Dr Christine Sexton, Director of Corporate Information and Computing Services at the University of Sheffield, shares her work life with you but wants to point out that the views expressed here are hers alone.
Earlier this week we had a Service Strategy Board where we had a look at the key objectives for next year for each of our Service Areas. Some key things coming up including our VLE review, a new digital media hosting solution, implementing our new teaching and learning strategy, a new BI/MI solution, our new research IT support team - and many more! Over the last couple of days me and the rest of the departmental executive team have been on an awayday pulling all of this together, as well as adding in other big initiatives including digital transformation, into our strategic plan for next year. Our theme is capability - helping the University achieve its business objectives by increasing its capability and capacity to do things.
Capability came into our other set of discussions over the last couple of days, which was about looking at how we can increase the pool of people we recruit from in order to increase diversity. We talked about recruiting for potential and capability, rather than just for skills people have on the day, and being more flexible in our recruitment practices.
One disadvantage of being away over the last couple of days was missing our winter degree ceremonies. As usual we record and stream live all of the ceremonies, as well as producing DVDs, USB sticks and our famous handshake videos.
A real team effort - thanks to everyone. Here's some photos from the day to give you a flavour of what's involved.
The AV team suited and booted ready to operate the cameras
A view from behind camera one
Some of the backstage production kit
And the creative mediateam producing the recordings
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.
Today was a big occasion at the University - the installation of a new Chancellor. For most of us working at a University, it doesn't happen very often. The last time it happened here was the installation of Sir Peter Middleton in 1999.
It was a great ceremony, with a brass fanfare composed by our music students especaillay for the occasion, the chancelor's choir singin, and the ceremonial passing on from one Chancellor to the other by both touching the University mace together.
Our new Chancellor is The Right Honourable Lady Justice Rafferty, DBE, a graduate of the University. I have to say, I am looking forward to her term of office with great expectations. The first woman Chancellor here, she delivered her address with passion, feeling, dignity, and without any notes, nor the comfort of the lecturn. Very impressive. The ceremony was videoed, and when I have the link for the stream I'll post it. Meanwhile, you can see her speak about her new role here:
Ceremonies like this do not organise themselves, and many people make it run smoothly. I would especially like to mention the team from CiCS who organised and ran all of the technology - the filming, live streaming, the audio, and video - you did a great job. Well done and thanks.
41 years ago today I arrived in Sheffield. A rather naive 18 year old from a market town in North Nottinghamshire. My Mum and Dad brought me in their car - I think it was a Hillman Minx but I
I could be wrong - dropped me at Halifax Hall, helped me unpack, and left. My room is still there - it's part of a suite in the Halifax Hotel. My room is the living area, and it's been knocked through to the room next door, which was the bedroom of my best friend Jane, who I met on my first night and remained my best friend throughout the three years of my degree. 41 years!!! I can't really believe it was that long ago. I remember it really well. And I've never left. But, the reason for thinking about it, is that today another set of young, apprehensive but excited students arrived in Sheffield.
Today many things are different. We greet them in a very different way. When I turned up, you got your key, were told where your room was, and that was it. Now, we have a fantastic red carpet for new students to walk down to collect their key, as well as a whole set of welcoming stalls and information stands. There's even free ice cream from Our Cow Molly.
And of course, we are there to help students with any IT issues. Mainly how to connect to wifi - which is all they really want. But, we are there to help them with anything. It was a bit quiet when I was there today, but that's a sign we've got thing's right. Everything just works, and they don't really need our help as much as they used to. But, don't this team and our stand look wonderful ;-)
And we'd produced a really good leaflet for students based on the idea of free IT deals...
I had a walk round all of the venues where we had staff today, and spotted something new in the Information Commons - self service laptop hire.
Finally, I'd like to pay tribute to a good friend of mine - Pat McGrath who retires next week - this is her last freshers weekend. She has worked tirelessly over the past 25 years to improve services to students. Today, as usual, hers was often the first face students and their parents saw when they arrived to start this exciting journey. She had a friendly and supportive word to say to everyone, and Freshers' Weekend will not be the same without her.
What with bank holidays and my annual trip to Chelsea Flower Show last week, not been a lot to post about. Unless you like pictures of gardens and flowers of course. Here's a couple of my favourites in case you do :-0
OK, back to work related stuff....
Today I went to a presentation about our Graduate Intern scheme. Running for the past 4 years, we've had 16 interns who work in departments across the University on a specific 6 month project from December onwards. Our current cohort have just finished, and its the first time for a while we've not had one in CiCS. This event was to look at how successful the scheme had been, and the interns gave a short presentation on what they had been doing and what skills they had gained.
