In Birmingham for the AoC Conference, November 2003

Tuesday 18 November 2003. I was in Birmingham with a colleague for the annual 3-day conference of the Association of Colleges.

This would be JISC infoNet's first showing at the conference and I was manning a stand in the exhibition hall with a colleague, Jacqui.

We had a few give-aways to draw people to our stall and lots of leaflets about topics we covered and areas where we could provide advice and support.

There were quite a few people I knew at the conference, representatives of various suppliers and software houses, a few college principals who I had known from previous work with NILTA, itself now part of the AoC, and also some college staff I knew from working with Management Information Systems software as I had been one of a small team that trained Lancashire Colleges in their use of Oracle and Oracle-based packages.

There were also familiar face from other Further Education support services such as Becta and other JISC Advisory Services and we went out for food at night as a fairly large group.

The back of Birmingham's ICC - International Conference Centre - backed onto a canal basin with hotels, restaurants and shops. It was quite a vibrant place.

It was my first visit to the AoC conference which for me would become an annual event.

Work Index

Work Trips During 2004

Better hang onto something - I'm racing through an entire year here. This was my second year with JISC infoNet. The training courses I was running were taking off big style and more topics were being added.

I did a lot of workshops alongside Clive Alderson, a consultant whose business Clive Alderson Associates was very well respected in the private sector and was about to make an impact in the public sector also. Plus he was a brilliant chap to get on with and had a wealth of knowledge and a very quick mind when the odd awkward question got asked. He became a good mate and I enjoyed and learned a lot from the time I spent with him. Please note that not every trip was conducive to taking photos and there were many more not covered here!

Tuesday 27 January 2004. Standard brightness for arriving (and leaving in this case) venues during the first two months of the year. Edinburgh's Waverley railway station looking down over Princes Street Gardens with Edinburgh Castle floodlit on the horizon. The forecast was for temperatures of -14°C and several inches of snow. We didn't see any...

Wednesday 28 January 2004. With Clive running a Project Management training workshop at Preston College the following day. Having had a night at home after Edinburgh it was a familiar journey for me as I had worked at Preston College for almost 12 years from the beginning of 1988 to October 1999.

Thursday 19 February 2004. It was Clive's turn to have a night at home as a workshop in Sunderland was not too far from his own home. I arrived after dark and drove round to try to see the transporter bridge, but ended up bottling it and turning back - whether it was or not, as I got closer to the bridge it seemed as though I was driving into a somewhat scary area!

Alan Cameron and myself at one of our team building and strategy meetings. Alan was a Scot and had responsibility for Records Management training to the HE and FE Sectors, which I used to do alongside him. This particular meeting was in York and whilst I can't quite remember what exactly prompted this behaviour, I'm certain it was engineered by our boss with this photograph in mind... If not, I'll get an indignant message during the next couple of days...

[EDIT: I received this the same night... "Loving these trips down memory lane! I took that photo and nobody incited you to pose. You were just being yourselves - I doubt either of you even knew there was a camera present"] Agh, rumbled... yes that was the pose we habitually struck whilst walking down the street...

I was on the way to Newcastle on the train one day, heading for the firm's head office at the University of Northumbria. The Euston-Glasgow train was delayed so I was kicking my heels on Preston Station and I missed my connection at Carlisle. It was a nice if somewhat crisp day and I snapped this out of the window as we passed over the river near Corby Bridge after leaving Carlisle.

Wednesday 5 May 2004. With Clive in Llandudno. A band was rehearsing in the hotel's ballroom but playing the same little bit over and over again. It was a bit annoying really, as a musician myself I ended up feeling as though I wanted to go in to show them how it was done...

The hotel was also full of old women on a pensioners' special deal and we were the only two men... They were vying with each other to enter into conversation with us whilst the rest of the party shouted encouragement or giggled...

No idea of the date other than it was in May... Ooh-er, Clive and I stay in a hotel right opposite the mural in Belfast. Getting to Belfast was always an adventure. I used to fly from Blackpool in an 8-seater plane which ran a regular service from Blackpool to Belfast with a stop on the Isle of Man in the middle.

