The gorilla and the trapdoor

Interesting meeting yesterday with some staff who are collecting stories and anecdotes from people in the University, to use in prospectuses, as news items, and to make sure that knowledge isn't lost when people leave. they really came to see me to talk about how to store make available various forms of media - audio, video, photos, text etc, but I couldn't help going into nostalgia mode and telling them some of my stories. As well as the ones here, the one they were most interested in, is why there's a trapdoor, cleverly hidden by the carpet, in one of our main meetings rooms in the University. It's actually an escape route, installed in the early 80s when students has a sit-in in the corridor outside the room whilst a meeting was going on, I think it was Council, and the VC had it installed so he could escape if it ever happen again. Only time I've seen it used is when a colleague of mine left, and the director of estates jumped out of it dressed as a gorilla. Those were the days....

Also been to two meetings of the Senate Budget Committee this week, where I'm the representative of the professional services. Interesting discussions about our terms of reference and way of working, and what areas we are going to be looking at over the next year. Comments received from members of Senate indicate a lot of mistrust, and misunderstanding, of how budgets are set, and we're looking at ways of making this more transparent.

I've also been involved this week in discussions about implementing a student eFile - bringing together all of those bits of information that are stored in many departments about students into one place. looks like we've found a way forward, but more on that later.

And now, as the weather's changed and the sun has gone and rain has appeared, I'm off camping for the weekend!  Have a nice bank holiday everyone.