The two-day Intelligent Information Symposium in May 2012 in Sydney featured workshops and keynote speakers on topics related to the future of libraries and information professionals. Day 1 included workshops on preparing for multiple futures and disruptive forces that may impact libraries by 2018-2025. Day 2 consisted of keynote speeches on engaging customers online, failing productively to drive learning, and envisioning post-print libraries, as well as intensive sessions on social media strategies and connecting clients to resources. The conference explored challenges and opportunities for the field.

1. Intelligent Information Symposium
2012
May 3-4 in Sydney
At the Sofitel Wentworth.

2. Quite a glamorous hotel!

3. Day 1: Workshops
• First ever annual conference.
• Three different workshops to choose from.
• Preparing for Multiple Futures – Taken by Steve
O’Connor.

4. Preparing for Multiple Futures.
Be aware of multiple futures
• Perception is more important than reality.
• Value that is not valued is not valuable.
• Patrons do not need Librarians as they once did.
• Organisations capabilities define it’s disabilities.
• Strategic planning. Not just planning for one future.

5. • In order to see futures, we need to be outsiders
and to have an Outside-in view.
• Suggested read Social Psychology rather than
library/literature magazines for an outside view.

6. Disruptive forces
According to Future files by Richard Watson
• Extinction summaries:
• 2018: Libraries, Blackberries, video rentals
• 2020: Copyright
• 2025: Desktop computers, blogging.
• If libraries are extinct, is the librarian extinct?

7. • Percentage of information delivered into the
library: Print - Digital - Web
• What is the plan for the next three years?

8. Basically a huge afternoon.
• And the conference has barely begun!
• Day 2 was even bigger!

9. Day 2
• Keynote, Intelligent Sessions and Panel day!
8am – 4pm
• Plenty of great catering and chatter in between!

10. Keynote 1:
Engaging customers in an online world
Karen Stocks, Google/Yahoo Australia
• Youtube is HUGE and very super cool.
• 10.8 million Australians watch online video.
• 79% of all internet users
• 10 hours per person uploaded
• Currently a THIRD of all web traffic and estimated
to be 90% by 2014.

11. • 500 years of video watched on facebook. 700 videos a
minute on twitter.
• Sharing is viral and has no frontier.
• The cost of production is trending to zero.
• Entertainment is not the only reason for using youtube.
Information is also an important factor.
• Great content can come from anywhere.
• Life is for sharing. 
• Suggested viewing for examples: Youtube Symphony
Orchestra, Life in a Day – A crowd sourced documentary
and Khan Academy.

12. Keynote 2: Failing in the right
direction.
• Taken by Kate Carruthers and Nic Hodges
• Learning doesn’t happen from failure itself but
rather from analysing the failure, making a change,
and then trying again. Over time this gives you a
deep understanding of the problem domain. –
Michael Hunter – Fail Fast 2005
http://blogs.msdn.com/b/michael/archive/2005/0
8/17/failfast.aspx
• http://www.slideshare.net/carruthk/failing-in-the-
right-direction

13. Making the impossible, possible.
• Failing often, failing fast.
• Social media does not mean just facebook, or
mirroring our online and offline connections.
• Out of social networks came the WWW. (IRC,
ICQ, BBS boards)
• Online projection of our offline self.
• Social media returning to a collective mindset.

14. • Social creation platforms: Wikipedia,
soundcloud, quora
• Social curation: Pinterest, tumblr, svpply
• Social funding: Kickstarter, pozible, bandcamp
• Social Data: data.gov.au, kaggle (making data
science a sport), digital public library of
America, Harvard library motivation lab.

15. • Issues: Authenticity, too much information, sea
of content, rights of use, trust, privacy.

16. Intelligent Sessions
• These were great, fast paced 30 minute sessions and
there were 9(!!!!!!!!) to choose from!
• I attended:
• ‘Information experience’ in social media spaces:
Emerging research and what it means for the
information professionals.
• How to get started on your social media strategy.
• Connecting clients to your resources – any way you can.
• No masses of slides here, or notes.

17. Keynote 3:
Libraries in a Post Print world.
• Taken by Joan Frye Williams
• Big changes are afoot and no one is asking for
permission.
• It’s not clear whether print is dying, but there is
an excitement for things not possible in print.
• There are factors we can’t influence.
• More people associate libraries with books now,
than ten years ago.
• Access not ownership

18. • But there are factors we can influence.
• Rethink:
▫ Just in case inventory control
▫ Circulation as a measure of usage.
▫ Timeliness measured in days
▫ Collection centric accountability.
▫ Quality = control.
• Libraries should be all things to all people.