Today’s post focuses on Creating Richer Volunteer Experiences to Develop In-Demand Skills. From the new vision posted to Future Ready 365:

“A fulfilled association-vision will depend heavily upon SLA’s volunteer-force—the network that gives the association its strength and relevance. What better incentive to become active in the association than the fact that it will benefit your career down the road? New skills picked up as volunteers in our chapters and divisions may just be the stepping stones to a promotion or achievement at work. Added focus will be placed on creating richer volunteer experiences in the areas of web development (search engine optimization, plug-in development and research), marketing (developing a marketing plan for local events and programs), program management (overseeing budgets, fundraising with local vendor communities), and more. SLA’s volunteers will be powerfully well-rounded in the years to come.“

According to SLA.org, there are a number of existing volunteer opportunities, including:

• Alignment Ambassadors;
• Archivist;
• Bulletin Editors;
• Chapter Presidents & Presidents-Elect;
• Committee Chairs;
• Consultation Chairs;
• Discussion List Owners;
• Division Chairs & Chairs-Elect;
• Ethics Ambassadors;
• Fundraising Chairs;
• Government Relations Chairs;
• Membership Chairs;
• Professional Development Chairs;
• Public Relations Chairs;
• Treasurers; and
• Webmasters.

What I’m hoping to accomplish with today’s post is to hear from you about what volunteer experiences SLA could create, repurpose, or nurture that are closely aligned to in-demand skills in today’s workplace. Using the comments below let’s start a dialog about what those skills might be or what experiences we might create together.

I’ve thought of four to kick things off:

1. Community Managers: working to engage, grow and manage SLA’s online communities
2. Plugin Developer: working to customize and develop plugins for WordPress, the main publishing platform for SLA unit websites
3. Search Engine Optimization Manager: working to improve the visibility of a unit’s website through “organic” search results
4. Knowledge Managers: working to influence SLA’s culture toward improved knowledge sharing, reuse, learning, collaboration and innovation, plus owning the unit’s presence on wiki.sla.org.

Some of you may say, “But we have those roles Daniel. They’re covered by such-and-such position.” Great! Let’s hear about that too. Perhaps it’s time to refresh the roles and responsibilities for those positions and figure out a way to cascade them through the organization. This is about a dialog, so what say you all?

(I wouldn’t be a good librarian unless I included a list of resources!)

LEADERSHIP RESOURCES
(Most are members only so get out your id/password)

• SLA’s Leadership Center
• Why Seek a Leadership Position in SLA?
• Chapter Idea Bank
• Division Idea Bank
• Model Chapter Governing Document
• Model Division Governing Document
• Recommended Practices – Chapters
• Recommended Practices – Divisions
• SLA Leadership Code of Responsibility

Today’s host:

Daniel P. Lee, MLIS.
SLA Director, 2009-2011
KPMG International, Toronto, Ontario.

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