Some of the projects they had worked on include:
Evaluating arts and humanities public engagement activities
Market research with current EU students to improve our EU website
Helping the outreach team in school of languages
Redesigning the Faculty of Arts Postgraduate website and looking at using social media to promote international students
Exploring use of mobile technology in teaching environments
Researching the public perception of carbon utilisation
Working with the Medical Schools Athena swan committee to promote gender equality in education and academia
Building an intranet for the Faculty of Science
Redeveloping the staff exams resources website within SSID
Administration of IT systems replacement projects and auditing and telephone equipment within ACS
Redeveloping the Ask Sheffield FAQ pages
It was interesting to see how many of the projects had involved technology - especially around websites.
During the internship they had a number of training sessions including project management, time management, coaching, how to manage a university, networking and action learning sets
The interns were all very positive about the scheme, and felt that had gained a lot of transferable skills which would improve their emolyability - communicationskills, software skills, report writing, administration, web page design, and budgeting and financial management.
Of course, there are benefits to the Universty as well - the interns often bring a fresh perspective into a department and in many cases have helped to deliver back burner projects - things that have been planned for a while but no-one has had time to do. Because they've worked as a team, there's also been improved collaboration across different departments.
All of them had been really surprised at how many people worked in a University, and how many different roles there were - commenting that during their undergraduate course they tend to see only their lecturers and the people they had their assignments in to! I remember I felt the same when I came out of an academic department - I had no idea really what "the Administration" did. Got a better idea now.
Finally got round to writing up the 24 Hours from Thursday 16 to Friday 17 April. A truly inspirational day and night!
1340 The team starts to take the kit in
1530 A Diary Room is being constructed, and yes, it does look like a beach hut. But it will be decorated with fairy lights and a shower curtain, so that's OK...
1650 almost ready to go. And lots, and lots of food is arriving.
1655 The audience is ready
1658 and Alex (aka Biscuits) is wide awake and raring to film for 24 hours..
1700 We're off! Opening welcome by Catherine - chief organiser.
1705 First session - a Tribute to Victoria Henshaw by John Flint. Researched the Importance of smell in a city and how important it is to an urban environment. She argued that there was movement to get rid of smell. To sterilise the city. Had bottles of smells. Room like something out of Hogwarts. "She pulls out a can of Glasgow" quote in the guardian.
1730 - its Nate Adams on Nanobots, and we have props!
All about the need to harness energy from the sun. Gene jockeys and Biochemists working together :-) We got a demo of Freddie and Mabel (2 parts of an enzyme, obviously), being hit my a laser
And a hydrogen rocket!
We did let the party poppers off, but can't remember why
1800 - talk on music for well being from Victoria Williamson. First (and only) technical issue of night
Fascinating talk about the connection between music and memory and emotion.
1830 Paul White on population growth - latest UN projection for global population in 2050 is 9.6 billion.
Managed to grab some tea - noodles cooked by Stuart.
1900 More about sound. 10% of population have tinnitus.Sound very important in our environment.
BBC used recordings of mutter to make people feel more at home in quiet offices. B and Q turn the music down on Wednesdays as it's pensioners day - who knew!
1930 Morag Rose. On loitering with intent! Great talk about the Loiterers Resistance Movement in Manchester. First Sunday on every month they go for a wander. Sometimes throw a dice to decide which way to go. Or
follow a different map. Or follow things that are yellow. Sometimes
there's an organised route eg to look at something in particular. Just done a sense walk.
Currently running contest for the most audacious buddleia! Love it!
2000 Clare McGourlay getting very upset at changes to legal aid. And rightly so!
Justice is now too expensive to pursue for many people.
3 months after changes, sex discrimination cases dropped by 90%. Race similar.
Just because people can't afford it.
Courts getting clogged up with people turning up to represent themselves.
Our own students are in the courts helping the judges out.
Loved the fact that all the way through the talk she referred to the Secretary of State for Justice as The Odious One. Or just Odious.
2030 Music and dancing going strong in the foyer
2100 First particle physics lecture of the night. And, the chalk has come out for writing on the blackboard!!! Anatomy of the ATlAS particle detector. Built some of it here in Sheffield.
3000 physicists in 40 countries working on ATLAS experiment.
It's well known that CERN collects antimatter to make bombs, illustrated with a great clip from Angels and Demons. In reality (!), he calculated it would take 15m years to make 0.5g of antimatter
2130 Tim Sheppard - a Musicologist. talking about Renaissance music and it's role in governance.
Machiavelli mentioned a lot.
