Back...

Well I'm back. Two weeks of glorious weather, good food and drink, lounging by the pool, reading and exploring Mallorca are over. Left Palma at 38deg, landed in Manchester to drizzle and 17deg. Fantastic holiday - even the go-carting (I just don't get it - why don't they steer like cars??)

Spent at least an hour this morning going through emails - about 80% deleted without even opening. When will suppliers realise that I'm not going to buy anything on the basis of them sending me an email.

Then straight into a series of meetings. First up an Executive Team where we spent some time discussing two of our strategies in detail - our Teaching and Learning strategy and our Technology Strategy. These are new documents, being developed as a framework for our activity over the next few years, and will form part of a suite of strategies currently under development, including a Research Support Strategy and a Customer Service Strategy. Both were first drafts, and we had a good discussion - will share more about actual content when they're a bit firmer.

Then a Programme Board where we approved a new project proposal, to provide a centralised hosting service for streaming media, with a searchable catalogue. The main thrust of this project will be to provide a unified, simple view of all types of the media for our users. We will need to provide access to media in different ways, including hooks into our VLE, ordinary web pages, and client applications including iTunes. We will need to think carefully about how information is catalogued as well as which technologies to use.

Finally a discussion with our marketing department about responsibilities for the web service, and how we might take the development of the web site forward.

A busy first day back - even the tan has started to fade.