🔨 Workshop: Fail4Lib @ SWIB24

[akorphan]

Workshop facilitator(s)

Andreas Orphanides (@akorphan)

Abstract

Everyone experiences failure in their professional lives, but no one likes to talk about it. When we see failure approaching, we distance ourselves, avert our eyes, or – if we’re in its path – brace for the worst. But failure has intrinsic value and is an essential step on the path to professional and organizational success. And since it’s inevitable, we ought to learn how to look back on our failures to derive value from them, and how to look ahead so that our past failures can inform our future successes.

Fail4Lib is a workshop dedicated to discussing and coming to terms with the failures that we all encounter in our work as information professionals. It originated as a preconference workshop at the Code4Lib annual conference, and we now hope to offer it at SWIB24. Fail4Lib is a safe space for us to explore failure, to talk about our own experiences with failure, and to encourage enlightened risk taking. The goal of Fail4Lib is for participants – and their organizations – to get better at failing gracefully, so that when we do fail, we do so in a way that moves us forward.

This 4-hour workshop includes three major components: a case-study review of a high-profile failure, presentation of failure lightning talks from workshop participants, and a structured discussion of our personal and organizational relationships with failure and approaches to accepting and learning from it.

To register your participation in this workshop click on the “Going” button above. You will then receive an email notification as soon as facilitators post an update. Watch out to not register for two parallel workshops.

[akorphan]

Hello, Fail4Libbers!

Thanks for signing up for this special presentation of Fail4Lib at SWIB24! Soon I will be posting some “homework” for everyone - a few articles to read to prepare for our case study discussion. Be on the lookout for that post!

In the meantime, it’s time to think about lightning talks!

One of the key elements to Fail4Lib is the opportunity for us to share our own failures in a safe environment. To that end, a part of the session will be dedicated to lightning talks where participants discuss failures they’ve experienced in their own work. A failure lightning talk is a 5-10 minute rundown of some professional failure that you were a party to, and the lessons you learned from it. Highly informal, slides optional, and completely voluntary! We generally have three or four lightning talks in a workshop, but there’s some flexibility.

To give you an idea, here are the slides to a lightning talk by Becky Yoose (shared with permission), from a past Fail4Lib that took place at Code4Lib a number of years ago.

If you would like to do a lightning talk, or are thinking about it and want more information or encouragement, please reply to this comment either here or by sending me a direct message, or email me at akorphan@ncsu.edu.

The content of lightning talks will not be recorded, or shared outside of the workshop session without your consent.

Lightning talks are in many ways the heart of the Fail4Lib experience, so I hope you’ll consider sharing!

[akorphan]

Hello again, Fail4Libbers!

It’s just a few short weeks until Fail4Lib, and it’s time to start getting ready in earnest, so that we can make sure that Fail4Lib is as rewarding as possible. To that end, there are two things I’m asking of participants.

1. Consider doing a lightning talk!
One of the key elements to Fail4Lib is the opportunity for us to share our own failures in a safe environment. I’m still looking for a few brave individuals to speak on their own experiences with failure for a few minutes. I’d like three or four volunteers who are willing to put together 5-10 minute talks on their own experiences. If you are willing, I’ll provide more detail.

I can’t stress enough the importance of lightning talks to making Fail4Lib a success, so please do consider it! You can email me, DM me, or post right here.

2. Get ready for the case study!
Another key component of Fail4Lib is a review of case studies, where we look at failures from the professional world that are (usually) much larger than the ones we experience on a day to day level. Not only does this give us a healthy perspective on our own failures, it allows us to take lessons from well-analyzed failures and integrate those lessons into our own work.

Usually I try to pick a case study topic outside of libraries, but this year an obvious choice seemed to be the British Library cyber-incident of October 2023. I think there’s a lot for us to take away from this topic, in terms of reflecting on our own institutions’ best and worst practices, thinking about institutional inertia and political appetites for change and infrastructure investment, and considering how we discuss and respond to risk as individuals, as institutions, and as a larger community.

Please read the BL’s own report on the cyberattack in preparation for our discussion. You might also want to give the Wikipedia page on the incident a skim to get a high-level overview.

---

Thanks, folks! Your participation is the key to Fail4Lib’s success, so I hope you’ll be willing to play an active role! Please drop a line if you have any questions, or if you’re interested in doing a lightning talk.

[acka47]

Dear participants of the Fail4Lib workshop at SWIB24,

the Fail4Lib workshop encourages and lives from exchange within the SWIB community. As @akorphan writes above, please think about sharing your experiences in a lightning talk during the workshop. Otherwise, we might end up with a short version of Fail4Lib comprising only one lightning talk titled “We tried to hold a Fail4Lib workshop at SWIB24 but nobody participated”.

[akorphan]

One of the things that’s always brought me peace when planning Fail4Lib is that if it all goes to pieces, I can use it as a case study in a future year.

That said, I’d rather avoid that if possible!

[AnkasZBW]

We made another announcement which features your workshop especially. I hope it helps! 📣 SWIB24 announcements - #15 by AnkasZBW

[akorphan]

We now have our first confirmed lightning talk! In addition, we have a second that’s a “maybe”. Thanks to the intrepid volunteers who have agreed to participate!

I would love to get two more lightning talks for our workshop! Who are our last two brave participants? Your participation is very important to the workshop! And you will be rewarded by getting to share your failure in a supportive and welcoming environment.

See you all on the 25th!

[akorphan]

Hi folks!

Our workshop on Monday will take place on Zoom. According to my shaky time-zone math (and Discourse’s time-zone conversion), our workshop begins at noon Eastern time (17:00 UTC). Here’s a link for the event:

Join our Cloud HD Video Meeting

We will have three lightning talks for our session! Thanks to our intrepid volunteers. We may have time for additional contributions if anyone is moved to speak in the moment, as well, so think about whether you have a story you may want to share.

The agenda:

• Introductions
• Case study
• Lightning talks
• Talking / commiserating about failure and organizational philosophy

Be sure to read the homework if you haven’t already!

Thanks everyone! See you there,
Dre.

[akorphan]

Today’s the big day! See you all in a few hours!

[NumerousHats]

I will be late due to another zoom, but hope I won’t miss too much. And yes, I’m still up for a lightning talk.