Alex Harries's diary

The office is empty and so quiet it feels like everything's fallen asleep - apart from me and my cup of tea - and once I've cleared my desk and finished playing this Paul Van Dyk mix at ASBO volume, I too am going to be packing up and clearing off home until the start of January.

I've been in office now for a smidge under five months, and it's been nothing short of a whirlwind ride - there have been late nights, lots of hard work, dangling from trees, "ideas theft" from other students' unions around the country, awards, tears, new ground broken, relationships made and un-made, shouting, hugging and even the occasional drink.

Scattered around my desk are piles of to-dos scrawled hurriedly on the back of yellow post-it notes. These probably total less than 10% of my overall pile of "things I must do two weeks ago or the world comes to an end", and even if I could clone myself over Christmas and not sleep, I wouldn't be able to complete everything I need to.

Still, this year has been, this far at least, an incredible learning experience. I've been more stressed and grumpy than I've ever been, and spent more money on bills and less on my social life - now a distance memory - than ever before, but I wouldn't change the majority of it for the world.

Last night over a beer, the conversation wandered onto the forthcoming Sabbatical elections, which pretty much kick off as soon as we come back in the New Year. We agreed that one of the hardest things any election candidate has to get their heads around is the fact that, as a Sabb, you're a trustee of the Union charity first - taking on all the responsibilities and duties that go with that role - and a president/sports officer/support officer/meeja whore/etc second.

What this boils down to is having to modify your thinking a little... Ok, a lot: when it comes to making important decisions about the future of the Union, as the Sabb team each year is tasked with doing to make sure the Union continues to provide a democratic and student-focused service, you have to have your "trustee hat" on.

For me, this year, this has already brought me a couple of sleepless nights where I've had to make decisions which call into question whether it's more important to put my trustee's responsibilities first, or my media responsibilities. Without going into detail (for I fear I may be taken outside and shot... Ok, maybe not shot...) I hope I made the right calls, but sometimes the only person who can be sure your decision was the right one is you, especially if the rest of the world happens to think you're the devil incarnate for making the choice you made, because they don't understand your reasoning.

I know the other sabbs this year have also faced some tough decisions they never expected to have to make, and possibly the second hardest part of being a Sabb is going from higher education - where you have lecturers and course mates to guide you to making The Right Decision - into a role where the future isn't planned, the decisions aren't clear, and the "right" answer is only right if you believe in it, commit to it, and do the hard work which your particular decision entails to make it happen.

This rambling monologue seems to be circling a potential problem - as a former maths teacher of mine put it, "always show your workings"; it's all too easy to fall into the trap of making decisions which affect students as a Sabb team without explaining to the student body why the decision was made on their behalf, and what factors were taken into account. In fact, it's all too easy to completely miss telling students that a decision has been made by the Sabb Exec which affects them!

This year, we've made some major inroads into further developing regular lines of communication between the Sabbs and students, making it easier and more beneficial for students...

You know those days where you get comfy on the sofa and just, well, vegetate? I tend to do something similar at work - I just park up at the desk and start working through my Never Ending To Do List (TM). Ok, so it's not as relaxing, but I guess it helps to get things done.

Anyway, today started out with my first SAGA meeting. Not the over-50's holiday and insurance company, but the University's Students' Academic and General Affairs committee, which (according to the Uni website - I'm not claiming to know anything about anything here, naturally...) is the Board of Governors' main way of getting feedback on the matters that are affecting the students of Portsmouth, through the Union's Sabbatical officers.

SAGA also makes sure that the information fed back to them via. the Sabbs is properly listened to and actioned. To save me rambling even more than usual, you can find out more from this page on the interweb.

So why have I been annoying people then? Well, after coming back from SAGA with a long list of Really Important Things That I Must Do Right Now If Not Sooner, I had to go round trying to track down the various bits of information to complete these odd jobs.

