A year in CiCS

December round up and party pics

Sorry - not posted in a while.So, a quick round up of the last couple of weeks. As part of our student systems project we've been scoring the ITPD responses from interested suppliers. For those who are interested in the acronym, that's Invitation to Participate in Dialogue. This is where we take the suppliers who got through the first round in our tendering process, and score their detailed answers to a number of our questions, to decide which ones to take to the next stage. A lot of people have spent a lot of time on this over the last couple of weeks, as scores are done individually, then moderated in a group, and then aggregated into the final scores for the Sponsorship Group to take the final decision on the next stage. All this has been completed in a relatively short period of time, so well done to all involved.

I've also been talking to a group of Sheffield Leader participants about challenges facing leadership in Universities, and meeting with the Sheffield City Region CIO forum, which brings together the CIOs from local authorities, the NHS and the Universities. One of the big topics on the agenda was devolution in the Sheffield city region, and what that might mean for us.

Of course, the highlight of the last couple of weeks has been the famous CiCS Christmas party, and this year for a change we were entertained by the excellent magician Steve Faulkner, who visited every table and entertained in the bar afterwards. My last post of the year wouldn't be complete without a few pictures from the event, so here goes, and I hope you all have a very Happy and Peaceful New Year.

Prizes and cakes....

An annual event for us is our thank you party in November/December every year. A couple of hours of beer, wine and food once the beginning of term has died down. We combine it with a charity raffle, prizes donated by the department and suppliers, and we regularly raise several hundred pounds for charity.

This year was no exception, the prize table was again groaning last Friday, much beer was drunk, and almost everyone took home something. Thanks to everyone for donating raffle prizes, selling tickets, and helping set up on the day. Great effort!

Today I was mainly interviewing for a new exciting post, more later as I clearly can't say much at the moment. But, the highlight of the day had to be judging the TEL teams bake off efforts. With 6 amazing cakes, it was very hard to pick a winner, so we picked three. But really, all of them deserved to win. I tasted all six, and as someone who doesn't have a sweet tooth, I really wondered how they do it on Bake Off where they have to taste many more! Well done to all of them.

Posted with Blogsy

Gratuitous cat picture....

As well as a lot of catch up meetings this week, I've spent quite a lot of time judging the Amber Miro award.  Amber was a great character, chair of the UCISA Support Services group, wore the most amazing red lipstick, had an amazing ability to innovate and motivate, but sadly died far too young in 2012.

This award was set up to in her memory, and is intended to reward innovation. This year we asked for the submissions to be in the form of a video - so I've spent some very enjoyable time this week watching and scoring them. There were some cracking ideas, and some great videos. Will announce winners on here when I can!

Other things so far this week include a meeting with our JISC account manager, and a liaison meeting with our our estates department.

This is a bit of a short post, so I'll leave you with a picture of two of my cats. One fat one asleep on my bed, and one looking at me intently, trying to will me to get out of bed and feed him. He failed. 

Where has all the blogging gone....

Well it's been 4 weeks since my last post - the longest blogging break since I started writing this in October 2007 I think. A number of reasons for that. First, I took a couple of weeks off work in August, one of those was for my annual pilgrimage to Whitby Folk Week, and I know how much some of you look forward to the obligatory morris dancing picture following that, so here it is - the wonderful Seven Champions Molly Dancers, straight from the Frittenden Treacle Mines.

Look at the colour of that sky - it was like that for almost the whole week we were there!

I suppose the second reason for the break, is that I just don't seem to have had a lot of time. I'm spending a lot of time during the day getting out and meeting Heads of Department. I decided I would visit each head over the summer, and I've almost made it, just a few more to do. The other thing taking up time, especially in the morning, lunchtimes and evenings, when I often write this, was walking. Back at the beginning of the summer, a stalwart walker in the department suggested that we enter a team in the Global Corporate Challenge, so I volunteered. Seven of us formed the Trekking Techies of CiCS, and set out to see how far we could walk in 100 days. I was used to walking between 10,000 to 12,000 steps a day, and originally set myself a new target of 13,000, but to keep pace with the others, and with other teams, I soon upped that to 16,000 and in the last 40 days did 18,000 a day.  When you get all your steps from walking, I don't cycle or run, this can take up a lot of time! Many evenings I got home from work and then went for a long work to get my steps up. But it paid off, and we came third out of 75 teams entered by the University, and depending on when you took a snapshot of the final results, we came about 780 out of 42,000 teams worldwide. A very respectable result. So, thanks to George, Dave, Andy, Steve, Jenny, Tessa for being great walking companions.

So now I'll get back to blogging and telling you what I've been up to. I'll try and post a couple of catch up posts in the next couple of days to get up to date.

Merry Christmas

And so another year comes to an end, marked by the annual event which is the famous CiCS Christmas Party.  I hope everyone enjoyed it, and has a good break. Here's some pictures:

Registration and DNA Torpedoes

So our new students have arrived, and so much goes on behind the scenes to make sure they are registered correctly, have everything they need to start their studies, have access to the right services etc. We have a team of people in our sports halls working alongside colleagues from across the University supporting online registration. Module loading, identity checking, fee paying and Ucard distribution. The sports halls are transformed by our voice and data and IT support teams. And everything will be taken down and things made back to normal this weekend. Everything seems to be going very smoothly at the moment, great team work again.



