Myerscough College 2002

Well of course there was much more going on at Myerscough College other than moving whopping great trees and building new blocks. I would end the year working my notice in preparation to joining JISC infoNet, my exploits during that employment are already open to scrutiny and the odd hilarity.

17 March 2002. I found myself (I think, for the last time) down at Coombe Lodge, venue for so many FEMIS courses in the 1990s.

Back then we had stayed in The Webbington hotel, a rather posh establishment where dinner was served at large communal round tables in the dining room. A refined lady with pearls and elaborate hair would play selections from (I swear) Watch With Mother on the piano and Rob Burnett would look across at the stuffed head of Bambi's mum on the wall, nudge me and say "Go on John - do the joke!"

The joke involved me drawing everyone's attention to the deer head and remarking "That thing must have been doing a hell of a lick when it hit that wall on the other side..." Never failed to bring a laugh... Why I'll never know. Rob and I once found ourselves seated after one meal with two very glamorous girls, far too young for us and with skirts far too short for keeping warm. They were absolutely gorgeous. One leaned forward slightly to ask, "So what do you think of this *%&*ing FEMIS then?" They had come from a very small specialised college and whilst one was the Principal's PA they were expected to also do all the work on the college's Management Information System. The other one was sitting thoughfully looking critically at her glass... "*%&*ing Vice Principal came upto me the other day and stuck his hand up my skirt, dirty sod!" she informed us. It was an enlightening evening... I remember the next day, which was the second of our 2-day course, the girls somehow learned how to do all sorts of tricks in the UNIX operating system to cause embarrassment to the VP...

This time I was staying at Coombe Lodge itself. Very boring as I was the only guest and I trotted off after arriving to have tea in Weston Super Mare which was just a few miles away. The following day after the course I went down to the nearby farmhouse where the FEMIS headquarters had been and the last few staff who had made the transfer to Capita were still working.

The programming team worked in the old stables and I went down to see Christina and her colleagues to make sure they had been properly mucked out... Happy days!

2002 was Queen Elizabeth II's Golden Jubilee. She had visited Myerscough College twice and they created a new space called Jubilee Court with a centrepiece of a 3D sculptured representation of the college logo, which was two ears of wheat set curving opposite each other. The sculpture set another two at right angles so they made four spokes or points of the compass (or ears of wheat...).

The college network was moving into the final phase of development with the instalation of new batch of managed network hubs which would be housed in a cabinet in the new build described in previous articles. On 20 May 2002 Jayne and I had another trip to Research Machines in Oxford to learn all about them and walked into this market just as the doors were locked at the far end. By the time we realised there were no stalls open the doors behind us had been locked as well. Luckily we found someone still in the place to let us out!

With similar luck we went to the Bodleian Library. We were unable to enter the library itself as there was some sort of graduation event going on.

In the courtyard stands King Charles I. In 1645 he was refused permission to borrow a book as the library's rule is not to allow books out of the building. It acts as a reference library only.

I got asked to contribute to another conference for NILTA and found myself on a platform with the head of a software company discussing whether paperless enrolments would ever become a reality. At the time the only thing holding this up was the Government's insistance that students should physically sign a form. Given that one college (there's always one...) had just made up a load of false students to fraudulently claim funding may have had some bearing on the Government's reluctance to allow digital signatures...

I also manned the NILTA stand at a local conference for North West colleges on 2 July 2002. About this time I received a strange telephone call one morning from a recruitment agency asking if I would be interested in a highly paid job for a national agency. They wouldn't disclose who it was but said that I had been specifically suggested as a likely candidate but that I would have to attend an interview that same day in York during the afternoon.

This was a deliberate ploy to see if I could actually do it and get there on time, whereupon I was told I had already passed several levels of criteria including being known to at least two currrent Government Ministers. (I've never been quiet in meetings or conferences, but as I've already mentioned somewhere, I never criticised without making positive suggestions for going forward.) The post turned out to be as head of an well known education support quango's Further Education arm. I later found lots of acquaintances doing similar work had also been approached and in the end I didn't get the job, but it was a very rewarding experience to go through.

