CFSIC Conference, Alicante, September 2006

Wednesday 21 September 2006. Around three o'clock in the afternoon I'm at Manchester Aiport in a gi-i-inormous queue waiting for a flight out to sunny Spain to attend and put in my odd Euro's worth at the Critical Success Factors in Institutional Change conference. Read the whole article before sneering at how lucky I was or how taxpayers' money was wasted. In fact the venue (Alicante University) had hosted the event either for free or at minimal cost and the cost of cheap flights to Spain was a heck of a lot less than a return fare to London from just about anywhere in the UK.

I was sandwiched between Deb's Divas (pink wigs and lots of pink satin) and Michelle's Minxes (pink gins and lots of noise). By the time the flight actually took off I was looking round the plane trying to spot anyone else who was sober...

We landed around seven o'clock and by the time I had managed to get a taxi and arrived at the hotel it was 8:00pm-ish and dark. Met up with Gill and Phil and we had a drink in the bar whilst my mind slowly cleared the worst scenes from the flight and airports including the aghast expressions on the faces of airport staff and security as various fancy dress stags and hens, of all ages and sizes staggered through arrivals.

I was staying at the Hotel Amerigo with Gill, my boss and her husband Phil. We went out to eat at this pizza place. Neither Gill nor Phil eat meat and none of us were quite sure of the Spanish for "vegetarian" but on the basis of add an "o" to everything, "vegetariano" worked quite well! Once we had convinced the Spanish waiters that chicken was not a vegetable, that is...

Good and humble employee that I am, I reluctantly agreed to Gill's request that we had to have an ice cream. I gawped at the size of it when it came and was still in shock when she took this photo... I'm sure I remember she only ate a couple of mouthfuls whilst saying "Come on - you can't leave all that..." I imagine she'll put me right at some point...! Anyway, we had a wander about for a while - she and Phil led the wandering whilst I staggered behind, holding my stomach, making strange whimpering noises... Around 11:00pm we came across a table full of familiar faces at an outdoor table at a restaurant. The JISC contingent.

We resisted the temptation to join them for another meal and by midnight for some inexplicable reason we were at the top of our hotel where the swimming pool was located, for the purpose of looking at the view. Street level is so far down you can only just see the glow of lights at the bottom of the photo because I didn't want to miss the castle, the 16th-century Castillo de Santa Barbara, at the top of the 166 metre cliff.

The following morning we were up bright and early and waiting for a bus to take us to the university. This quarter-hour wait was the only chance I got of seeing Alicante in daylight and sadly the beach was not in sight. The conference was interesting, I chirruped my views a couple of times and by 3:15pm was back in a taxi being driven though what appeared to be a sea-view-free scrubland desert back to the airport for a flight back to Manchester.

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Conference Going

During the course of my work I attend a number of conferences during the year. One of the highlights for me is always the JISC Conference. Now I know that to anyone not familiar with UK Higher and Further Education the word "JISC" will be meaningless, but JISC is an organisation that supports colleges and universities with their various uses of Information Technology. This includes computers and all the technical bits that go with them - setting up networks both inside the institution but also the wider networks. Colleges and Universities access the Internet via a super-fast network called JANET, the Joint Academic Network.

JISC also supports what institutions do with their computers and networks - things such as funding projects to test ways of working so that the whole academic community benefits from the learning of the project rather than 600 institutions all trying it for themselves and making the same mistakes. (As well as the mistakes JISC ensures the institutions benefit from identified good practice and successful ways of working of course!)

Then there are the JISC Services which exist to provide expert advice on all manner of things computing. I work for such a service, JISC infoNet which provides advice and guidance on how to write strategies, link them to business change, run projects, assess and manage risks, assess and use new types of web services, store information to best allow clear and uncomplicated access routes, understand new uses of technology for learning etc. etc.

The JISC website is open to everyone and you can get an idea of their activities - which are many - by having a look.

Anyway, from Monday evening through until the end of yesterday JISC held their annual conference. It was in London at the Queen Elizabeth II Conference Centre in Westminster, just across the road from Westminster Abbey.

Friends were saying things like "Lucky you!" with varying amounts of envy. But whilst there were indeed some nice views from the windows (on the rare occasions I was standing in a room that had any windows), there was no chance of any sight-seeing or boat trips up the Thames or anything like that!

Instead it was still a very enjoyable and informative day, meeting up with colleagues from other services, academics and managers from institutions who I've known either through projects or through their attendance on my workshops.

We had lots of sessions on various projects that are either currently ongoing or just finished, sessions on what various JISC services have to offer the sector - I ran a couple of these myself - and at break times there were touch screens set up where you choose from a number of short videos giving an overview of more of the same! Again I was featured on one of those videos and it is a weird experience to be walking round and spot yourself on a monitor screen with people watching! From a distance (that made it impossible to hear what I was saying) it actually looked as though I was talking sense...

The furthest I have ever been to a conference was Alicante in Spain for which I flew to Alicante, got a taxi from the airport to the hotel, went out to eat (it being around 10:00pm by this time), went to bed just after eating (never a good thing), got picked up by a bus at the hotel the following morning to go to Alicante University for the conference and then got a taxi at the end of the day straight from the university back to the airport to fly home. Friends were green with envy... I was just green...

Large version of the photo: Westminster It was taken on my phone and through window glass so no great quality I'm afraid!