Have managed to get another couple of nights in the Spiegel Tent this week for our X lectures- reseach that we thought might be better presented to a more adult audience! Monday was Tim Birkhead talking about sex in the animal kingdom. Absolutely fascinating. Learned a lot! Last night was my old friend Allan Pacey on the secret life of sperm. Again brilliantly presented, very interesting and very funny. And just a little bit rude....
It was preceded my a short film made by Human Studios especially for Festival of the Mind. Lovely graphics, and worth a watch.

DNA Torpedoes from Humanstudio on Vimeo.




- Posted using BlogPress from my iPad

Nothing worse than a wet morris dancer....

Back from my annual pilgrimage from Whitby Folk Week, and I know you all look forward to the gratuitous picture of Morris Dancers, but contain yourselves.....

I mentioned in an earlier post that I'd been helping  with the University's contribution to a civic event - The Sheffield Fayre.  Well, it's just happened, and I've spent the weekend there. Sunday was glorious, lovely sunny weather.  I only had one team to look after - The Sheffield Giants, who are magnificent.

I love this picture of the porters (who carry the Giants and dance with them), putting on their black large belts to help support them.

So, Monday dawned, on the day that I had 6 teams to juggle, and it rained. Rained, and rained. Threw away the programme, Tried to find dryish dance spots, and the show went on! Ably assisted by beer from the beer tent. So, here's a very wet, bedraggled morris team - actually the one I normally dance with.

So that's it. Your annual exposure to folky things. Normal CiCS service will shortly be resumed....

The famous CiCS BBQ

Last Friday was the famous CiCS BBQ, in our lovely back garden and in glorious sunshine. Lots of people helped of course - to prepare the food, to put up the gazebos, to BBQ, to move furniture, to test the beer.... All under Alison's direction of course - so thanks to everyone, and those who stayed behind to clear up and wash up. Forgot my camera, so here's a few iPhone pictures of a great event:

Grannies on Segways!

Something to amuse you. To help publicise the Mobile University, we had the world's first, and only,  shopping trolley formation dance team, Granny Turismo. On Segways!

Inspirational, Mobile University!

There are some things that happen that reinforce my view that the University is more than a place to work, but is a community. One of those events was the 24HourInspire which took place earlier this year in memory of Tim Richardson. 24 hours of lectures - my diary here, and more importantly the lectures are here.  Today I went to the first planning meeting for next years event - great ideas, lots of enthusiasm. Watch this space!

Another great event happening this weekend is the Mobile University. Three days of lectures from some of our best young academics on a variety of subjects all delivered on a vintage double decker bus!

All part of our civic engagement mission, to bring the University to the people of our wonderful city. And of course, an event wouldn't be an event without us providing the technology. A wireless base station transmitting a wireless signal without being connected to the internet (I have really struggled to get my head around that!), and mini iPads to deliver the slides to the passengers. There's even a conductors cap for someone to wear. Looks like it should be fun!

You dirty rat....

Just realised I haven't posted about the end of the Gartner conference - great finish. An improvisational comedian - Neil Mullarkey - showing us how the techniques used in improv can be used to improve engagement with others. Colleagues, customers, all benefit from increased engagement and it was fascinating to see some of his techniques. I've seen Neil in action a couple of times with the Comedy Store Players, and am fascinated by how good improvisational comedians can seemingly think so quickly and be so creative and funny. He taught us about how to listen, how to offer things to people and how to deal with blocks. And, as soon as I saw 3 microphones on the stage, I knew someone would have to go up with him. And as soon as he got my name, I knew I'd be one of them. And I was. Great fun trying out some improv games.

And now I'm back, and so are the students!  There's a real buzz about the place. I missed most of the arrivals weekend, but managed to get to The Edge on Sunday for an hour. The sun was shining and it looked great as always

Lots of CiCS staff on hand to help students get on line and help out with any IT problems. Not as busy as in previous years, which is good, means we're getting all the pre-arrival stuff right.

This week registration starts in earnest, and without tempting fate, it seems to be going very well. The sports hall where most of the process occurs had virtually no queues - looked very different to in previous years! Again, testament to all of the hard work put in to improve the student experience when they arrive. Great teamwork across many different areas.

One of the few problems we had to deal with today was the loss of connectivity to one of the accommodation blocks. After investigation we discovered that a rat, (or some other animal) had chewed through the optic fibre!

Dead Hedwigs, Pierced Angels and Omi

A common theme of this blog is why I love working at the University - last night was another good example. An invite to the opening of another exhibition in our great Western Bank Library Exhibition Space. This time it's of the work of the Sheffield sculptor, Anthony Bennett. Anthony has been working for 30 years, but has been relatively unknown till recently. He has produced some amazing work - the Pierced Angel at the bottom of the Library stairs is really impressive

But the strangest piece of all is of The Great Omi - aka The Barbaric Beauty or The Zebra Man. He was really Horace Ridler, a British cavalry officer in WW1 who after the war decided to join the circus. He had a variety of mundane jobs, and in 1935 decided to transform himself into an exotic sideshow curiosity. He was tattooed and pierced, and this is an extremely lifelike sculpture of him. So lifelike it's creepy. I kept expecting it to wink at me.

It's a great exhibition - curated of course by the great Professor Vanessa - here she is opening it in front of another work - Humbug

If you can get to see it, it's open to the public every weekday from 0900 to 1900 and weekend afternoons - details here.

My only concern was I thought that he had killed some Hedwigs - but he assured me they were handmade...