Sheffield Professional and an interesting print story

Interesting meeting today discussing our Sheffield Professional initiative which we have developed to make sure that we value the talent of our professional staff, and to promote team working and collaboration between professional services and academic departments. So far we've had three big events with the Registrar, and put together a set of useful web pages. Now we're promoting secondment and project opportunities to encourage movement between departments.

Last year we had an intern working with us to produce training and promotional material, and he produced several excellent short videos. We've just taken on another intern, with a similar remit, and he's just produced this as his first great video about our Sustainable Print Project:

Back of a napkin and creative problem solving

One of the final sessions at the Gartner HE sessions last week was a workshop looking at new ways of communicating strategies. Instead of lots of words, we had a go at using pictures. Someone once said if you can't communicate your vision, it doesn't matter how good your strategy is. So, we had a go at a technique described in the book, Back of a Napkin by Dan Roam. Jot down some ideas, and draw some pictures. Mine was a student with a smiley face holding an iPad with a world map on it in one hand and a martini in the other. Got it? Student centred (happy student), mobile (iPad), world class (map) and anytime, anyplace, anywhere (Martini!). Wonder if there's a job for me in design?

Today we had the second of our Registrar's events as part of the Sheffield Professionals - a series of  initiatives to ensure that we value the talent of our professional staff. Another excellent session with representatives from professional service staff from across the University, and a mixture of talks, discussion and networking. We even did some creative problem solving based around thinking of an object, then describing its attributes, then using those to think of solutions to problems. Good fun and quite productive once you got used to it!  At the last event in November we asked participants for one big question which we subsequently answered - this time we got more, so the page will be updated soon.

Talent Management

Yesterday lunchtime I went to the first "Registrar's Event", as part of the launch of our new talent management initiative for Professional Staff. It had about 100 attendees from all areas of professional services from a variety of grades and job areas, and began to explore how we can continue to develop a cohesive, flexible and values team of professional staff. It was acknowledged that behind every outstanding piece of research work which  reaches the national and international press,  every award the university  achieves, and every outstanding piece of teaching, there is a team of professional staff which make this possible. Our aim to to describe the Sheffield Professional, in the same way that we do the Sheffield Academic and the Sheffield Graduate.

It was a good event, lots of networking, opportunities to meet new people, speed dating, spot prizes, and a very uplifting and stimulating talk from the Registrar.  As part of the discussion, attendees were asked to identify the One Big Question. What would they like answered, and my favourite was "what does the Registrar actually do?  I've been asked the same question myself (about me, not him), and that's how this blog started. More to come - watch this space.

Today I've been in the UEB Information Services sub group - a small group who discuss items which might be relevant to our Executive Board. One of the main items from CiCS we discussed today was Information Security, especially in relation to mobile devices. User education is as critical as policies and technical solutions, and we are rolling out an on-line training/awareness programme which we have piloted in one faculty and are about to implement in CiCS.  Our discussion today was how to implement it across the University, and how much should be mandatory.

The other main discussion we had was around open access publishing of research journals. Suffice to say, it's complex!