Earlier this year Johnnie Moore put together an interesting podcast on Unconferencing, asking the question of how can we get away from unsatisfying and boring conferences?

I just heard a great story from Rob Thomson a library technician at BlueScopeSteel who designed a detective game to help get delegates more engaged with exhibitors and their stands at a recent 2005 ALIA National Library and Information Technicians Conference . The game was based on the idea of getting delegates to seek out clues from exhibitors stands which would help them locate a missing book. Rob told me that his inspiration came after hearing that forensic courses at Uni had exploded because of CSI/Cold Case type shows and had said to his daughter that if only there was a TV show about Librarians then maybe interest in being a librarian would soar…

Prior to the conference, Rob circulated the rules of the game to the delegates, including a great story  around the founders of a (fictional) agency called the Library Book Recovery Agency  (LiBRA) with two central characters Winston MacArthur Leeds and Victoria Follows. Follows and Leeds were co-sponsers of the conference.  An amusing story which emerged was how several people thought that LiBRA was a real organisation and had passed it on to their bosses… maybe as an answer for all those missing books out there……