Our findings from Expo07

So back from Llandudno and back to work today, I guess it would do to describe some of the sights sounds and smells of Expo07: Well the first day was a bit of a dissapointint start to be perrfectly honest and was ill organised but the second day showed a big improvement and with that we found it to be much more succesfull.

In terms of benifits to the charity we got some good links with other organisations and some interested parties in volunteering, awareness training and transcription services across Wales. Our profile was also raised which of course is always a benifit too.

Personal development wise, i got some more workshops on coaching and imporoving the mind/memory. I also got to hear from a number of speakers about their lives and exeriences which although varied in quality still all gave me something to think about and learn from. I also managed to circulate my own buisness cards and project details aroud so that people can get in contact with me further down the line. I feel like my networking skills are really improving and my ability to talk work related nothingness is coming on in leaps and bounds.... a skill that im especially proud of (for if you can talk rubbish to people and keep them interested you get more facetime and therefore remain in their memory for longer)!

Questions on the event would be answered happily if i get any but apart from taht i shall sign off!
tara

Preparing for Expo 07

Tomorrow we have Expo 07 to attend in Llandudno, so today we were sorting out various materials and promtional resources ready to take with us. It was a rather tedious and labour intensive task involving burning of cds, printing of stickers and applying the for mentioned labels to the sleves... however it has left us with a promotional CD Rom that looks nice and proffesional to promote the Awareness Training. Apart from that it was a relatively dull day (in terms of work AND weather). Was good to see Linda and Joy back in the office after their holidays making it a bit more back to normal in terms of people being in.

Probalby wont post till Thursday now as i shall be out of the office (unless they have wireless in the venue we are going to)

Bye for now

and a thanks to Andrew for doing the minutes

so first since i know that some of you have requested an update since Tuesday as i haven't posted the last couple of days, i have a brief run down of things that have happened:-
Meetings held: 2 (one of them a monthly supervisors meeting)
emails recieved: 22
cups of tea drank: 7
Conferences arranged for Andrew:: 1
Buscuits eaten: 1 packet of ginger nuts
(there you go Wendy, thats in a nut shell what happened on wednesday and Thursday)

So today... and yes ive been VERY busy... Not only did i help Dave Holins out by checking the accessibility of the website using Supernova. Coming up to lunch time I helped out Audrey with the stuffing of envelopes in preperation of the AGM. I also started to play around with Joomla (cheers to Dave Jones for sending the lnks for it). Additionally i signed in to the chartered managers website as a student with my brand new login address (im really starting to get too many accounts online in my opinion). Further more i aided Andrew in writting up the minutes that he took so kindly yesterday. One more thing i did that arose from the meeting yesterdays meeting and was needed to be done by Expo 07 on Tuesday, that was the questionaire that we are goign to get delegates to fill out on website visits.

However all of that work was loose change in comparison to the crisp notes that was mine and Kaths recording of the Vision Support Awareness Training Team's promotional audio CD. I am especially grateful to Kath for her help with that and lets hope that it is recieved well by those who use it.

Ok that sounds like a comprehenisve list of what i did today and hopefully regains your interest
bye for the rest of the week...
T.x

my first bit of audio and my first image... i'm going multimedia!!!

Thought i would attach the Vision Support logo at the top of this blog just for a change...

So today Andrew and I worked on creating the audio version of the promotional material for the awareness training... Using Garage Bnad we created the audio files that were then tranfererable to itunes and then to CD... our various attempts eventually resulted in success and tomorrow we shall get Kath to record the audio material that we have scripted ready for her.

what else did i do today? hmm... oh yes, I booked Andrew on to a course on assistive technology in my absence at the end of september... that is at NEWI in Wrexham so hopefully he can get some usefull information from it ready for when i get back from my holiday. We also discussed what we plan to do next week for Expo 07 and what we plan to do whilst we are there. Finally i wrote up a summary for Miriam regarding the web service and the progress we have made with it so that she may give it to the board as a verbal this evening when they have their monthy meeting.

Sounds like i was busy today... which is good...

bye for now

Tim

Bonus post due to an amazing comment!