Myerscough held a graduation ceremony and as a member of the support staff rather than academic, I found myself in red robes. Mick who I had worked with at Preston and subsequently brought to Myerscough to support me (and bypass me!) with programming of report output from the Management Information System took this photo from a low level. it emphasises the noble brow, the proud features, the double chin...

The ceremony was held over two days, one for Higher Education students and one for Further Education students. On each day a guest was invited to do a speech and to hand out the certificates. On the second day I was quite pleased to shake the hand and chat to Lord Brian Rix, the famous actor from the Whitehall Farces and then acting as President of MENCAP. "I've seen you before," I told him, "...but I doubt if you'll remember!"

It was a touching experience that day, I had no teaching duties but occasionally spent time with students to help them over an I.T. problem and some of those who I'd spent time with made a special effort to come and say thanks.

In August a new Business Incubator building was planned and an old barn had to come down to make way for it. This would change the road plan of the college also. By now I had gotten involved, again through NILTA, with a project to set up a new Advisory Service for JISC. JISC was a committee at the time, not an organisation, so all its staff were employed by various universities around the UK. The University of Northumbria at Newcastle would be hosting this new service which would support Information Systems and development, planning and implementation of I.T. use within colleges and universities.

With the opening of the new building featured in the previous couple of articles, a new I.T. drop-in centre was opened. The old one still existed but from 60 total PCs, we had now added this - a considerable achievement but which matched in terms of percentages the growth in student numbers over the past two years or so. Use of the Internet was expanding rapidly and demanding far greater computing power than was even envisioned when I started at Myerscough in 1999.

Use of images in particular had gone from almost zero to unbelievable in that time - we had software to help, but policing access to pornography on the Network was a necessary and onerous task. The reluctance of teaching staff to discipline students, leaving it to us to "ban" them temporarily from the network was an annoying - and completely useless - imposition. I argued with management over this but they said it was all they could do. This is what would happen: Despite my protests that my staff were not policemen, judge and jury, I had one young student, not the most intelligent, sent to me so I could block his access to the network. He had been looking at porn whilst seated next to a girl student and some rather unsavoury noises had resulted from what he was doing...

Sternly I made him tell me why he had been sent to me. "I was looking at porn, sir!" he admitted readily with a huge grin. "Well, I've got to take away your access to computers for the next two weeks so you are going to fall behind on your work unless you have computer access at home!" I waited for his response. "Yes I know, Sir!" Still grinning... "So what will you do now?" I asked still trying to be stern, but knowing I just wasn't getting through to him that he shouldn't think of continuing to not only watch porn at college but do it openly whilst enjoying it to the full, in front of other students female or male. "Oh, I'm going to borrow my mate's password!" Total waste of time. Teachers and management, do not do this to your busy I.T. staff!

26 November 2002. At Hinckley, near Leicester for the Ferl conference on a stand for the recently announced new service JISC infoNet. Ferl if I remember rightly - someone will correct me if I'm wrong - stood for Further Education Resources for Learning and was a joint project involving the National Learning Network and Becta and possibly more (Someone help me out here!)

Also at this conference were a couple of respected colleagues: Keith Duckett of the Further Education Funding Council (FEFC) and John Bushnell of the Department for Education and Science (DFES). I always used to say it wasn't a proper conference unless you found out a couple of PUAs (Previously Unknown Acronyms)...

The weather threw up more floods again in 2002. It was time (if not already past time) to start taking this Global Warming thing seriously. The hand rail in the photo is that of a bridge over a stream...

As a writer and especially as a writer of (hopefully) good advice, it's always nice to get the occasional bit of feedback that proves that what you are doing is of some use or interest to someone. In one issue of NILTA's newsletter/magazine in 2002 there was a letter from a relieved member of staff from the University of Illinois in America who had struggled with a problem and found the answer in an article that I had published. I was quick to point out that the solution to his problem had been discovered by Jayne, not by me!

