Aqsa and I hit the road again this week, this time travelling to Liverpool to the O2 Arena, where our parent company Aspire-i had taken an exhibitors' stand at the Welfare to Work Convention 2009. Along with Bluetree, our colleagues Ansar Rahman, corporate marketing manager from Apsire-i and Jen Florence from our sister company Careers Europe made up the exhibition team.
| Our Stand | Our new product posters for 2009 |
We took the opportunity to showcase our Interviewer product which is now undergoing final testing and tewaking before release in July 2009. We also had demoes of Rickter Impact Online, Absence Manager and an early prototype of TeamSolutionz' Management Information System at the stand. During the course of the convention over 2 days we ran at least 10 demonstrations each of Rickter Impact Online and Interviewer; Interviewer was particularly well received and received really positive feedback.
Back in the office we are now working through the 40 or so leads which resulted from the conference. Thanks to Nick who did a great job on the posters for our stand. Comments (0)
John Munro June 19th, 2009 20:44:49
Aqsa and I attended the JISC RSC Y&H (how's that for acronyms!) E-Learning Conference 2009. This translates as the Joint Information Systems Committee Regional Support Centre Yorkshire and Humberside! The event was held at York Racecourse - last time I was there was for the York Model Railway Show (anorak!) - which is an impressive venue, especially on a glorious sunny day. Only problem was that the Internet connectivity was useless and this was an e-Learning conference so guess what? Yes, lots of exhibitiors and presenters wanted/needed live connectivity to show off their wares. One of the facilitators commented that "we came here yesterday and tested it and it was fine with one or two simultaneous connections" - yes but on the conference day there were maybe a hundred devices all trying to connect. Pity the poor BBC presenter Zeb who planned to show us interesting video clips from the BBC educational archive, only to get the dreaded "Failed to connect" message.
That apart, and it was a significant failing, the conference show cased some interesting ideas and projects. I have since built a social website using Ning as a direct result of my attending the workshop on "Ning vs. VLE" run by Liz Bennett of Huddersfield Uni. Another highlight for me was the Henshaws College (Harrogate) presentation on how they are making practical use of new technology to work with visually impaired students - this was of interest because of the work we are doing with the RLSB.
Then I attended an update session on the molenet project given by Keith Tellum of Joseph Priestley College. "The Mobile Learning Network (MoLeNET) is a unique collaborative approach to encouraging, supporting, expanding and promoting mobile learning, primarily in the English Further Education sector, via supported shared cost mobile learning projects" and a number of colleges in the West Yorkshire region are involved in this - which is now in it's second year. We had a demo of how JPC and Leeds Building College are providing their students with O2 smartphones to access all sorts of e-learning material and then using SOTI software to administer the devices.
Overall impression is that there is a lot of web 2.0 stuff being used/tested/demo'd out in Yorkshire and Humberside schools and colleges. The "elephants in the room" as always are - how do you get people to contribute content and keep it all fresh and uptodate? how do you administer the content/security aspects? Both were discussed but there was no real consensus. And of course, in this brave new world of pervasive, 24x7 availability - how do you square this with the old traditional 9to5 office day?
John Munro June 3rd, 2009 12:05:16
End of last month Leila Shkodra of Careers Europe, Anthea Tinsley of Aspire-i and Nigel Godden and myself from Bluetree taook part in a 2 day Rickter Associate training, The training was run by Nan Wood, Operations Director of The Rickter Company, and a Rickter Associate Cath (sorry Cath, I've lost your surname - I will get it and update this) who has many years of practical experience with using Rickter in the Dumfries and Galloway area and elsewhere.
During the training, we learned again about the Rickter process and had to then present our understanding back to Nan and Cath to demonstrate that we had fully grasped the concept and method. The training was well organised by Nan and flowed smoothly. I have had a lot of exposure to Rickter through our software development but there was still lots to learn. One product which I had not fully appreciated was the Groupwork Rickter board; we tried this out for ourselves and we all thought we could see opportunities for this in schools, training departments, team meetings etc etc.
Anyway we are now Rickter Associates and looking forward to demonstrating our new skills at the earliest convenience. So if you'd like to hear more about Rickter and how it might be used in your organisation, do get in touch with me.