It could almost have been accomplished with a big catapult, a trampoline on the Isle of Man and a net at the far end... Coming back, the check-in procedure was often handled by the pilot who then led us out through the gates onto the tarmac to the plane. He would then read out the safety instructions before taking his place behind the controls. You were never more than 4 rows behind him.

Tuesday 11 May 2004. I was in Southampton. Clive couldn't make the trip and I was doing a workshop on my own. Not having been to Southampton before I had a wander around the old city walls and marina.

Tuesday 18 May 2004. We were in Cambridge to do a Project Management workshop for the Regional Support Centre, Eastern Region. We were on best behaviour too, as the boss was doing a quality check on our delivery.

It was June 2004 but I don't have the exact date. In Brighton for the night before a workshop, Clive had some work to complete for a client so I went for a wander on my own. Brighton Pavilion all lit up like a Christmas Tree.

The following morning we were at East Sussex University.

Later in June we were delivering a workshop at the University of Sunderland at a venue on the banks of the River Wear.

We jump to September and the start of a new academic year. I was in York for two days, spending the first day running a training workshop on Process Review techniques. It meant I had a full evening to wander around York.

The following day I had been invited to speak to an audience of IT people from universities by one of the Higher Education support agencies, possibly ucisa (Universities and Colleges Information Systems Association), but I can't be sure.

The topic was the Further Education experience of Management Information Systems, something I had quite a few years of experience and a recognised reputation in. The conference was being held at the National Railway Museum, so it was a great venue.

I was first on after lunch and the host, who had a very quiet voice, was having trouble getting the audience to settle down quietly. In the end I stopped her and said over the mic, "Right, we've tried the Yorkshire way, now allow me to try the Lancashire way - SHURRUP!" It got a huge laugh from the ones who had been getting fed up at the delay and my presentation went down a storm as I made sure there were plenty more laughs amongst the serious bits.

The Director of our service and one of our researchers were present and both were complimentary afterwards, as were the hosting organisation.

Tuesday 7 September 2004. Another early morning start from Blackpool railway station and the shot was taken from the train on the curve in Gateshead as we approached the bridge over the River Tyne towards Newcastle.

Friday 24 September 2004. Taking down responses to a group activity at a Project Management workshop run on behalf of the Regional Support Centre (North West) at St Helen's College.

Thursday 14 October 2004. I'm back at St Helens College, this time to run a couple of sessions as part of the FERL Practitioners Programme. This was a national programme aimed at supporting teachers and transforming Teaching and Learning with Information and Learning Technology. I had been asked to put together some materials drawing techniques from some of JISC infoNet's resources and producing some bespoke exercises. Modesty causes me to blush excessively when I tell you that one feedback form given at the end of the event said simply: "John Burke - EXCELLENT!"

Work Index

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.

Return to Work Index

Hobnobbing November 2011 Part One

Last week saw me in Birmingham for much of the week for the Association of Colleges annual conference. It's an event populated by the movers and shakers of the Further Education sector and a chance to sit in front of Government ministers, Lords of the Realm (and a Baroness) and some great inspirational speakers. Add in a huge exhibition and a number of workshops debating all sorts of things from use of technology to literacy and numeracy. Plus as an added bonus for me, the chance to catch up with friends who I tend only to see here once a year these days and you can see why I look on it as a chance to recharge enthusiasm and chip in with my pennyworth every now and then to remind people that my organisation (JISC infoNet) has something to offer. The venue is Birmingham's International Convention Centre which backs onto Brindley Place with its canals and restaurants. I was however keeping a close ear on what was going on at home as my daughter was being whisked into hospital with a baby arrival imminent! More of that in another entry!

Return to Work Index

Off the Rails, On the Road

Dear diary...

The week started with a train ride up to Bonnie Scotland. Edinburgh in fact. The train was packed with people lugging heavy suitcases - ye gods, how did those poor people manage in the 1950s and 60s with those tiny flat leather suitcases? At least in the 1930s and 40s they had trunks. Not the swimming kind you understand... those knitted woolly things with a gusset that hung down to your knees once wet would have been useless for carrying clothes about on holiday.

