May 12th,still very late. - Dinner Time!

I arrived at my table to be greeted by Paul Tomlin, general manager at Avis Futures, Duanne Mahon IS manager at ABNA Group and Bruce Grimley MD and founder of Achieving Lives.

Dinner was excellent, although even harder to keep track of what you are drinking because everytime you turn your back a waiter fills your glass up. I have a great love of food and could bang on at length about what i had for my dinner but I appreciate that not everyone shares my enthusiasm for all things gastronomic.

I had some interesting discussions ofer dinner regarding what makes a good interviewee and a good employee. One thing that threw me totally was the complete lack of interest in the enabling technologies. Thats not to say that the two IT people at the table didn't appreciatethe value of the technology, more that they were only interested in what technology could do for them rather than how it does it. Duanne and Paul did have a few digs over dinner regarding my status as a student, basically letting me know that I know nothing. It did seem a little harsh at the time, but I've never been accused of being sensitive so it din't bother me that much. Also after more thought, I was able to see where they were coming from. Here's an example: I asked the question 'what do you look for in a potential employee at an interview?'. Paul asked me a few things about me and announced he wouldn't employ me on the basis of those questions.

The reason he gave was that I said too much, which is something I am often guilty of if I'm honest! Basically what he was saying was this :- If they don't ask, don't tell them and if they do ask make your experiences sound positive all the time. After dinner Duanne took some time to talk to me about the discussion and emphasised a similar message on interview techniques. I'm a firm believer that job interviews can be failed within the first 15 seconds, and Duanne was inclined to agreee with me. If you go in bright and confident, then you are on to a good start, shuffle in looking nervous and you could have lost it already (depending on the job obviously!). These are some of the things Duanne was saying. 'When it come to questions, just answer them don't start speculating'. 'If they ask "is the sky blue today?", dont just say Yes or No, look out the window and say 'Yes, the sky is nice and blue, it's a nice day', but leave out the speculation :- 'Yeah, the sky is a bit blue, could be turquoise and it could rain later, those clouds dont look promising......etc. etc.'

That was obviously just a simple example but you get the point - if some set of circumstances put you out of work for a while, or you failed something at some point an your interviewer asks about it, don't lie but don't tell the unadulterated truth either. They don't want to here about how it wasn't your fault, the best spin you can put on it is how much you learned from the experience or how you never be where you are today without that sharp learning curve.




Apologies for the rambling here, this part of the blog is written from some fairly garbled notes, but for the sake of accuracy I thought it best to reproduce them as closelty as possible.

More tomorrow

May 12th (probably 13th) very late - Champagne for the soul.....

It's late, very late. I'm drunk, very drunk. I have breakfast in about 3 and a half hours. Whats wrong with these people?! are they all related to george best?

Let me recap, I believe i left it at changing for dinner.

After Tim Smit opened, we all went back to our rooms to get a dressed for dinner but first there was the champagne reception to attend. Now Edward and I weren't sure if we were supposed to attend this thing, but we were assured that we could go pretty much anywhere we pleased. So we hung around this reception feeling pretty nervous and out of place (we were the only males on board who were not wearing a tux!). We did get talking to a nice woman from Barclays and the Richmond events girls after a few minutes and they put us at our ease. One thing about champagne receptions like this, its is almost impossible to keep track of what you are drinking. The waiters and waitresses prowl the room looking for helpless empty glasses to pounce on, no sooner are you done with a drink than another mysteriously appears in your hand. So I wobbled off in the direction of the restaurant feeling quite happy with the direction things were going. I'd been given free drinks, spoken to some pleasant people and I was about to be fed. Peachy.

Working down the Salt mines

Just a quick apology to those who may have been checking this page for updates, my employers have been working me hard just recently and have spent most of my days off either in the recovery position or waiting for phone calls asking me to give up my days off! I will finish this blog goddamnit! I'm going to do my best to finish this off today, I have left instructions that if anyone from work phones my housemates are to say I was killed in a freak ice cream accident.........

May 12th, 7pm

After having a quick look at the itinerary and the welcome pack, I though I'd try and track down Kay Gamble from the BCS. She is Vice Chair of the Young Professionals Group and part of the reason I am on board. After phoning reception and getting them to put me through to her cabinm I heard a phone ringing next door, so i had a fairly good idea where she was!

Soon after I met Edward Kingscote, the other YPG winner, and we arranged to got see the Richmond Events people to find out what was expected of us. They were obviously very busy with delegates and vendors and the person we needed to speak to wasn't about at this point, though we were told that we would have a meeting tomorrow to arrange things.

I'm going to go slightly off topic for a minute here and explain a bit about the ITDF and the ship. First off, the ship. It's huge. It's bloody huge. It's stand really far back, take three photos and stick them together huge. Click the link I posted in the first entry, behild its overall bigness.

Now the event. After talking to a few people, this is how I understand it. The various vendors on board pay for themselves at £12k a head. Let me give that figure more justice - TWELVE THOUSAND POUNDS A HEAD! They also pay for the IT Directors to be on board. This may seem a little odd at first but let me explain further. IT Directors are generally very busy, and get cold calls from dozens of vendors a day each trying to get some meeting time with the Director. These meetings can take months to arrange due to the demands on the time of the Director. At ITDF, the Directors are invited along with the provision that they schedule meetings with vendors, if a Director misses three meetings then they are not invited back to the event. This gives the vendors an excellent opportunity to not only have one on one meetings with these people but also to entertain them throughout the event, with the hope of making sales. As the Directors are amongst their peers, there is also an awful lot of 'word of mouth' recommendations going on. For example one Director may recommend a vendor he is using to another Director. This doesn't just extend to purchanses, perhaps one will decide to try a new Business process that is working for one of his counterparts in another organisation.