The new JISC infoNet was given the green light and one dark night on 27 November 2002 I found myself driving over to Newcastle dodging snowflakes, swooping owls, the ghosts of Roman Auxilliaries from Hadrian's Wall and large lorries on small roads over the Pennines for a formal interview to become a member of staff. As I gave in my one month's notice, Myerscough was hit with a notice that HM Inspectors would be visiting the day after I left... They negotiated with JISC to extend my notice for a further month and I would join the University of Northumbria at the end of January instead of the beginning.

As the new job would entail lots of travelling about the four countries of the UK, I didn't really want to uproot my family to the North East and then just leave them there whilst I went off all over the place so we negotiated to rent an office at Myerscough College with Internet access etc. whilst I would go over to Newcastle regularly for meetings and so on. Myerscough would have me available if needed. (I can't remember it happening - no matter how indisensable you may think you are and indeed may be, the cracks don't begin to show until you have been gone long enough for people not to associate them with you.) Besides, I was pleased when Jayne secured a promotion to the vacancy I left and I knew they were in good hands. Mick too had already acquired greater knowledge than I had had time to keep up with regarding new web-based languages to interrogate the college student and finance systems.

Despite the obvious advantages of sharing some information from HR systems - teaching timetables; deletion of access when staff left employment etc. - in both colleges and universities HR systems were never ever allowed to be accessed even by programmers who would only draw the necessary data out of the system without anyone else being able to see any other details. I suspect more because of dire warnings by software house training events than anything else, HR systems were installed within barbed wire, concrete gun emplacements and the excuse of, but with little understanding of, the Data Protection Act. It is not there to stop your organisation from working efficiently. The times I heard "Well people could see what the Principal was paid!" - yes... you mean the same as any CEO whose salary has to be published in publicly available Annual Reports?

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Of Cows, Books and Other Animals

Continuing the series of articles covering my time as Head of I.T. & M.I.S. at Myerscough College, a land-based (agriculture and horticulture college but rapidly diversifying into other areas).

It's early April 2000 at Myerscough - well it was early April everywhere else I suppose but I probably won't be mentioning many other places in this article so we'll stick to Myerscough College for now. I had by now been at the college for six months and at last things seemed to be moving in the right direction. The first phase of the new network had gone in. Some of the dafter "innovations" that the older network had installed were still there but at least were not causing problems.

One of these was an experiment with computer card-controlled access to rooms. These are familiar now to lots of people. In hotels for instance, instead of having a physical metal key that you turn in a lock, there's a pad on the door; you press your keycard to it and the door unlocks for you to simply push open. In 2000 these were innovative to say the least. They had been installed in the college in just two places. My office and the door leading to the technician's office and server room. These doors had no handles, no keyholes, just the pad and a prayer that the card would work. If it didn't then it was tough, because the computer that controlled the system was behind those locked doors...

But anyway, on this bright April day, Jayne and I during our lunch break took a walk half a mile up the road from the main campus to Lodge Farm, which was the college's dairy farm.

Cattle can breed all year long, but some 70-75% of cows are born March to May so we were in the middle of that season. There were lots of calves in the sheds, sheltering from the odd shower and cold spell that April is prone to in our neck of the woods.

We were walking through here alone. The staff knew that we were college staff and left us to our own devices. What we hadn't known until then was just how human sounding a cow's cough is. At several points, particularly in a darker part of the sheds a cow would cough and we would jump out of our skins!

The milking shed. Although students were, I think, still taught how to milk a cow by hand, most were milked using modern machinery. It was all the same to the cows. One minute they were in place, hooked up and the next they were walking out with a look of relief and satisfaction...

It amused me how many students were amazed at the process. At the start of any given academic year you could ask students "where does milk come from?" and the answer would be, "a bottle." "Yes but where does the milk in the bottles come from?" Pause for slight confusion, then "the supermarket..." The next question would totally baffle them.

A bit ago in an earlier article I promised you a look at the Animal Academy. This was opened formally by Lord Shuttleworth on Wednesday, 26 April 2000. Here he uncovers a memorative placque, watched by Kathy Kissick the Head of Animal Studies, Principal John Moverley and the Chair of Governors.

