Still can’t quite believe that it is October next week, did we have a summer, or was that somewhere else?

At the start of the week I had an online meeting with Oaklands College, about their smart campus aspirations. It was a good meeting, and we discussed various topics and aspects of what we mean by smart campus, use cases, and what foundations are needed.

Attended another active learning set session as part of an internal leadership training, I am undertaking. The problem we were discussing was about recruitment. I won’t go into details here, but I was reminded of the challenges involved in recruitment and getting it right. Over my career I have recruited some amazing people, and occasionally, not so much. One thing I will pass on from my experience is, no matter how desperate you are to fill a position, if the candidates you interview are not right, don’t feel forced to appoint. It may feel you have solved a short term issue, but the reality is that it may become a long term problem. Also, think about the type of attributes and skills you need for that position and then think about how you will find that in the people who apply. For example, does putting in having a degree as an essential attribute provide the skills you need, or will it exclude people who have those skills gained through experience, but never went to university, as it wasn’t something that was available to them?

Attending training for our new travel booking system. Not too different to the system we already have. Having this kind of self-service system makes life so much easier to the processes and systems I used in the past. I remember having to fill out paper forms, get them authorised, and then pass them to the travel team, who would then book the travel and accommodation.

I attended the Education Espresso session organised by Wonkhe and Adobe. It was an interesting discussion.

I had quite a few meetings this week.

Planned out the conferences I want to attend, I won’t be able to attend them all, but at least I have thought through the ones I would like to go to.

This week Paul Bailey retired; I have worked with Paul for twenty odd years. I joined Jisc in June 2015 and have regularly worked with Paul on various projects and programmes. I would also bring him for conversations about my work. Before I joined Jisc I collaborated and worked with Paul on various things, some I don’t remember, but certainly in the early days of learning analytics. I also am sure he was a critical friend of some case studies I did back in the 2000s. He was a real asset to Jisc and he will be missed.