I was in Shah Alam this morning attending the CoP, Klang Valley 2007, Get Together at Seminar Room, PTAR, UITM Shah Alam, organized by UiTM/Paradigm Systems. It was meant more for ILMU users. I have several reasons to be there.
To network with fellow practitioners to share our experience and to market ourselves
Since the topic was actually and introduction of CoP and I knew would be a new thing to most. I wanted to help to make sure we are doing and introducing it properly so that the community would be effective
Also, since the subject of competency was another topic of discussion our experience would be very useful to share
Lastly, to at least help to give the true picture of what KM is suppose to be.
Unfortunately, due to my early morning meeting I was late getting there. I actually left the office at 1046 and reached the Seminar room around 1130 when the second session was already coming to an end. Thus I could not contribute much. Reading the handouts I had my worries.
Firstly, the slides on the introduction to CoP was too academic and not properly contextualize to the audience. Secondly, I found out the KM framework that was used to contextualize the concept was too limiting. I doubt it brought clarity to explain what CoP means to librarians. Thirdly, the second paper on competency also was a bit academic and did not incorporate the real world needs. With all due respect to all I am not trying to belittle the efforts but more trying to help as for so many times already we missed opportunities just because we did not understand enough of the new things and apply them appropriately within the profession. Fourth, I was told the workshop on Competency for Librarians after lunch was a repeat of what they have done in PD. This is the fallacy of Best Practices that we have to be aware. What works before do not necessarily will work again and this time certainly failed to me. I would have preferred for the session to be an open discussion. It was so unfortunate as well that I had to leave the session early after lunch for my teleconference session at the office.
The other observation that I could make was that the seminar room arrangement was not suitable for session like we had. It would have been better if it was horse shoe of half moon to give opportunity for everyone to face each other. The arrangement was not audience friendly. The way the session was conducted could also be improved by doing it in a discussion and conversation mode rather than just presentations. This is something I believe we need to improve urgently.
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