On another occasion the Mayor and Mayoress of Wyre were shown round. The Mayor was treated to a close encounter with a blue-tongued skink by one of the staff and here the Mayor and Mayoress admire the intricate tunnels and pipework enjoyed by the guinea pigs or hamsters. Can't quite remember which they were now, but I do remember just how vocal the guinea pigs were with each other. "Alright Fred? Been down that new bit of piping yet? Oh, hey-up, one of them big two-legged things has just come in to look at us..."

The aquaria room. Tropical, cold water and sea water tanks. I loved it. There's something very relaxing about looking at them. Though something very exacting and exhausting about looking after them all...

The college was training vetinary nurses, so needed an operating theatre. This large fluffy doggie was equipped with large fluffy internal organs that could withstand dire things being done to them. Never said a great deal, never complained, but was totally hooked on pretend anaesthetic...

I was still writing my articles for the National Information and Learning Technologies Association (NILTA) - in fact was one of their Directors by then.

In the summer of 2000 they had been commissioned to survey colleges with regard to the extent, suitability and effectiveness of their I.T. networks. This was to identify any problems around capacity, management and maintenance, suitability and security. It was to be published under the umbrella of something called the National Learning Network of which several centrally-funded agencies had a hand in supporting: Becta and JISC amongst them.

By early summer the draft was completed but unfortunately there were a few issues with grammar and with the fact that there were lots of graphs with all shades of colours, but the eventual book would be published in black and white only. I wasn't told exactly why the original author wasn't asked to re-write it (though the deadline was one issue) and I was asked if I would re-write it over the summer.

So we didn't take a holiday that year until the second half of August. I changed all the different types of graph (especially the 3D pie charts that weren't easy to evaluate) and made them all into bar charts with lines in descending order so that you could see the difference between bars of very similar values, using patterns instead of shades that could be distinguished one from the other. It went off to be scrutinised by the Further Education Funding Coucil and JISC who would then think of something else that they wanted in it and it would come back with a request for either a change or an insert. Time and time again.

I was heartily sick of the thing by the time it was accepted but accepted and published it eventually was. I still have a copy, but you won't find my name in it at all. But I know - and now, so do you! At one of the conferences I attended early in the following academic year, Keith Duckitt of the Further Education Funding Council (FEFC) found me one evening at the bar.

"John, come and join us on our table - we have a bottle..." Well the bottle was champagne and I found myself seated amongst the great and powerful folks of both Further and Higher Education. One of them would later have a great significance in my career, Malcolm Read, who was the Executive Secretary of JISC, one of which's Advisory Services I would later work for. The re-write of the book may have driven me half-mad, but it became obvious that it was thought I had done a good job.

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Woodbridge, Suffolk for an Annual General Meeting

Tuesday, 25 February 2003. The 2003 Annual General Meeting of the National Information and Learning Technologies Association (NILTA) was being held at at British Telecom's headquarters in Ipswich.

BT had a team dedicated to thinking about future uses of technology and it was at one of these visits that we were introduced to self-service shopping checkouts, shelves that registered which products were being sold and all things to do away with the need for human staff so that no-one would be able to get a job unless highly qualified and therefore wouldn't be able to afford food or pretty much anything else in the future... Ah... nearly there!

This was a two-day event and we were all staying nearby in a small town and port, Woodbridge in Suffolk. The photographs in this article were taken on one of my usual before-breakfast forays on Wednesday 26th.

Given that this was February, it follows that the sun was not quite at its zenith as I shrugged on a coat and grabbed my camera. Temperatures were hovering around zero. The sun was making a valiant attempt but hadn't succeeded in making itself known as yet. Woodbridge is on the River Deben, eight miles from the sea. The area has been home to humans for around 4,000 years. Somewhere behind those trees on the far side of the river is the site of the Sutton Hoo ship burial.

The Romans were here for around 300 years once they had finally managed to get rid of Queen Boudicca. That's quite a long time to wait before deciding that she wasn't coming back... Once the Romans left around 410 CE, the Angles migrated in large numbers from modern Germany and gave their name to East Anglia.

Woodbridge has a tidal mill. The mill wheel on the mill's website is described as "five metres wide" - I presume they mean "in diameter". It sits in the small extension seen on the right hand side of the mill in the photo. A mill has existed on the site since 1170 CE and it is thought that the one still existing is the third mill since that date. It is still working and can be visited. But not at 7:00am....