These days though people drag hard plastic cases of the size you might see on the back of a lorry having just brought it from the port. Anyway there were lots of those on the train. And the journey was enlivened by a loud American telling a woman, who insisted her dog had to have a seat, how to react when coming face to face with bears, moose and wolves. All of which roam the streets of Edinburgh I expect...

I was staying in the Travelodge on St Mary Street which has the advantage over lots of Travelodges that it has a place to eat in. Not that I used it at night but it did mean I got a breakfast on the two days I was working in Edinburgh!

At night I mooched along the Royal Mile and ate both nights in a Garfunkels. The prospect of an Eastern European trying to explain to a German couple what mushy peas are was quite amusing. He obviously had no idea apart from the main ingredient... Just for the record, you do not prepare them like mashed potatoes... Although just down the road a bit they prepare Mars Bars like fish and chips I suppose...

Anyway I arrived home by another train which was much less crowded on Wednesday night in time to hear about the cat having been taken ill on top of my desk (note to colleagues - that's why I had to ask for replacement memory sticks to be sent...) We may have to replace the telephone too... Luckily the puddle didn't reach as far as the computer!

Then today I've been in Manchester at the JISC Regional Support Centre Northwest's annual conference held this year at Manchester University. Nice car too - the hire company dropped off a brand spanking new Hyundai i30 with only 19 miles on the clock. I haven't smelt that new car smell since I was a lad and Dad bought a new Mark 1 Escort in the 60s.

Once in Manchester I found the car park dead easy, despite only asking Chrissie where we were late last night once she was already tipsy! "I'll be there from half seven! she said. "I won't..." I responded wittily.

Found the campus map dead easy. Alas someone had been round all the campus maps, knicking the red dot and the "You are here" sign. Coupled with the reluctance of local authorities to pay for street name signs - or the reluctance of owners of new buildings to allow them to be sullied with street name signs - that made finding where I was going rather more difficult than it should have been. It was the Barnes Wallis Building, but whichever way I looked I couldn't see a building with water pouring from a breech in the wall...

There were only a few exhibitors besides myself and the stand that probably got most notice was this one with the massive screen with a new material that could be stuck to either plastic or glass and allowed you to project either from the front or rear.

They were showing a video loop taken in some huge aquarium in Okinawa which included several whale sharks swimming about. I couldn't help thinking how brilliant it would be though to have your mates round for a bar-b-que and sit lolling in the garden whilst your entire bedroom window showed Lord of the Rings...

And now I'm in Telford again - it's becoming a second home as I try to stay in every single room in this Premier Inn near the station. The travel should start to dry up for a few weeks now as summer approaches and college and university staff start to think about holidays. Tomorrow I shall be teaching some eager folks all about Managing Multiple Projects in a Complex Environment.

Return to Work Index

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!

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!

Return to Work Index

Corporate Event Gig

Last night we played for the JISC Regional Support Centre (RSC) Northwest annual conference at Southport Theatre and Convention Centre after I had been involved in the event with my work hat on!

A few people were wondering what to expect and some were possibly a bit gobsmacked but lots of nice comments folks so thanks for that!

A birthday party on Sunday will make the 3rd gig in 8 days!

Large version of photos: creeping bentgrass

In Conference Mode

Before anyone comments I've gone quiet again, I must confess to being down in Birmingham at the 3-day Association of Colleges Conference.

Having sat through a number of ministerial sessions (stood through for one of them...) you could be forgiven for thinking that the conference theme was all about colleges engaging with business. It's an obvious priority at the moment and this is a good thing for me, because I'm currently project managing a JISC-funded project "Embedding BCE (Business & Community Engagement) through Business Process Improvement and Internal Engagement". A bit of a mouthful - so I'm calling it simply "Embedding BCE".

We're working with 5 institutional partners (UK colleges and universities) to find and highlight areas and examples of good practice and identify barriers and issues surrounding such work. It aims to help the 5 partners to identify ways improve their current business processes. It will give a picture of how well embedded BCE work is currently and produce online resources to help other institutions do the same for themselves.