This is just a brief overview that I have put forward, there are also seminars and workshops to go to, but they don't start until tomorrow so i'll be putting some brief things about those too.

OK, back to today. Tim Smit, Chief executive of the Eden Project gave the opening speech at 6pm today. He was one of the most engaging speakers I've seen, speaking about how the Eden project came about and his management style. I was in a bit of a daze today, trying to take everything in and plan the next few days, but one thing about this talk that stuck in my mind was this: When asked 'how do you select your staff?' he simply said 'If I like them and they have a genuine enthusiasm for the work, generally I'll employ them'. This reinforced my long held view that unless you are capable of communicating effectively with people, your qualifications will only take you so far. It'll be interesting to talk to some of the Directors on board to try and gauge their view.

Right, got a Champagne reception at 7:45 then dinner at 8:30 so got to change my shirt and tie and put a jacket on. More after dinner.

May 12th, 2pm(ish)

After a lovely 6 hour journey from Hull I arrived in Southampton central. Before I go on, a few notes on trains.

Firstly, after three years in Hull I have yet to catch a train that arrives or leaves Doncaster on time. This is a 100% record for this station and I think that they should be up for some kind of award. I get the impression that they think the timetable is more a kindly suggestion from a well wisher, than a formal set of guidelines dictating when trains should arrive and leave.
The second observation is specifically for the people who run GNER trains. I don't know if you've ever been to the North of England, but I can assure it is not populated by pixies. It wasn't until I boarded a South Western train that I felt those over 3'2" were being catered for.

OK, so I'm in Southampton, I've done my Clark Kent act and wandered outside to wait for the Shuttle.......... no one else is wearing a suit. No bother though, I still feel better for changing out of travel clothes.

After the bus arrived at the port there was a little confusion as I didnt have an invite letter, but got my CrusieCard (used for boarding and charging stuff to the cabin) and got onto the ship. Found my cabin with no trouble, making a note of where the bars were on the way, and it all looks pretty sweet. Found a delegate pack in my room with an itinerary and some other stuff. Will have a coffee and a read then write some more.

The Miracles of time-stamping........

Allow me to explain. My posh and shiny Orange Smartphone has full internet access and can enter any site that your PC can. What it doesn't say in the manual is that when trying to update your blog, the phone will have a fit, exit Internet Explorer then pretend nothings happened. 'So why not use the internet on the ship Matt?' Because I know IT Directors who earn less than the PC's aboard the Aurora thats why!

OK rant over. Suffice to say I wasn't able to update my blog while on board the ship, and the last week has been a little busy with work commitments, hence no updates. No fear though, through the ancient wonders of pen and paper I have recorded my exploits at ITDF 2004 and I reproduce those notes here for your enjoyment! (pics to follow). I'll be date and time stamping the entries so you can get a better picture of what is going on!

What's this all about?

OK, so this is my first Blog, bear with me here. I'm Matt, a 27 year old (or 'nearly 30' as my friends prefer to call it!). I'm a second year student at the University of Hull in East Yorkshire and I've won an essay competition run by the British Computer Society. The prize is a trip down to Southampton to attend the IT Directors Forum on board the P&0 Cruise Ship Aurora (check out the link and behold its shiny plushness!)

So I have to get up at an unfeasibly early hour tomorrow in order to get to the beautifully architectured hull train station. My liar cards (otherwise known as 'Train Tickets') alledge that I will be arriving in Southampton at about quarter to 2 tomorrow afternoon, so only around 6 hours travelling time!

This fact has given me something of a dilemma - the whole affair is 'Business Casual' in the day and black tie at night. I dont particularly want to travel for six hours in my suit, then wear it for the rest of the day and night, I'd feel a little ripe. I have, however, come up with an ingenious plan. As I am going home to Wales after the event (what can I say, I miss the rain), I shall have my regular clothes with me too, so I will travel down to Southampton in my jeans etc., then - in a Clark Kent styl-ee - occupy a cubical in the station amenities and emerge Suited and Booted.

I'm going to be writing this Blog on board the ship, and after some judicious 'cut and pasting', it may look very similar to the diary I have to keep for the BCS. If, on the other hand, the net access on board is a little pricey or just plain naff I will be blogging via the wonder of my Orange SmartPhone, which, given the fact I dont have the snazzy keyboard attachment, may take a little while......

Hmmm..... After installing the new ROM for the Phone which, amongst other things, extends the battery life beyond that of the average horsefly, I've set about looking for an FTP client for the phone but no free ones appear to exist. This could be a problem if I want to post piccies from the phone. I'll investigate further, but will be taking my shiny new DigiCam my girlfriend and mates bought for my birthday with me and praying that I can hook it up to the computers on board (also, thanks to Pete for remembering the batteries were dead and getting me new ones!).

Thats enough of my babble for now, I am going to go pack stuff and spend some time wondering why on earth anyone could possibly be interested in whether or not I change my clothes before arriving at the event..................