During the reign of Catholic Queen Mary Tudor a local woman, Alice Driver had her ears cut off as punishment for daring to likening Queen Mary to Jezebel. Being disfigured didn't stop her from continuing to have a go though and she ended up being burned at the stake as a heretic. Those were the days, eh?

The railway line follows the river and I had to use the footbridge to get to the harbour and return to the hotel. You can't help but feel that taking a train alongside the river must make for a brilliant scenic journey.

So it's now up and over as the cold and the growing pangs of hunger assault me. The rest of the day will be spent doing exercises as part of a marketing strategy. Some of the techniques we were introduced to stood me in good stead for the work that I was to undertake in the following years with JISC infoNet.

The hotel. My diary from the time says it was the Church Inn, dating from 1530 but I can't find any mention of it on the Internet now. So if anyone recognises it please leave a comment and let me know!

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NILTA Directors' Meeting, London

15 February 2007. I'm in London again for a Directors' Meeting of the National Information and Learning Technologies Association.

It's the Chinese New Year, so I go down to have a look around Chinatown behind Leicester Square.

The following morning and we are on the 15th floor of the International Press Centre on Shoe Lane. As with the more well known Pudding Lane where the Great Fire of London started in 1666, Shoe Lane was so named because shoes were made there.

Not everyone was happy that the windows in this room stretched from floor to ceiling but the view was excellent. Looking towards the bottom left of the photograph, I love the way you can find the older gorgeous buildings dwarfed by the larger but far less impressive modern skyscrapers. Alas all the design seems to have gone from design these days.

The Old Bailey and the now-familiar shape of 30 St Mary Axe, known popularly as the Gherkin Building - a name the owners hate and discourage. Probably a non-starter of a hope.

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Retiring

I think I mentioned a while ago that I was planning to retire at the end of March and here it is. Already!

On 17 March I attended my last Planning Meeting with Jisc infoNet and the team gathered at the Castle Green hotel in Kendal for the event, which included a bit of a marathon presentation to me...

The above image is the cover of a little booklet containing photos and messages from colleagues not only from infoNet but from lots of colleagues at partner services which was really nice and quite humbling. I'm glad I didn't read it on the spot - I'd have been going all emotional!

On Wednesday this week I went over to Newcastle to hand in my work phone etc and had a last lunch with the team, this time without Steve, but with Kath who hadn't been able to get over to Kendal. Then a sad farewell and I drove home, slightly thankful for the heavy sleet which made me concentrate on the driving.

My career started as a self-employed photographer with a list of publications in magazines such as "She", "Weekend", "The National Enquirer" and many more, followed by a spell in a family owned department store that I think the TV programme Are You Being Served was based on... I started working in Education in 1984 before moving to Further Education at Fleetwood Nautical College in 1985, Blackpool College, Preston College, Myerscough College and finally joining Jisc infoNet and the University of Northumbria in 2003.

At Preston College from the early 1990s I started to get involved at a national level, helping start and run the National CMIS Board, The National Information and Learning Technologies Association (NILTA) for which I was a Director, Deputy CIS Operations Committee Chair and North West Representative, and as a member of one or two working groups for the Further Education Funding Council. In 1999 I was awarded a national award for "outstanding contribution to the development of College Information Systems in Further Education in the UK".

In 2002 I was involved for Myerscough College in a joint bid to run a new JISC service covering information systems in both Further and Higher Education. This would be hosted by the University of Northumbria and was provisionally to be called SysInfoNet. The consortium won the bidding process and the new service, now named JISC infoNet, came into being and I joined them as a full time employee. Before long I found myself teaching university and college managers things like Project Management, Change Management, Process Review, Strategy, Risk Management and more.

I've had the opportunity to lead workshops in universities across the UK, including Cambridge, Edinburgh, Glasgow, Stirling, Belfast, Cardiff, Swansea, Royal Holloway, LSE, Lincoln, Brighton, Manchester, Newcastle and a host of others and at Further Education Colleges in most counties as well as speaking at conferences both in the UK and elsewhere in Europe.

