Quick Summary
The 2023 Minitex Technical Services Symposium was held at the Minnesota History Center on Monday, October 30. This year's theme was "Creating a Sustainable Future in Technical Services," and featured two keynote speakers and eight breakout sessions. For those who could not join us in person, recordings are now available after completing a short request form. Read on to view statistics and comments from the event.
The 2023 Minitex Technical Services Symposium was held at the Minnesota History Center on Monday, October 30. This year's theme was "Creating a Sustainable Future in Technical Services," which featured two keynote speakers and eight breakout sessions. Keynotes Tricia MacKenzie and Kim Edwards spoke about how storytelling, collaboration, communication, and relationships help sustain technical services workers in tough times. The eight breakout sessions elaborated on this theme by exploring and discussing communities of practice, unseen labor, data storytelling, department rebranding, user experience work, data dashboards, new communication strategies, and documentation hackathons.
Here are a few quick statistics from the day:
- 120 people attended
- 56 different institutions
- 7 different states
So far, we've received some great feedback from attendees. I've included just a few of the comments here.
What attendees told us they learned at the Symposium
- Learning how so many other teams communicate is always valuable. It was also very encouraging and motivating to hear the keynote speakers share so passionately about care and sustainability in our work.
- I feel encouraged to make more informal connections outside of my team to build relationships that lead to more understanding and collaboration, and I want to try some of the ways of publicizing or sharing the word about what and how much happens behind the scenes!
- I am going to start working on a data dashboard right away!
- I am pondering data stories.
- Having fun at work is important.
Accessing keynote speaker and breakout session recordings
This year, the Technical Services Symposium was partially funded with a grant. Attendees were able to join us without a registration fee. For those who could not join us in person, recordings of the keynote speakers and breakout sessions are now available for free, all you have to do is request access with a simple form:
Our gratitude
Thank you to all the many people who helped make the Technical Services Symposium happen: planning committee members, Minitex staff, vendor partners, and symposium volunteers. Our event would not have been successful without your contributions!
This year's Symposium was partially funded with a grant from the Minnesota Department of Education using federal funding, CFDA 84.027A, Special Education - Grants to States.
