We survived the G4C Employability event!

So Thursday night, we held a G4C Employability event at Sheffield Hallam University.

It actually went quite well!

On the build up to any event that I'm taking part in (especially any where I have some responsibility) I do tend to become slightly more nervous than usual.

Plus for this one there was the added factors of:

• I'd never been to the venue before
• I'd not met most of the presenters in person before
• We included a speed networking session, which I'd never organised before (or indeed attended before!)
• We were looking at having a far larger event than anything G4C in the region had done before
• I wasn't able to, if all else failed, do everything myself!

This last one might sound odd, but I was very much aware that in this case we had a decent group of people spending their evening coming to this event and I wanted it not to be a waste of their time (especially for the students as it happened to be the evening before their exams!).  I've certainly been to events in the past where, for what ever reason, I've not been engaged.

As it happens, the event went even better than I'd hoped it might, which is (in particular) down to:

• Sheffield Hallam, Tony Cheetham, their lecturers, caterers and their alumni team for the venue, making sure everything ran smoothly, encouraging their students to attend and putting out drinks!
• Paul Jackman of Thorn Baker and Hayley Smith of Mason Clark for presenting at the event
• Mark Taylor of Mott MacDonald for helping us out with the cost of refreshments as well as bringing along information about opportunities
• Caroline Key of George Hurst & Sons for generally sorting everything out, as well as on the night making sure no one got in without signing!
• Lisa Martin of Leeds City Council for having the idea for the topic of the event in the first place
• Megan Clough of East Riding of Yorkshire Council for filming and photographing the event (and thanks to Alex the photographer who lent Megan a clip to fix her camera to her tripod!)
• YORhub and its various framework contractors and consultants that attended to share their knowledge with the students
• The many groups and people that promoted the event for us, be it putting it on their website, emailing details out to their contacts or members, or however else they helped us
• The students for attending!

Many apologies to anyone that I've missed out!

I honestly can't remember why I was pretending to be a mime holding a two litre bottle of lemonade.

Personally I can say that I was really impressed by the students, they were really keen to take the opportunity to speak to people in the construction industry and ask pertinent questions.  It was clear that they really wanted to attend the event and weren't just coming along because their lecturer was pushing them to and I do hope that everyone got something out of it.

Feedback wise the event scored something like 7.9 out of 10 which I'm happy with bearing in mind that as it happened I think the speed networking could have gone better - probably if I'd left the room arrangement alone when I arrived and didn't squash all the chairs together that would have helped (but I was worried that we'd have the full 67 registered people turn up and we'd have to make room for them, as it happened the 45 that turned up was just the right number) and we probably tried to pack a little bit too much into the event, but I certainly think we can learn from the event to improve future ones.  Nevertheless I found the speed networking really interesting and would definitely consider doing again in the future.

While walking around Sheffield on the day I walked past Mott MacDonald's offices.  I took the photo because one of the G4C Yorkshire committee members is based here.  What the photo doesn't tell you is that he wasn't in the office at the time.

I also noticed this sign highlighting a route was a permissive path.  I now know what a permissive path is, but at the time it sounded faintly tantalising.  It probably means that I ought to go and study English again.

So what next for G4C in Yorkshire?  We've got an event on avoiding contractual disputes arranged for the 9th of May in Leeds, being delivered by Addleshaw Goddard, and I think contracts is a really key and overlooked issue in construction - whatever discipline you work in the construction industry, you're going to come into contact with contracts, and be affected by contracts, and I think at least a certain level of awareness of contracts is really necessary for any construction professional (and that's including site teams as well, certainly anyone looking to become a site manager).  Again it's going to be fairly introductory level and we'll be intending to attract a good number of students to the event as well as newly qualified professionals.

Being appropriate with social media

When I was at college studying IT far too many years ago (fourteen perhaps?) one of the things we learned about was "netiquette", or basically the practice of being polite whilst on the Internet and using email.

This has evolved as social media has taken off and we are ever more connected to the world (and more importantly, our contacts) 24/7.

However, this can cause issues.  I personally feel for those people in their teenage years who may make one or two mistakes in their time, acting silly or making bad judgement choices.  We are all human and none of us are perfect.  However, the new generation is under more and more scrutiny, everyone has a camera attached to their phone (and everyone has a phone in their pocket) so anything occurring can be photographed and shared with groups of people within seconds of it happening.  This is a great freedom but also means that people need to be careful how they behave and with who.

For example, I have my blog, my twitter account, my LinkedIn account, my Facebook, and several email addresses - professional, personal and mainly spam ones.  And I have to make decisions on what gets posted to which account, as what may be suitable material to appear on one I may not want to show on another.  Some people have more than one twitter account, one for work and one for personal use - I've not taken that option (yet) but as a result I am aware of what is going up on my twitter feed and try to ensure that it remains acceptable.

