UCISA Conference Reflections

Just realised that I haven't posted two works in progress (now done) and haven't put together an overall reflection so here is a short summary of that. It was somewhat hectic and putting notes together became less important than listening and reflecting on the content as we went along. I liked the way that the speakers manage to find connections between their presentations (and this was unplanned and unbriefed) . It meant that I felt we had some coherence across speakers when they referenced something that was coming before or after rather than in isolation. Others have already commented on the programme but I think we tried a few new things we seemed to work quite well like the world cafe session and trying to keep to a "theme" for each day also provided coherence. Tim might have also given us the themes for next year without realising it: know your business, know your numbers, strive to be trusted, empower the team and see over the horizon. I rather like that personally as a simple business plan for anyone in any business. Lots of talk about shared service and collaboration and a real willingness to begin engaging in this over the next year. Perhaps plenty to look back on in a year's time on that topic. There were too many personal highlights including meeting the amazing Larry Hincker who was just amazing and humbling and just a great person. One day I hope to visit Virginia Tech. I really enjoyed the day three double act with Ajay and Andrew which had a lot of resonance for me personally and a really engaging presentation too. Took a string of actions away for back home. Some examples include the laptop loan service (which we ceased a couple of years ago but would like to restart), buying books on Amazon versus inter-library loans (possible money saver), Downloading the VT desktop alerter and all those emenrgency planning things we know we should do, initiate the (non) attendance monitoring focus group etc. Perhaps the final thing is more of a connection suggested after it was all over: How could we (UCISA) do something to (a) collaborate across the sector (b) something Olympian (ahead of 2012) (c) use our expertise in so many different fields. Or maybe combining the messages of Tim Marshall and James Cracknell "it's possible"?