over the holiday period where is was difficult to find time in schedules to organise planning meetings. We had questions which in hindsight seem very straightforward, but they were essential to the initial planning stages: how do we book the CILIP Zoom account? Do we want our speakers to be CILIP members only? What would the ticket price point be? What will the schedule look like?

I kept reminding myself, that if you don’t know something you can’t assume. The committee has a Best Practice document for event planning, and it was helpful but the scale of Beyond the Horizon was out of scope of the document and involved elements we’d never done before. We used the Best Practice document as much as we could but the conference To Do list seemed to be increasing with very little traction. Added to this, I had started working full time, was continuing my studies at University and was home schooling my son due to lockdown. I had very little time and my energy was waning.

One of the biggest assets being on CILIP North East Member Network are the committee members. Their experience, contacts, skills and knowledge are invaluable, so I put the plea out for help, and got it!

From this point on my email notifications went crazy and it was great. Having the help of Suzie Williams, Committee Secretary, and Leanne Young, Interim Chair/Digital Champion was invaluable. Getting drafts proofed, schedules laid down, presentation submission survey created, event page created, social media postings… things I need support with and things I didn’t have time to do.

The Call for Papers didn’t go out until mid-March, which is close to the event date and not ideal. The decision was made to allow 2 weeks for proposals to be made and we would carry out the selection process the first week of April with notifications going to speakers two days later. I was terrified no one would submit a paper. I knew the Call had gone out and some interest was shown but I’d pretty much convinced myself no one was going to submit. Thankfully I was wrong. The submissions were strong and covered a range of topics and fields within the Library and Information sectors and I along with five other committee members selected our presenters. Best of all, all the speakers selected were committed and excited to take part.

In the lead up to the event I tried to maintain contact with the speakers, for me it was important that they not feel forgotten about and know that there was someone at the other end of an email, feeling part of the event even before the day itself. I on the other hand had stress dreams: not having necessary passwords, internet problems, speakers dropping out, coffee spills on my laptop.

Really, I shouldn’t have worried.

On the day there was a great team of people set to support the event. Dr Biddy Casselden, Library School Representative was set to Host, Suzie Williams and Sarah Sparham were going to monitor the chat, Jennie Hillyard, Youth Library Group NE Representative was live tweeting the event from the @CILIPNE account and I was co-host and in charge of the technical aspects.  I remember the entire morning feeling like I had electricity going through me I was so nervous. I had prepared, I had tested, I had everything set up and organised, I had a great team set on the day.

Personally, I think the afternoon worked wonderfully. Not without its faults, but my stress dreams didn’t come true. Phew! The afternoon itself is a little bit of  blur to me so I encourage you to read about an attendees account, Julia Oliver wrote an article about it for this blog, 'Beyond the Horizon' CILIP NE Conference - event review.

Beyond the Horizon is a wonderful opportunity for speakers, local, national and international; from Libraries sector, Information sector or somewhere in-between; for new speakers and new professionals to more experienced. The conference is reflection of the CILIP North East Members Network. I hope, for my part, I did it justice.

Lessons Learned

As I’ve said the event wasn’t without fault, and as a first-time organiser there were a lot of hits and misses. These are some of my main takes, some are lessons I’ve learned from the process, some I would repeat in future undertakings.

• Define organisational roles and duties
• Create task list with smart timescales
• Arrange regular organisation meetings which will take place with greater frequency as the event draws closer and include necessary people only (monthly > fortnightly > weekly)
• Open Call for Papers with at least a month for consideration
• Notify successful presenters with at least a month in advance
• Have a centralised email address for contact
• Advertising should include all speakers other than the Key Note
• Use Google Forms for Call for Papers submissions
• Regular contact with speakers in the lead-up
• Ask for help

Contact information:

Twitter: @vadania82

Instagram: @clairedrinkstea

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