As news of my pending retirement became known I've been amazed at messages referring to work I'd almost forgotten. Thank you all. It has been wonderful working with such dedicated colleagues over the years. I'll still be doing the odd workshop for a bit, but I know that even though there are all sorts of plans for new directions, books, gigs with the band, etc - I am going to miss you all!

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Keith Duckitt

Keith Duckitt of the Further Education Funding Council (FEFC) looks on as the Chairman of the National College Management Information Services Board (National CMIS Board), John Rockett, shakes hands with the Chairman of the National Association for Information Technology in Further Education (NAITFE), Malcolm Himsworth, to merge the two organisations and form the National Information and Learning Technology Association (NILTA) in July 1995.

I attended Keith's funeral yesterday, a sad occasion as all funerals are, but a celebration of a man who was much loved by those of us in the Further Education Sector of those days and a veritable mover and shaker in the implementation of new technology in learning.

He is pictured doing what he did best - bringing people together to get things done. One of the tributes given yesterday mentioned that many people have said of Keith; "If it hadn't been for Keith, I wouldn't have been where I am now." I am one of those.

Keith Duckitt 1940-2008 RIP

Large Version of the Photo: Keith

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.

AoC NILTA Conference 2007

I'm currently at the AoC NILTA Conference in Leeds and it has been an excellent conference this year. This has been the 19th NILTA Conference if you count the "parent" organisations of NILTA, namely NAITFE, the National CMIS Board and SCITFE the first incarnation of all.

One or two people present have been at all 19 of them. I can't quite claim that, I started out in 1993 as Associate Chair of the National CMIS Board so have been to enough for people to look at me with concern, wondering whether I'll collapse with age... or perhaps waiting for me to grow up - no chance of that I'm afraid! Lots of people yesterday were saying nice things about me to my boss, some without realising who she was, so my thanks to them!

Some good and pertinent sessions and keynote speakers. I especially liked a couple of phrases by Barbara Ganley from Middlebury College in America who was speaking about the use of blogs by her creative writing students. She spoke about "learning in cycles of disruption and repair" and the need for building into your courses some opportunities to fail, so that learning can come from it. Initially this might sound strange - we want students to fail? Well not in the long run of course, we want them to achieve their qualification, but walking away with a certificate is not the only goal I hope. It's when we fail in something that we take a step backwards, assess things like what went wrong and why, learn to identify and solve problems and learn what is repeatable and what should not be repeated.

The second keynote was from Nigel Paine who gave a very enjoyable and thought provoking session. He focussed on Change and the rate of change and the slowness of many educational cultures in dealing and accepting change and embedding new ways of learning. "We have got to let things from the past go," he said - a phrase that might challenge a few cultures perhaps. The tendency can be to evolve slowly, adding and supplementing but without always reviewing, releasing and discarding those things which have become tired, outdated or no longer relevant to today's young people in Further Education.

JISC infoNet, my own organisation, is currently involved with a series of one-day workshops on Change Management, delivered by myself with Clive Alderson, which introduce strategy and techniques for supporting Change in organisations. Another of our resources which has been generating lots of interest is the Planning & Designing Technology-Rich Learning Spaces infoKit. With many colleges currently involved in new building projects or refurbishment, the kit, released last week is timely and contains many resources, including a database of images of college and university innovative building projects, hosted at Flickr.

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Two in a Bed...

Cats I mean... This normally spells trouble. I got up this morning, despatched to make the coffee as Fran was in work for 7:00am and the cats had decided to bunk up in one bed rather than use the other (larger) bed.

Normally Jess has a thing for standing, sitting or lying using Tigger as a pillow, but this morning she was sprawled out on top of him, bum hanging over the edge of the bed and Jess looking just a touch resigned at the unusual state of affairs...

It's been a bit of a musical morning for me - the band have a gig tonight so I've been getting ready for that, more about that on the band's blog. It's a busy weekend all round as tomorrow we have the family coming round - there's a few birthdays in March and three of us will have had or are about to have one! Next week will see me in Leeds for the AoC NILTA conference and then rushing off to Taunton to give a session at a seminar on bidding for project funding.

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