John Munro June 1st, 2009 16:28:54
Wednesday was the official external launch of the new Aspire-i, formerly Careers Bradford. As the parent company is no longer only involved in Careers Advice and is seeking to expand it's area of operation outside of Bradford (Careers Europe is one if it's subsidiaries) the name change seemed a good idea and long overdue.
The event was held at the Hilton in Bradford kicking off at 9:15 with an address by Trevor Mason, the CEO. MArketing Manager Ansar Rahman then explained the new branding and ran the new company DVD (I am old enough to remember the new company movie at Hoechst UK ack before video). The DVD was well made and showed Bradford as a very cosmopolitan city. Bluetree got a positive name check which was cool and we got the same from Trevor in his speech which was also good.
After this we split into 3 workshops; as designated Bluetree Brand champion I was to lead the Bluetree workshop. I had a Powerpoint prepared but unfortunatley the Hilton weren't prepared; none of the power sockets within the foyer area where we were due to present worked. According to the flustered employee "they work, but they don't have enough power" - I messed up my O level physics but I know a load of tosh when I hear it. Evenutally, we laid a massive extension cable into the bar and got power. Thanks to Nigel and Mick who improvised so well while we messed around, powerless to do anything.
After the workshop there was an exhibition area and we got a lot of interest, especially in our Interviewer product. Aqsa and Liza did their usual excellent work on the stand and a big thanks is due to Nick (Nick Wingfield Design) who produced our brochures at such short notice. All of our key business partners attended the day which was great - big thanks to Geoff and David of Team Solutionz who flew over from Belfast. The event had a good buzz about it and may become a fixture (obviously we won't rebrand every time). Certainly it was pretty good getting all our partners together and we may look to do this again maybe in 6 months.
John Munro May 16th, 2009 00:38:50
Friday morning I attended the breakout session "designing and delivering an effective careers website" run by Careers Wales. Their website had already been mentioned in the morning's keynote address by John Griffiths, Deputy Minister for Skills in the Welsh Assembly, who had praised it as a key tool in their strategy to bring better careers information advice and guidance to all children and adults in Wales.
The session began inauspiciously with the internet connection not working - always a bit of a killer when you are showing off a website. Eventually after much changing of cables and rebooting of laptops the connection started working and the display on the projector centred itself. The technical gremlins thus eradicated, we then had a discussion about how large the website was and how it would be impossible to go through ti all in just an hour, so what in particular did we want to see? This was an admirable approach but it meant that the presentation was bitty and the two presenters did seem to swap presenting completely at random. I would have welcomed a more structured approach taking us through some of the highlights of the site - and it's a great site; no wonder it has won awards.
The site provides information and facilities to 5 distinct groups - Employers, Professionals (Careers and Guidance professionals), Adults, 16 - 19 years olds and 14 - 16 year olds. As each group has different needs each area of the site is designed to meet those needs - so the 14 -16 area has lots of animation, the 16 -19s does not but has cool dark pink colorway and graphics. The site includes an e-portfolio which they refer to as their e-Progress file and a young person can use this to, say "who I am", describe their "progress so far", and to "reflect and take action". It also includes a CV Wizard and their are lots of quizzes and games used for inputting information as opposed to form filling.
We got a sneak preview of the new LDD specific area which has been developed and which is in beta; lots of animation, done by a company in Sheffield, and clear, easy and fun to use.
From the quick look which we got, there is masses of content and functionality on the site and it really does look impressive. One to benchmark against. GReat job byt he manager, Paul Messer............. and of course it is all in Welsh as well!
John Munro November 17th, 2008 17:43:30
Recently someone has very kindly left anonymous comments on my blog and then protested, anonymously, again when I deleted them. "Anonymous" also suggested that this was somehow against the rules - far as I am concerned, this is my blog, my rules and rule 1 is anonymous comments will be regarded as spam and deleted.
(0)John Munro November 17th, 2008 17:30:41
Well - left the conference after the breakout session on Website design and caught the 11:50 back to Manchester. Still only 2 carriages - come on Arriva - you can do better than this. We are all packed in snugly and after a short delay for the police to remove 2 abusive drunks and their binliner of booze (they left another binliner on the train stocked with cans) we left. It was an uneventful 3 hours back up to Manchester and then caught the 3:12 over to Huddersfield; standing room only - and it's not even the rush hour.