Return to Work Index

A Tale of Willy Wobble

No, I'm not being rude. I'm at a conference for a couple of days and the delegates in the first session of the day were shown a film of a one-year-old baby who had learned to swipe her finger over her father's i-Phone to cause a progression of photographs to appear. This is how youngsters these days are brought up to have no fear of new technology and to interact with it from as soon as - no let's make that before - they can walk. Someone else suggested in a session that it may be taken as proof that the human brain now learns in different ways from the way human brains learned in those dark dark days before computers. I disagreed.

In a room full of strategic managers from colleges and the great and glorious from government funded support agencies I told them about the rattle toy I had as a baby that was called Willy Wobble... I kid you not. I pointed out that as a child with a rattle stuck by a suction cup to the tray of my high chair I learned that :

(1) by striking it sideways it made a noise that I found pleasing

(2) that it didn't hurt, and

(3) if I did it enough my Mum got annoyed at the row and removed it.

Therefore I learned to draw a balance between how often and how violently I wanted to make it rattle and how little I needed to do it in order to keep the use of it. This caused much hilarity in the room...

Since then people have come up to say how much they enjoyed my input.

How do we learn then? Well I think we learn from absolutely everything we do. We learn from experimenting, we learn from playing, we learn from people telling us stories; whether in person or from books or now from a web browser.

If anything has changed in the short time that computers have existed it is not the human brain because I don't believe that evolution is as rapid as all that. I think it is more in the way that opportunities are presented to us or kept from us and the ways in which, having tried something new, we enjoy it, or appreciate it. That can be a good or bad thing.

In the far-away past before books, we were told "facts" by people in authority over us - the Church, quite often. We didn't know enough to challenge them. When handwritten books came about, they were mostly religious and created in scriptoriums and had to be read to us by people with that skill, who could put whatever spin they wanted upon the contents. Then when printed books and education in reading became the norm, it was still quite a job to be published and you had to jump through a number of hoops so in the main text books were written by people who were well informed and other people checked and edited content before publication.

Now we can all be publishers because of the wonderful world of blogs. It's easy to learn what we like and therefore we look for more. But it's sometimes less easy to know what's truth or what's accurate and what's twaddle or even deliberate misinformation.

I need to get back to another session now though other stuff is bubbling in my mind. More later perhaps, but for now - thanks for reading my twaddle...

Return to Work Index

Two Days in Sutton Coldfield

Sounds dramatic doesn't it?

Well it wasn't all that dramatic - I've spent the last two days at a conference. Some interesting sessions, some painful ones, some where I sat quiet (not that many!) and some where I was one of the noisiest!

Gala dinner, pork, heavy on the stomach, wakeful night in roasting room.

I wonder why some hotels seem to cater for visitors from the equator and have no heating controls in the room. There were no opening windows in my room either - there was a door to a small balcony but it may have gone the opposite way if I'd left that open.

There was also a non-switchable heated towel rail so close to the toilet that to avoid burning your leg you had to sit sideways which is not that comfortable...

Am home again now until tomorrow when I trog off to Letchworth...

A Bit of Rain...

Phew! I was in Sheffield yesterday at the AoC NILTA CIS Conference for managers of College Information Services.

If you are reading this from the UK, you will have seen the news images of the horrendous flooding. The rain was hammering on the windows and skylights of the hotel venue all day without any let-up.

Several of us were travelling back west from Sheffield and we got to a very crowded railway station to see rows of cancelled trains on the announcements board. Luckily we managed to get onto a train heading for Manchester, but it was a very slow journey home. The knock-on effects of so many cancelled trains was having its effect on trains all over the country and the second stage from Manchester to Preston was a journey of long waits before approaching stations.

Ironically, my final train from Preston to Blackpool was almost empty as can be seen above and it reached Blackpool as the sun came out and I could hardly believe how bad it had been until I got home 20 minutes later and saw the TV coverage.

There must have been a lot of people unable to get home - nothing was travelling south, we saw lots of very agitated people talking into mobile phones and huge queues of people at Sheffield forming in front of any railway official they could find.

For all that the conference seemed to go quite well. I delivered two workshops, one with my colleague Andrew Stewart on the use of Web 2.0 social software, concentrating on Wikis. Only a couple of the delegates in the session had tried it but we got some quite good discussion and ideas from them.

My other session was on Risk Management and that too stimulated a lot of interest.