Rain? In Manchester???

Well it goes without saying doesn't it?

This was the view from my hotel window, first thing on Thursday as we prepared to introduce another set of delegates to the delights of Risk Management. The drive from London had been a tad prolongued the night before - it took us three hours to get from around Euston to the M1 motorway and we didn't reach our hotel until a quarter to midnight.

It was nice therefore to be staying in the same hotel that was the venue for the workshop as it meant we didn't have to be up at the very crack of dawn and we could have a leisurely breakfast. The conference centre was in the basement and the lift had a strange habit of immediately answering the call of a pressed button - which meant when you reached the basement the voice announced where you were but the doors didn't open and you went back up again to pick up the next set of passengers...

Funny the first time...

Anyway the day went well and it was a thankfully shorter journey back to Blackpool and home to my own bed!

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.

Train of Disasters

Well, Fran and Gill got home ok on Sunday night but only just.

The train from Liverpool St Station - the Stansted Express - had to stop because of overhead problems at Cheshunt and they were told it wouldn't go any further. Ten carriages full of folk needing to get to the airport to catch flights. Some had already missed their check-in times by the time they were told it would go no further and most jumped off at the tiny station to form an impossibly long queue at a taxi rank that probably sees no more than two taxis at any one time. (The good folks at Cheshunt will forgive my ignorance if that assumption is a bit wild?)

The point being though that train companies show a complete and utter disregard for any passengers when this sort of thing happens. "It's not our problem", "It's not our fault", the best you can hope for is "You can claim your train fare back..."

Do they not have Risk Management at train companies I wonder? Presumably they do as far as health and safety goes, but they never seem to know what to do when a train breaks down or has to stop where it is for any length of time.

In mainline carriages where no windows open and you are totally reliant on the air conditioning that has gone off the guards still insist they cannot open doors even when it is so hot that smoke is coming from passengers' skin! "We'll sue you if you break that window" is the normal response.

Anyway, as the two ladies were getting somewhat worried and the time for their check-in to close loomed ever closer the decision was made that the train could, after all, carry on to Stansted. By which time Fran said there were not many more than two dozen passengers left on it. I wonder how many hundreds missed their flights?

Come on train companies - you should at least carry the phone numbers of all coach firms along your route, even if you leave it to passengers to pay for their coach trip.

Risk Management Workshop

Clive and I have been in Nottingham again today, delivering a Risk Management Workshop for JISC infoNet.

Based on the Risk Management infoKit, the day introduces delegates to a methodology for identifying and assessing risks in order to make better-informed decisions.

Feedback gave us 37 out of a possible 40 "Excellent" ratings with a few ad hoc comments:

"Both presenters friendly and knowledgeable"
"Broadened my perception of what is involved"
"Engaging and very informative"

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