2200 very popular talk - Catherine Fletcher - academic advisor to the producers of Wolf Hall.
For example, what sort of accessories did they wear?
Interesting that they didn't try to reproduce the actual colour. Would have been very bright and colourful, would have looked garish to us, we're used to seeing that period as faded.
2230 Something about neutrinos
Is it time to put the pyjamas on yet?
2300 This should be fun. Matt Mears comes in with 5 boxes, to illustrate 5 laws of physics, and we pick which box to illustrate which law. Ad lib physics
2330 Put pyjamas on. Toyed with idea of wearing panda onesie, but seems to be distinct lack of them this year. Missed apparently very good session on codes and secret messages. Must watch when videos are out. Ian standing by door - his place. Apparently you can't go to sleep standing up. Tell me that in a few hours....
Midnight - and I'm on as MC. First up in my spot is Andrew Parnell on colour. Complete with colourful shirt. He has a slinky and lots of feathers. We have 3 cones in our eyes, birds have 4 so can see more than us. But we're not sure what! Beautiful picture of Peacock feather under electron microscope. They're trying to work out the colour of a dodo from a tiny piece of feather that has been kept.
0030 - OK, it's time for the Smut Slot. Wonder why they asked me to MC these next talks? And real coffee arrives courtesy of my mate Vanessa!
Chella Quint bursts in wearing a onesie (wish I'd put mine on now....) and empties her props onto the table. Seems to be various types of sanitary wear.... Some men in audience looking uncomfortable.Then we get 30 minutes on periods - including a fair amount of interactivity!
Fantastic talk - funny, informative and breaks down many taboos.
Bizarre sight of a PVC in a sanitary belt will be forever etched on my mind.
Favourite quote - "Vaginas are self cleaning, like ovens"
0100 More in the Smut Slot - Allan Pacey on the Ins and Outs of Sperm donations. Thankfully no live demonstrations.
First donor insemination was 1884 when a doctor inseminated a woman with the sperm of a student, without telling her.
Law changed in 2004 to remove anonymity and we suffered a drop in the number of donors.
Now we import about 1/3 of our sperm, mainly from Denmark. Look out for the sperm bike.....
Loved some of the advertising slogans used in the past, including "Give a toss for Britain"
0130 And more smut - Tony Ryan on condoms
Oldest form of contraception - 6000 years old. Originally to protect against disease
Pregnancy not recognised till much later.
Originally made from animal gut. Intended to be reused. Sterilised by boiling.
One area where you pay more for less - the thinner they are now, the more expensive.
First imported and sold in barbers shops
Condom factories are funny - 10,000 glass knobs on a conveyor belt
Have to have a sense of humour to work in condom development - understatement of day!
0200 Yay - it's time for Ed Daw to play some blues on his piano - and here is is playing You Are my Project Sunshine for Tony Ryan
0230 Drew Tarmey
How many people are frightened of needles? I suppose I can't be, as I've spent quite a lot of time having my back tattood - but about 10% of the population are needle phobic
When did we first start injecting people with needles? In Roman times
So, we need needle free injection device like Star Trek
Drive medication though skin with a high pressure jet was around from 1947.
Can get modern jet injectors. Not completely pain free! So, drew injected himself with one to prove it worked, and wasn't painful!
0300 More music in the foyer
0310 Took a bit of time out to talk about magic with Aneurin Kennedy. He's great at mind reading. Or is is all a trick.....
0330 James Mullarky dressed all in black fortelling the end of the earth and universe....
In 100,000 years we'll have another period of glaciation. Everything North of us will be crushed.
In 10m years. Africa will slowly crash into Europe due to plate tectonics.
In 100m years, Australia will crash into Indonesia.
Everything that we know won't exist anymore.
6.5bn years away from total extinction of life on Earth. The experiment that is life will end. We are now closer to the end, than the beginning.
In 100bn years things start to get a bit weird...
This is bloody fascinating, and all delivered by a man in a black hooded dressing gown
Ian's taken over the filming, but is still standing up...
0400 Anna Topakas in a fab onesie - and the microphone transmitter fits in the hood. A must have for departmental meetings...
0430 Rhonda Hawkins on what is life. My main take away quote - "If you saw hair gel moving across the floor you'd be a bit freaked out"
0500 We're trending!!
Bit of a gap to stretch legs - a quick walk round the local area. Very interesting at this time of the morning. Need to make sure I get my step count up too..
0525 Glad to see Greg in his PJs.
0530 Alistair Warren resplendent in PJs talking about whips and lashes
Whiplash injury accounts for 70% of all RTAs. Adds about £100 on to all of our car insurance per year.
