From September 8 to 15 St. Petersburg was crowded with many people coming to the 13th IGeLU conference hosted by the National Library of Russia.
The conference was attended by 400 participants coming from 38 countries worldwide, among them about 60 Ex Libris staff. More than 25%, 120 attendees, visited the conference for the first time!
Following the conference Developers Day – already a tradition in its third event since the start in Budapest 2015 – was visited by the maximum of 150 attendees.
Divided over more than 70 sessions, part plenary and part breakout, the conference programme (https://igelu.org/conferences/2017-st-petersburg/programme) offered presentations on what customers feel is interesting and important to share and Ex Libris presented their products road maps.
For Developers Day the programme offered 10 sessions in which the global developer community collaborative with Ex Libris showed what innovative and creative inventions and additions to Ex Libris products are in use and available for all colleagues in the world.
The conference customer presentations are online available for all IGeLU members https://igelu.org/conferences/2017-st-petersburg/archive-of-presentations,
the Ex Libris presentations are online available for all at https://knowledge.exlibrisgroup.com/Cross_Product/Conferences_and_Seminars/IGeLU/IGeLU_2017 and all Developers Day presentations are visible at https://knowledge.exlibrisgroup.com/Cross_Product/Conferences_and_Seminars/Developers_Day/Developers_Day_IGeLU_2017
Apart from the official programme the conference allowed for many professional and social networking opportunities, ranging from the Ex Libris product consultation room where customers can meet company staff to discuss problems and needs to the coffee breaks and lunches, topping it off with an excellent and cosy Social Event in the National Library of Russia who kindly offered their new library building for that. Of course the traditional IGeLU sing along by Mark Dehmlow (https://youtu.be/fRfK3aU3fBo) was one of the highlights of that event. (re)Connecting to international colleagues sharing knowledge and experiences has always been the most valued part of our conferences.
Starting with the traditional pre-conference on Saturday 9 September where all IGeLU Officers and the ELUNA Steering Committee hold meetings in various set ups and the INUG meeting on Sunday 10 September where representatives of all National User Groups first meet with the IGeLU SC while after the coffee break senior executives of Ex Libris join to discuss topics raised by the INUG representatives. The minutes of both meetings are published on our website https://igelu.org/national-regional-user-groups/2017-inug-meeting
This year the new IGeLU Conference App was introduced, offering all attendees a state of the art digital up to date – and if preferred personalized – programme enriched by nice features like contacting other attendees and a true gaming feature.
Last but not least the App enables our guests to rate the sessions and send us overall feedback regarding the conference facilities.
Many conference participants have used these options and we are very happy with all the feedback we received. It will help us improve the parts of the conference that were criticized and hold on to the parts that are valued.
More on the feedback to read in the IGeLU 2017 Feedback post in this issue of our News in Brief
We greatly thank all IGeLU volunteers who worked so hard to make the conference and Developers Day to become so successful, especially Naomi Greidinger, the chair of the conference programme committee and all other 22 committee members and Laura Akerman and Roxana Popistasu, chairing the Developers Day committee and all other committee members.
Also we want to memorize the enormous amount of work done by the local organizing people from the National Library of Russia headed by Oleg Shorin and the team from the Professional Conference Organizing company Monomax Elena Gorbunova, Elena Margulis and Darya Davydova.
Last but not least we thank our sponsors Ex Libris, GOBI, ProQuest, The National Library of Russia, SpringShare and Third Iron who by supporting the conference financially enabled us to make IGeLU 2017 unforgettable.