How the networked organization approach made a difference at the LGBTI ALMS 2012 conference.
A week has passed since the LGBTI
ALMS 2012 conference, designed as a networked
organization event, and it
is clear that our approach had extraordinary results.
Lin McDevitt-Pugh delivering networking workshop |
It all happened. All of it.
Our methods were invented and I will share them.
It began with the vision. It always begins with the vision.
As organizers we were clear about what we were up to, what legacy our conference
would leave in the world. By 2020 every young LGBTI person will wander into a
cultural heritage institute and be at home, because they are part of the
history.
Putting together the call for proposals we explored what
kinds of contributions, and from whom, would move us toward this vision. We
knew who we needed in the room. We chose to focus on Europe and North America
and be open to the contribution of people from other parts of the world. We
knew we wanted the conversation to be about lesbians, gay men, bisexuals, trans
and intersex people. People working on LGBTI cultural heritage in community
organizations, in academic organizations and in mainstream institutions. We
wanted to see how students, the young wise folk, were bringing together what
they were learning with what could be.
We selected a broad group of advisors and they sharpened the
focus while ensuring it was including the vast colourful palet of what can be
seen as LGBTI heritage work. From ancient Greek art to oral histories of black
communities in London, from the writings of poets to those of pamphletists.
Our content committee analaysed the proposals and noted the gaps. There were
countries missing, institutes missing, themes missing. We noticed very few
people offered to discuss the cultural heritage of trans and bisexual people
and no one really was working on intersex. So again we went out to our advisors
and our networks and found new people to invite and great speakers to address the missing topics - speakers
you would perhaps not normally find on a conference for the world of gay
heritage. One was a professor in law relating to trans. He was able to show
very graphically how representation of trans was interpreted and how this
affects how trans is ‘collected’ in a heritage sense. Was the woman soldier in
the 18th century butch, like some say, or trying to get away from a
staid situation at home, like others say, or was it actually a woman who liked
wearing male-designated clothing? Collection, we heard time an again, was a lot
about having an opinion about someone, and often that opinion is pinned down to
the paradigms of thinking – the memes – of the day. Those opinions may not be
valid in 30 years time, and then what happens to the collection? Will the women
dressed as men be findable, with etiquettes plastered on their index cards that
make no sense 50 years from now? The legal profession can provide valuable
input into methods of making the past visible and accessible.
One quite big gap was in the supplier side of the work of
librarians, archivists and people in museums. I wasn’t surprised we didn’t receive offers of contributions
from suppliers. It is an unusual conference for suppliers to be involved in. Yet from the work I do with LGBTI people within corporations I know that there are
suppliers to the, lets say, heritage industry that are actually very
interesting for the heritage industry to know. Their approach to LGBT in the workplace can offer new
insights for heritage workers. In my mind I was thinking that it is quite
possible that the director of a museum is concerned that making gay history
visible, sponsors may respond negatively. The work of IBM in the
field of LGBT at work shows that productivity in the organization increases
when there is a practice of valuing people being out at work. I hoped that
there could be some cross-fertilization of ideas at the management level as
well as the content level. I was happy that IBM agreed to speak at the
conference. it brought in a different perspective to the subject at hand.
We had a full program of speakers, some with a 30-minute
presentation, most with 10 minutes.
Our format was partially borrowed from a format of speakers
I enjoyed at the L-Women at Work
conference I spoke at last year. At that conference, people were offered a 6,
12 or 20-minute slot. I liked that I was able to hear every speaker. At so many
conferences you have to choose. What I felt could be improved is the way
pathways were created to increase interactions between participants. Our team
felt we could improve on the format in three ways. A fourth innovation was very
particular to the heritage world.
First, we asked the 10-minute speakers to post their
contribution on our conference blog
so that people could read before they came to the conference what the person
would speak about. This is after all the age of connectivity, and there is
really no need to arrive uninformed of the content at a conference. By reading
the papers beforehand people had a better chance of getting what they had come
all the way to Amsterdam to get: new connections, new inspiration, new ideas
and a lot of fun. The 30-minute speakers were welcome to post on the blog, but
could also keep their contribution as a ‘surprise’.
Secondly, we felt that there could be some organization
added to the informal interactions. In a totally unorganized, informal setting,
it is possible for people to walk up to a speaker after the presentation and
chat, perhaps over coffee. But do you do that? Were they so impressive that you
think they wouldn’t want to talk with you? Or would a friend get in first and
monopolize the person’s time. There are many reasons not to talk with someone
and many people just aren’t used to walking up to a speaker and asking things
about the presentation. We chose
to facilitate informal communications by organizing breakout sessions. We
placed two speakers from the previous section of the program in a room together
and invited people to go to that room and talk more. There was no structure, no
further organization. No right way to hold a breakout session. People are adult
and could figure out themselves how to make good use of the time available.
Feedback on the breakout sessions was very enthusiastic. People really talked
with each other and shared ideas.
The third innovation was fun for all of us. We began the
conference with a mini networking workshop. We were aware that most people in the auditorium did not
know the other people. About 75 percent of the participants had never been to
the previous editions of the conference. In the workshop, my first task was to
get everybody on the same page about what ‘networking’ is. We explored what
people regard a network to be and then how to translate that to a verb. If a
network is connection between people, networking is making connections. The
participants were then asked to define for themselves their networking goals
and then to share these with their neighbour. If they were sitting alone they
were asked to move. Standing in
front of the room watching perfect strangers animatedly talk with each other
about why they were here was mind blowing. I then ran around with the mike, asking volunteers to share
what their neighbour’s networking goals were. Suddenly people were engaged with
each other and, as one participant later remarked, awake.
The fourth innovation was particularly successful perhaps
because it spoke to the passions of the archivists and collectors who had
travelled to Amsterdam to be part of this conference. IHLIA’s colleagues
at Aletta E-Quality, the 75 year old
collection of the history of the Dutch and international women’s movement,
invited conference participants to a tour of their library and archives on the
day preceding the conference. Aletta E-Quality senior staff member Evelien
Rijsbosch later told me how she saw networking unfold, as she led the groups of
participants around the superb collection. People who didn’t know each other
were talking together, asking questions, debating answers. When she later
attended the conference she noticed how people who had come into her institute
disparate and alone were now connected.
So what is networking? It is knowing what you want, asking
others for their input, and giving generously when others let you know what
they need. A conference is a great place to build strong networks.
Lin McDevitt-Pugh MBA
Lin McDevitt-Pugh is director of NetSHEila and expert in networked organizations.
She provides training to schools, universities, public and private companies
and employee networks, supporting them to do more, with more fun, by utilizing
the circles of people in which they operate.
For more on the conference, see the conference website.
For more on the conference, see the conference website.
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