Also taking seemingly safe options such as "liking" something on Facebook - I may like the thing I've clicked on, but if friends of mine (who may also be work colleagues) see me liking something that they find offensive, does that cause an issue?

Possibly.  Do be aware that everyone has slightly different senses of humour and can take offense at different things, and something that you find absolutely fine can be anathema to another.

Very important for anyone in work is to be aware of your organisations social media policy and guidance (if available).  I've certainly read my organisations details several times and do strive to ensure that I stay on the right side of the guidance.

To hear from someone who is far more of an expert on these things than myself, check out Paul Wilkinson's website, pwcom.co.uk - Paul is a specialist in social media and is a fantastic speaker about the subject too.

I'll finish off just to give an update about the G4C event I've been arranging - the event we've been doing on Employability is taking place tomorrow at Sheffield Hallam University.  Everything is looking extremely good for the event and I'm very much looking forward to it.  We have now sold out of tickets for the ticket which is great (although I feel bad for anyone who wants to attend but now can't) so fingers crossed for a great evening and everything running smoothly!  We are filming the event and hopefully we'll get the video up at the weekend.

G4C Sheffield is happening! Event on 24 January 2013

I'm very happy to disclose that our new G4C event, which is going to be on the topic of Employability, is taking place at Sheffield Hallam University on Thursday the 24th of January 2013, kicking off at 5pm.

If you don't know what G4C is, it's a construction best practice initiative backed by Constructing Excellence to give future leaders of the industry the skills and knowledge that they need to drive the change agenda in construction.

In other words, if you're new to construction or moving into construction, G4C (Generation For Change) is here to help you gain additional knowledge and skills to help you.  I'm the G4C Co-ordinator for the Yorkshire & Humber region, and I work with a group of people arrange and manage regular events around the Yorkshire region.  Do feel free to drop me an email to discuss.

Anyway, the event on the 24th is on Employability, all about helping people find out what they should and shouldn't do to secure that job, and to keep that job once they're in it.   We've got some fantastic people speaking, a recruitment firm, Thorn Baker, who are specialists in construction recruitment, as well as Hayley Smith who won the Young Achiever of the Year award at the national Constructing Excellence awards at the end of November.  There's also going to be a speed networking session (that's my particular bit to organise so as you can imagine I'm quite worried about it!) to help people build their contacts.

If you want to find out more about the event and register to attend, go to https://g4cyorkshire.eventbrite.co.uk/ - numbers are restricted so please do register!

And if you want to find out more about G4C, the home of G4C is at http://g4cnet.ning.com/ and they also have a LinkedIn group at http://www.linkedin.com/groups?gid=1801083 - if that's not enough there's even a G4C Yorkshire & Humber LinkedIn group at http://www.linkedin.com/groups?gid=4075124 - do join us and say hi.

Two other (non-work related) things to discuss today!

Firstly, I was lucky enough to catch on my way into work today a very good comedy on Radio 4 called Losing the Plot by Nick Warburton.  The show starred James Fleet as Edward, a man who applies to take on an allotment. But what does it he do with when he gets it?!?

I won't spoil the surprise for you but it's very funny, and I think shows the English both at their best and at their worst. You can listen to the show right now on the Radio 4 website.  But hurry - you've only got 7 days to do so.

The other thing I wanted to mention is a rather decent website of stories, storybag.com.  I came across this website by virtue of its authors other website, http://www.requnix.com.  The owner of both of these websites is no other than David Allen, creator of various excellent computer games.  The one that particularly holds memory for me is the original Mordor, one of the very few (perhaps the only) shareware games that I actually paid for and registered.  In Mordor you had a fifteen level dungeon to explore and conquer with your groups of characters.  In the dungeon was all kinds of weird and wonderful monsters to kill, items that dropped (that you often had to pay to identify, only to discover that you couldn't use it because it was an Evil item and you were Good!), teleporters that usually split your party up and dotted them all over the place and the like.

I remember a trick me and my dad used to safely teleport ourselves was to leave dead characters laid around the dungeon.  Then when you wanted to go to a certain level you searched for the soul of the dead character on the level you wished to visit - the game would tell you the co-ordinates to rescue that person, and you then teleported to those co-ordinates.

And then left the dead person to rot as you carried out slaughtering monsters!

Anyway I digress - David also has a story website, storybag.com and the stories are rather good.  I'm currently working my way through 2203, a story set in the future about a human ambassador meeting a new alien race far in advance of our own.

Very good and very addictive.  The only comment I would make about the website is that it isn't always obvious how to actually read a story - I'd advise going to the Stories page, choosing the genre of choice, and then clicking on the stories title from the list that appears.