I’m gaining quite a discouraging picture of my professional development through doing the 23 things. I’ve already found out that I’m a reluctant user of online networking tools and am about to admit that I do very little in the way of face-to-face professional networking either. I suppose this is part of 23 things though, to help us find some professional strengths and weaknesses and introduce us to tools to help with those weaknesses.
I’ve been a member of Cilip for some years now, with the ultimate aim of completing my charter. I’ve been qualified for 15 years and in a professional post for 10, so you can see how slowly that aim is progressing! I enjoy reading Update magazine, although I do find that I don’t look at it nearly so often now that it’s online. It’s just another thing for me to remember to go and look at. At least if the magazine was lying on my desk I was likely to pick it up during a slow half-hour. My engagement with Cilip has gone no further than that though.
As part of my Cilip membership I’m also in both the Career Development Group and Colleges of Further and Higher Education. Again, I read the magazines and subscribe to the COFHE jisc mailing list, but go no further than that.
I know that Cilip Scotland has a fairly active local branch, but have avoided getting involved with that for various reasons. It’s something I might have considered but, unfortunately, until the main reason is gone, then I won’t be going down that route.
It’s not all doom and gloom though, as I’ve remembered that I have done some face-to-face networking in the past. We have a local network called Grampian Information and I have thoroughly enjoyed going to their annual conferences over the last 10 years. I wasn’t able to go last year, and will have to miss it again this year due to an overlap between some annual leave and the conference date. Fingers crossed for next year though as I was disappointed that I couldn’t go. The conferences are usually interesting, informative and a good way of meeting new people and catching up with friends from previous jobs or university. I do struggle with networking and talking to new people though. Maybe I should take a look at the book mentioned on Jo Alcock’s Blog (the link to which can be found from the Thing 7 thread on the CPD23 site) as it looks as though it would be ideal for me.
Another obstacle to face-to-face networking is that, as with organisations all over the country, reduced staffing and budgets make it very difficult to get to external CPD events. I did manage to get to quite a few local events in the past but this is now very restricted. I keep an eye out for free events which fit in with the working hours but there’s not much coming up at the moment.
Reflecting on all of this (see, I’m getting better at it!) I think I need to take some action. Initially I’m going to see if I can get hold of the networking book as I think it would help me in those situations. Then I’m going to make an effort to find local events that I can manage to get to. Although I find the thought of these events a little scary, I know I always enjoy them once I’m there so time to do something about it.
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