Tonight I am off to Manchester to Adrian Abel's retirement do - despite recessions, mergers, takeovers et al Adrian has kept going, most recently steering Gemini Dispersions as their Managing Director, out of ownership by Yule Catto and into new ownership by Canadian company, Dominion Colour. He's had a long and interesting career and I am looking forward to wishing him a happy retirement and seeing some old friends from our days at Hoechst.
John Munro November 14th, 2008 17:45:00
Yesterday I flew over to Belfast again for another Rickter presentation. This time Nan Woods, Rickter's Operations Manager, and I had been asked to present at one of the breakout sessions during the Northern Ireland Prison Service's Education and Vocational Training Conference. The event was held within the very impressive portals of Hillsborough Castle, just south of Belfast near the town of Lisburn. The village of Hillsborough itself is a very pleasant little place and we drove through to the castle at the top of the main street on a beautiful clear autumn day.
The conference focused on three key areas: Improving the Quality of Learning; Learning Disabilities and Learning Differences and Developing Partnerships and was attended by about 150 people including teachers and trainers. About 20 people had registered for our breakout session but in the event we had more than 30 delegates turned up - there was literally standing room only. The Rickter process is a great way of interacting with people and helping identify and quantify their perception of themselves. It helps practitioners identify a person's personal journey and measure their distance travelled on that journey over a period of time. Nan gave an introduction to the Rickter process and handed out the Rickter boards for delegates to "try out"; I then finished the session by showing an overview of our new Rickter Online Management System which practitioners can use to record interview data.
Judging by the number of delegates who signed up for further information and the number of questions we received, the presentation was a success so hopefully we'll be back some time soon to help some of the delegates introduce Rickter to their own organisations.
John Munro October 24th, 2008 22:56:56
I was fortunate to be in Belfast on Friday 1st August for the inaugural meeting of the NI Lotus geeks, chaired by none other than an old school friend of mine, the one and only Steve McDonagh. I haven't seen Steve in years though I've been back to Coleraine at least once a year; his Dad used to try to teach me maths at Coleraine Inst. and Steve and I hung around in the same group of teenagers on the Ballycairn Road and we used to go canoeing together on the Bann (as I remember it, we couldn't hack the mainstream sports of rugger, rowing and cricket so did canoeing instead). Might not seem terribly exciting but canoeing round the Salmon Leap weir - not to be recommended - nearly proved to be an Extremely Dangerous sport.
We met in the famous Crown Bar in Belfast - great venue - which was rockin' at 6:00pm on a Friday night and as the evening went on just got louder and louder. What a difference from my local pub, the Star, in England; well, if partying was an Olympic sport, I think we Irish would be gold medallists. As well as Steve, the entourage included Paul Mooney, Brendan and Geoff and Adrian from Teamsolutionz. With such Notes talent assembled it was almost tempting to have an indepth technical discussion of the pros and cons of this or that API.........almost. This being Belfast, any attempt at such talk was met with howls of derision and mickey taking so we simply got on with the "craique".
Steve and co. set a cracking pace of 4 pints an hour (on an empty stomach.........ooh, that's gotta hurt!). I did have to leave to catch the 7:30pm train back up to Coleraine so I escaped the worst of the brain damage and was able to function reasonably well on Saturday. For any of you fortunate enough to get invited to meeting #2, I'd thoroughly recommend it.
John Munro August 4th, 2008 15:59:57
My daughter Helen, aged 13 going on 23, along with a lot ofher friends got a laptop for Christmas. It was a special offer from PC World at Bradford where the sales chap did his utmost to get me to purchase some additional stuff. "Would you like anti-virus software? would you like MS Office? Would you like PC support? etc etc". To all these increasingly desperate questions I answered "no" until finally he disppeared into the back of the store and then reappeared with a laptop bag which he threw in for "free" as long as I signed up for PC support for 1 month. This was also free and would only cost me money if I forgot to cancel the Direct Debit. Sorry PC World, I remembered!
Anyway, having got her laptop and played around with the joys of Windows Vista (she thinks it's cool!) we finally got round to the dreaded "H" word - homework - the reason why we bought he laptop in the first place. "But I can't do any homework as I haven't got Microsoft Office" she cried. Thank you IBM; rather than shelling out for an Office licence I simply downloaded IBM Symphony onto a CD and gave it to Ms Munro. I waited for moans of "it's not as good as......." or "it doesn't do this and that" but instead, this was her verdict
"Heh Dad, it's really cool". Result!
John Munro January 16th, 2008 10:08:23