Tuesday, 28 March 2017

Wolverhampton weekly newsletter #20

Here is a penultimate newsletter - with one more week to go.

This week was dominated by the run up to the Digital Strategy Committee meeting including updating several documents as well as a few updates to the main powerpoint and presentation materials including development of a "one pager".  There was also some preparation for the first of the Academic Reference Groups on Monday. It was great to meet a colleague in the Maths department and corresponded about "humagrams" launched at BETT, and also a meeting next week with another colleague regarding his PhD Thesis which has a Digital theme.

Dates were circulated to all members for the Digital Advisory Board hosted by McCann and that will be part of my handover during next week - when I have also scheduled time to complete final handover tasks.

Our meeting with the City Council was fascinating.  Great tour of the facilities which are being significantly re-developed on our doorstep in the Civic Centre.  Various photos and observations are available, however, as some of them are sensitive (i.e. Server Room) I am not putting them here. It was agreed to meet on a regular basis from now on, and to invite them along to our Digital Advisory Board.

I facilitated a final meeting on the Business Intelligence (BI) Lessons Learned activity.  This captured a number of new and different perspectives from those involved with earlier stages of the BI project activity. Draft report is with participants and I will circulate the final signed-off version for next Thursday's deadline.

My final scheduled Nexus session went ahead with the Faculty of Engineering and Arts. It was much more interactive than any other of these sessions and there were some very helpful input from the Faculty team leaders including:-  the need for specialist teams in Faculty; about the nature of relationships with DAS/IT; some fundamental issues with planning and budgeting for basic hygiene factors; confirmation that "one size does not fit all".

CAST kindly circulated a message around DAS with an invitation for a beer and a natter next Wednesday evening to mark my departure at Slater's Bar.  I also created a short highlight report  of my 6 months at the University.  It has been a great opportunity.  Thanks to everyone who has made me feel so welcome.

No comments: