Cindy Romaine became president of SLA for 2011. Her theme for her (very short) year is Future Ready. As a past president of a few associations, I know that one year is a very short time!
One of her initiatives is the Future Ready 365 blog. I’ve been meaning to blog about this blog myself since I returned from the 2011 SLA Leadership Summit. Add the blog to your RSS feeds and participate if you’re moved to. You’ll win by reading the different ideas and perspectives.
The real question is how do we build on the past in librarianship and respect that as well as prepare ourselves to be totally ready for the future which is always there and changing. There are those librarians who think that every experiment or pilot that attempts to discover new ways to address future and present challenges is dissing the past. I am not one of them. Librarianship has a great past and has the resilience and capacity for change as demonstrated by our extensive adoption and leadership in many of the very things that are changing the world today. One of the things about associations like SLA is that we learn to recognize that we’re all in this together. There is no need for absolutely everyone to be expert at everything. It takes a team, a village, an association, whatever. Indeed it only takes a few to move the needle towards the future. I am an association junkie and know the power of collective effort, small team leadership, and the awesome things that collective effort can achieve. We can move mountains and change the world – because we work and play together.
I support Cindy’s initiative to use this blog to kickstart the conversation to have something every day in 2011 about how we might be more future ready as a profession. Got something to add? Participate! Wanna whine without any suggestions on how to make things better? Stay home, we have enough of that in the world today. Be different. We need leadership like Cindy’s now not whiners.
I am crafting my contributions for Cindy and SLA now and will add them to blog soon. Hmmm – what do we need to know to be future ready?
Stephen
2 Responses
Stay in touch with the conversation, subscribe to the RSS feed for comments on this post.
Stephen,
I’m glad the Future Ready initiative resonates with you! I’m interested in getting your insight and ideas on how YOU are ready for the future.
What I love about Future Ready 365 blog is that it is an initiative that honors the proverb to “practice what you preach.” The simple, although challenging, concept of moving forward through community and collaboration seems to be a primary goal of the blog. I believe the first step to being future ready is to be open-minded to other’s ideas while at the same time being willing to share your own insights. I can’t wait to find and share new ideas on the blog. Thanks for the heads-up, Stephen.