It was my first day back (I am writing this a day later) and already I have met two people that I have never met before. At our Elephant Eating party we made a commitment to say hello to someone new every day and so I’m up by one. I have started in a way I mean to carry on. There are as many as three hundred and sixty thousand people born into the world every twenty four hours and so I won’t be running out of new colleagues any time soon.
The first was Graham, the Head of Department Computer Science and Digital Technologies at Northumbria University. I’ve been working to build a relationship with each of the universities across the region and I am keen to help more students develop their skills here so that they can end up working here. The lure of the bright lights of London can sometimes be too great yet we have a lot to offer.
I’m making good progress however and am particularly pleased with the developments involving Durham University but hopefully I will come back to more of those as the year goes on.
Graham and I talked about the possibility of some guest lecturing as the students are always keen on hearing about real world examples (as if I work in the real world!) and even the possibility of me helping the University with their Industrial Advisory Board. Now that sounds grand.
The second was Peter Woods, the Founder at Schoolhere.co, Hexhamtv and Goodcausetv. I met Peter at an Open Data event last year at Campus North. He wanted to talk to me about health and education. Peter has some fantastic ideas around how to engage the wide community using technology to give greater access to the skills that exist across the region. There are some people that I would like to get him in front of to expand on his thinking.
I was also interested in his use of local and micro TV to get our messages across but that is for another day.
Two days in and my head is already stuffed full of new things to get on with.
Thoughts from a Guerrilla Worker 