A Week on the Road

It was a hectic old week last week. Early Tuesday morning I was on the motorway, heading for Birmingham for the Association of Colleges conference. This was at the ICC, the International Conference Centre.

Over the three days of the conference I spoke to lots of old friends from my 18 years in Further Education colleges, met and chatted with Ruby Wax who since leaving the world of television has retrained in coaching skills and is now qualified to coach executives and spent some time on the exhibition stand with my colleagues from the world of JISC (it used to stand for Joint Information Systems Committee, but it's best to just to think of it as "JISC" these days in the same way you don't try to work out what FORD is an acronym for...)

I sat through some interesting sessions from Lord Peter Mandelson, Minister Ian Wright and Leader of the Lib Dems, Nick Clegg and an absolutely spot-on assessment of the world recession by a Swiss chap, who managed to make it utterly entertaining.

There were lots of student demonstrations (of work, not of students getting uppity). Barnet College had a diversity display. I signed my name in Gujerati, feeling ridiculously pleased with myself when they pronounced it readable...

My hotel was a bit too far away and the receptionist asked if I wanted a room "with a bath?!?", managing to imbue the question with outraged astonishment as I checked in.

The Big Wheel outside the ICC looked nice but didn't actually spin round very much. Time did though and so on Thursday I left the delights of Birmingham and headed for Shrewsbury where I was to meet up with Clive and run a Process Review workshop on Friday.

The Lion Hotel in Shrewsbury has seen a few distinguished visitors in its time. Kings, Prime Ministers, stars of stage such as Paganini, stars of the written page, such as Charles Dickens whose favourite room bears his name. He wrote The Pickwick Papers there.

Our favourite spot is in front of the log fire in winter. As yet, it was just too warm for the fire to be lit. We sat in the bar and yarned and planned the following day. The event went well. The delegates seemed pleased and possibly relieved to find the day was not going to be as dry and boring as they had feared. Clive and I split up. He was heading back north to home. I was heading south, to join Fran, Gill and Eddie in London. More in the next entry!

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