Circle of Knowledge

The Wikipedia article about unconferences includes the following principles of open source meetings:

1. Whoever comes are the right people.
2. Whatever happens is the only thing that could have.
3. Whenever it starts is the right time.
4. Whenever it is over it is over.

I took two ideas from that list (one verbatim and the other slightly modified) as guiding principles for “unprogramming.”

1. Whoever comes are the right people.
2. Whatever experiences people have are the right experiences.

What is an unprogram? One of the concepts we have bounced around in our department lately has been the idea of self-directed or spontaneous programming. These would be sessions/times/happenings without any specific objectives other than to allow patrons the chance to have an engaging library experience (see unprogramming principle #2 above). Working with all of these ideas in mind, I decided to try an experiment. In part 2 I’ll tell you all about it.

 Jason