Monday 21 February 2011

Essex Futures again

Thursday and Friday were spent with the Essex Futures crowd.  On Thursday we were discussing how to develop an academic career, with contributions from Cam Donaldson of Glasgow Caledonian and Nigel South of Essex, who discussed their own careers and the learning they could draw from them.  Sue Endean, the HR Director, helped keep the focus very practical with an exploration of the promotion process and a case study based on that, and I offered some provocations around the theme of time and priority management.

In the evening we went to see E!%'s production of Dracula, directed by one of last year's EF participants, Chris Main - and a good show it was too!

The second day was more focussed on research strategies, with Rob Massara and a team from the REO sharing their expertise and offering practical advice; and the day culminated in a Dragon's Den exercise, with participants pitching ideas to our visiting Dragons, having had minimal time to prepare the ideas or the pitches: but as ever they rose to the challenge, and came up with some great interdisciplinary ideas, and some compelling ways of pitching them.

And along the way we picked up snippets of how well their projects are going, and also heard some personal successes in the Action Learning Sets.

Another stimulating event with this very energising group!

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