This is only a brief post as i already said about my day and its actually getting very late but since i posted i checked the comments i had recieved from earlier posts and was AMAZED to find one from not only a fellow visually impaired person but someone with the same eye condition (which incidentaly is very rare). So i guess i would like to quickly thank the lady for getting in touch and hey it shows that my blog is actually worthwhile after all... i hope that from this it might even manage to reach others if she sign posts it on and i can start to build links maybe with other people with a visual impairment online across the world!!

Ok thats enough for now... off to bed... work tomorrow...
Night!

Needing to worki on my communication skills?

Today i learnt that it is possibly better to engage my brain before i open my mouth... though i did get this message drummed in to me at primary school (the teacher i had in class 1 had a sign on his desk saying such for us to read every day). Not that i speak out of turn, i do however tend to say things a little too bluntly sometimes. Anyways i guess that its good to be opinionated so long as you dont let it take over the conversation and come across as dis interested in other points of view.

That muse aside, today i looked into the content managment system (CMS) Joomla and to how it would suit Vision Supports needs. I shall have to continue with that before Thursdays meeting so that im aware of how it works ready for my discussions with Sue, Les and Rich.

The office ssweepstake for the 20 20 ckricket was also started and my name along with the other 11 staff members involved was sealed in to an envelope with a mystery team so hopefully i have been drawn then winner. A masive £12 prize is available there.

done talking for the day i think so it shall be off home for me soon!
Tim

Dedicated to Jo

The best thing that happened today was the presentation of Vision Supports gift and card to Joanne who is getting married at the weekend and who is off tomorrow so in the afternoon tere was a brief pause in work while we all wished her our luck and happiness with both Saturday and the future! I hope she was pleased with it (im sure that she probalby was though)

In terms of work unfortunatly Rich couldnt make it for the meeting about the website today so i had to re arrange how we were goign to look at getting the informatio for Mirriam in time for the board meeting but still have a comprehensive disscussion on the various aspects of the web service project.

I also looked at the NVQ again and began planing hwo i will move through it and who i will need to work with to coplete the various units. It seems like its going to be ALOT of work and involve even more paper (despite being an online course).

Without wanting to sound too negative i feel this week has been a bit of a waste as both today and Friday are now not happening but then as Sue has just said things are meant to be so every cloud has a silver lining and there are always contingency plans available. Beidies im sure i can use the rearranging as evidence for the NVQ!!

tara
Tim

Dig the hole even deeper Tim!

The lesson to learn from today i found was not to ask someone to say something interesting without previously explaing why... Stuck for a title for my blog i asked Audrey to "say something interesting" it wasnt met quite as well as i would have liked and other office collegues didnt help the matter by suggesting i was saying she was normally boring which i hasten to add was not what i meant at all!!! Anyway it ended up that i have a title for my blog now and a large section on the way that part of the day panned out.

So what work did i do today? I sorted out the agenda and gathered in soome materials for tomorrows web service meeting so that is all prepared and ready. I also took a look at the accessiblity of a promo cd rom that the awareness traing team are sending out. Additionally i filled in a n onl9ine survey for KTP regarding their shocking organisational skills on the modules 2 and 3 courses

bye for another day

Tim

A dolphin stess ball

Today I got a dolphin stress ball given to me by the demonstrator who came from their company to speak to us about ways that we can link with them. the meeting itself was very interesting with lots of usefull bits and pieces coming out of it including something for future personal development regarding an acredited course for demonstrating their prodcuts and the fact that they are setting these courses up to run soon. To our amusement though they also gave us a pot of mints each as pr material too that was pretty much totally inaccessible to get in to since it was fiddly and the instructions of how to get in to it were in minute print!

The one negative that came from the day was the realisation that the course in Ireland was not going to be feasable to get to on time and so therefore i ahd to cancel but in doing so registered my interest with the man i spoke to regarding podcasts as an assitive learning too and he was keen to speak to me at a later date so i still kept that link open.

Not alot else to report today
so i shall go home and give eh stress dolphin a few squeezes ready for work again tomorrow

gantt charting for the web services project

In a very quiet office today i sat and started to write out a gantt chart for the next few months which focusses on the web services project and the related tasks i need to complete. I have to say i have flet very tired today after what seemed like a long weekend and with it alot of travelling but alas no time for sleeping as i have many important activities coming up that i have to attend to!

Incidentally i endorse boat trips down the River Thames as i went on one at the weekend and it was very enjoyable indeed!!