Of course, pretty much everyone I asked was also up to their collective eyeballs in their own workloads, so I ended up feeling like I was going in circles and annoying people on the way, so my mantra for the next couple of days is going to have to be "stop being so bloody annoying", otherwise I think I may lose my kneecaps...

 

Today I have mainly...

• ... been to SAGA and learnt lots of new things (which I then promptly forgot),
• ... played about with exporting the AU Dinner video so we can put it on t'interweb,
• ... PDF'd 160 Union Council motions, amendments, agendas and meeting minutes from 2002 to 2007, ready to build a shiny new archive of Union Council goodness,
• ... bugged people to get the AGM agenda ready to go (it's on its way, and my annoyance tactics aren't helping it go any faster, so I'll try to stop pestering now!),
• ... bugged Jodie Austin for details of the AU Dinner awards (sorry!). They're online now, so panic over,
• ... finally put Elle's tenancy deposit news article online (only a month after I was asked to do it - sorry!),
• ... turned on the new Get Involved template (and I'll be polishing the Get Involved pages over the next few weeks),
• ... done some more bug fixing on the site to repair the RSS feeds after the upgrade to the database broke a few things (again, sorry, and a thankyou to hosting bod Clive Garder for helping fix it!
• ... tidied up the AGM pages and found out where the AGM agendas and minutes are kept so we can build an archive of that, too...
• ... and a load of other really boring, boring things no-one cares about, too.....

...zzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzz /al ;o)

 

I like to keep an eye on what other Students' Unions are doing online - I'd be the first to admit that I don't know all the tricks, ideas and guidelines behind designing any sort of website, so I will happily admit that I take my cues from sites designed and run by more knowledgeable people.

However, one thing I refuse to do is to simply copy designs, ideas, etc from another website - if someone is doing something cool, for example the BBC Blogs website, then we look at how and why they do things that way, and how we can adapt and improve it to suit our needs.

It's because of these two rather conflicting principles that I am more than a little annoyed at a statement by Southampton SU's Media & Communications ossifer, Laura Fewell, who published a Union Council report in May saying UPSU.net has "ripped [SUSU.org] off something rotten", and then goes on to say "But on a plus, they have linked to Wessex Scene Online news feed because we rock and they don’t but want to rock like us."

Ok Laura, whether or not you're reading this, here's a reply to your statements (and please remember that this is *my* reply - not that of UPSU.net, Portsmouth Students' Union, or anyone with any actual say in anything at all whatsoever, so if you want to send an angry mob to Pompey, send them to me, and not my bosses... ;o):

• On the subject of (allegedly) ripping SUSU.org off:
  
  What makes you think we have? Is it that we have a news section? Or that we have a big advert on our homepage? Or a list of links to common areas of the site on the homepage?
  
  Is it that we provide forums for students to chat on? Or ... Well, I'm stumped, so tell me - what have we "ripped off"?
  
  Admittedly, my questions are a touch flippant, but that's purely because I really can't see how we have taken any great influence from your site in our design process. Yes, SUSU.org has a huge range of content - varied in style and generally consistent in being of good quality - but then almost every Students' Union which has made a commitment to providing a comprehensive online presence has similarly well-developed content.
  
  
• And as for linking to Wessex Scene online:
  
  When I was involved in the design process for UPSU's news section, I wanted to include news and information which was up-to-date and relevant to all of our students. I am no snob, and nor are my superiors - we know that there are many good sites external to UPSU.net which offer interesting content for students. We felt that we wanted to pick out some of the most relevant and interesting content for students in the Portsmouth (and wider Hampshire) areas.
  
  Of those sites, those which have taken the time to provide this news as a publicly-available RSS feed were ones we could syndicate from, including Wessex Scene. I must admit, I like reading WSO - I think the style is interesting and funny, and the articles are varied and well-written - and it was for this reason that we are making use of the RSS feed from Wessex Scene in our news pages (scroll down and it's a block of four small links on the bottom-left of the main news column).
  
  Maybe next year, when we bring About 120 more words in this entry