Occasionally, I notice something that raises questions or concerns for me and I start to focus on it (alright, maybe obsess, and maybe more than occasionally). Right now it is our lack of visibility (happily, I caught my spell check which inserted virility, which could also be true) on the political landscape, in fact on most landscapes.
A few weeks ago I wrote about Municipal World (and there are many other examples) which provides insights to the world of community building from the perspective of all of the players – planning, recreation and community services, fire, police, transportation and so on – except (dare I add “of course”) libraries.
Last week I was travelling to a conference with a colleague who had just attended a different conference on “analytics, big data and the cloud”. Definitely only of peripheral interest for sure, yet there were the conference streams or tracks, with all of the community players present –planning, recreation, culture, community services, fire, police, transportation and so on – except (dare I add “of course”) libraries. There were even sessions on changing citizen expectations (democracy), intelligent communities (smart homes) and foresight in community development (planning).
As “information professionals” how is it that we don’t know about these conferences and opportunities? How is it that our municipal colleagues are literally on the agenda, and on the program? We simply need better connections with city hall and its inhabitants and better means of getting to the venues where “our” issues, or at least those where we can contribute an important perspective or insight, are being discussed and debated by industry leaders.
I do think that our future depends, at least in part, on it.
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