Discoveries, Lessons and Surprises

Discoveries

1.Many Hands Make Light Work: We discovered the importance of teamwork and cooperation. If the cyberfair was to rely on one team member, it would never be successful. At each event, each team member has to man his/her own station as well as offer assistance to the rest of the team. Only like this will the event be able to run smoothly.

2.Searching for Information: Small Small Bookshop is always promoting reading, literary events and a creative voice in the local community. Because of this, we now have the Small Life Creative Association and their publishing arm. When searching for information, we had to understand the relationship that the bookstore has with it's partnering associations. We not only scoured the Internet for information, but we also went down to the local library to search through old newspapers and periodicals. It was here that we found out many secrets about the independent bookstores!

3.Running a Bookstore is Not Easy: Originally, we thought that running a bookstore just involved sticking a few books on shelves in a room. However, after a day at the bookstore shadowing a clerk, we discovered that it's not an easy task at all. You need to have a lot of willpower and determination to get the job done!

4.Website Design: During the process of producing the website, we discovered that designing webpages is not easy. Not only did we have to use old and new software, and designing the aesthetics of every webpage was also a huge challenge!

Lessons

1.Don't Put Off to Tomorrow What You Can Do Today: After every activity and interview, we had to immediately write down what happened and how we felt about the process. Otherwise our workload would build up and we would get swamped. We had to ensure that things got down on time and efficiently in order to complete everything before our deadlines.

2.Preparation is Paramount: After we ran a few events, we discovered that talking, discussing, and preparing in advance was imperative. Being well-prepared stopped us from being overrun and not knowing what to do during our activities!

3.Practice Makes Perfect: Prior to any interview or activity, our teachers asked us to practice over and over again. Although this was very tiring, as after each mistake we started over again, but the extra rehearsals helped each activity run more smoothly!

Surprises

After researching several topics, we discovered that apart from the main chain stores, there were also a lot of unique independent bookstores in Yonghe. We also discovered the love for books and never-ending energy for promoting reading and literary events shown by Sappho Liu (the owner of Small Small Bookshop).

After everything that we have done, we now finally warmth and personal touch that an indpendent bookstore can offer. Something that any chain store can't compete with. In the future, we hope to use the map of independent bookstores produced by Small Small Bookshop, and visit every single independent bookstore in Taiwan. Then we can also give our support to these people who never stop chasing their dream of promoting reading and books!