Friday, September 12, 2008

Maine & NH Library Leaders Get Creative!

Back in NYC after my almost-week in Maine. The Round 2 kickoff of the PLA tour was great! Had a great time meeting librarians and their supporters from Maine & New Hampshire.

In addition to my sessions on Leadership, Creating Compelling Stories and Giving Memorable Presentations, I led a new session on Project Management called Staying on Track. This was a great way to help participants tie the content from their previous sessions together.

Besides upgrading their computer hardware, many participants indicated that libraries in Maine & NH are engaging in capital projects, e.g., renovation, preservation -- and one library will be re-carpeted! This project sparked some cool discussion as participants traded ideas on how to generate project support.
  • One person suggested "selling" squares of the new carpet, so that donors could see which part(s) they had contributed to.

  • The librarian indicated that carpet squares couldn't be used because of the wood flooring underneath.

  • Dialogue continued until another participant suggested creating a quilt to replicate the carpet squares that could be hung on the wall -- this would maintain the visual of donor contributions, but not force them into using carpet squares on the floor!

It's this creativity and willingness of participants to pitch in new ideas that makes the PLA project so rewarding to work on.

And, the ability to travel the country has been fun as well. Here are a few shots from our boat ride to Diamond Cove off Casco Bay.

1 comment:

Katie Skow said...

Glad to know you had a great PLA tour! How did Staying on Track go? Speaking of which, thanks for the comments on my blog. You're right, I did breeze over the middle ground options. Check out the latest post on HOW TO PRIORITIZE LIKE A PROJECT MANAGER.