Human head weighs about 11lbs. Crash helmet weighs 4lbs. Helmet can protect, but can also contribute to whiplash because makes head heavier
A 15lb helmeted head can travel forward at 107g in a 40 g head on collision.
Then lots about vertebrae and a demonstration of how hanging works. Nice.
0600 Brill pictures from Ash Cadby and Katherine Inskip - voting on what are best - very small (microscopy pictures) or very big (astronomy pics)
0630 Peter Bath - sharing infomation on forums if you have a life threatening illness
0700 Jane Hodson. What can bad novels tell us about dialect - Lots of interesting dialects, good and bad, from novels including Jane Austen
0715 - Coffee Rev and Johns Van are both open - thank the lord!! Do a run to both for coffee and bacon butties
0730 Something about Einstein and protons
0800 Now maths. Golden Frames in buildings.
Why do mathmaticians write on blackboards? Best bit of morning - he got the formula wrong and his PhD student had to shout out the correction from the audience!
Losing it a bit now. Should I have a nap? Decide to have a quick walk outside, but then grab a few minutes of a nap....
1030 Wake up in time to hear Katie Edwards on the Hollywood epics and the character of God - God's a brat.
"To look upon God would kill a human" : Exodus. Makes for a pretty tricky one to one.
1100 - whoooo lots more props arriving. David Mowbray and Marieke Navin on Light.
We have glow sticks, a Mexican wave. A demo of light travelling in a straight line by sprinkling chalk dust on a laser to see it. Disappointed to learn that James Bond films are wrong and you cant see laser beams.
Making optic fibre with a water cooler
Trippy glasses
Nate makes a fire rainbow
Raspberry pie demo of infra red camera pointed at audience
Well that woke us all up!
1200 Marek Szablewski tells the story of one of his father's friends - Joker. One of the few to escape from Auschwitz and survive.
Gripping
1230 - Penelope Ottewell on cancer research. Cancer very prevalent today. In 1900 most people died of infectious diseases. Now, cancer and heart disease
We've improved standard of living and used antibiotics to get rid of infectious diseases
Also, people live longer.
Why do people get cancer?
Age, cellular mechanism gets tired, more mistakes: Bugs - some bugs cause cancer; Genetics; Environmental factors eg smoking, obesity, asbestos, radiation, pollutants etc
But for most cancers, still don't know what cause is
First link between environment and cancer 1775. Boys, chimney sweeps, cancer of scrotum
1300 - hungry. Thank goodness for John's van
1330 Heather Campbell on planning.
Effective planning is about possibilities. A sense that you can create a better world
All about the collective good not individual interest
Planning is necessary to change the world for the better
1400 - It's Professor Vanessa!! A last minute substitution as someone has dropped out. Here she is with her Auntie Brenda
Some great life quotes from her real fairground family:
Educate don't patronise your audience or public
Never turn your back on a snake
Never stoop down without picking something up
If you want something done ask a busy woman
My favourite - Never go to bed with a man you can squash. (or Go into partnership with people who are your equal)
Family motto - Fun without vulgarity
And - there's always the dancing pig.
This 1907 film, made in Paris by Pathe, never fails to amuse and disturb me. Mainly disturb.
1430 from dancing pigs to robotics with Tony Prescott, Director of Sheffield Robotics talking about the singularity.
"The technological singularity is the hypothesis that accelerating progress in technologies will cause a runaway effect wherein artificial intelligence will exceed human intellectual capacity and control, thus radically changing civilization in an event called "the singularity".
Because the capabilities of such an intelligence may be impossible for a human to comprehend, the technological singularity is an occurrence beyond which events may become unpredictable, unfavorable, or even unfathomable." So there.
Expected in 2045. Or maybe not.
The future maybe more like today than you think.
1530 Amber Regis talks about Love at First Read and her love affair (metaphorically speaking) with the writer John Addington Symonds. There's still a lot of people here....
1600 have just noticed that John Flint is sitting behind me with what looks like a bottle of Grande Marnier!
1630 - finally - the last lecture!! Richard Jones on Making Life.
Golems, Homunculus, Frankenstein.
2010 saw the first artificial life breakthrough - first living cell controlled by synthetic DNA. Led to great Daily Mail headline.
This synthetic DNA has a watermark in the DNA including quote from James Joyce. Most pretentious parasite ever?
Most important thing about living things is that they are massively out of equilibrium.
And finally - some moving closing words from Catherine.
and Tom has already edited some of the diary room video....
Great event again. Despite several of us making it through 24 hours, only one person saw every single lecture. Well done George!
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