That's the end of elections for another year, and the last year I'll be involved in the Union. It's been a helluva fortnight, with a larger UPSU Media presence than ever before.

For the first year ever, we've had photographers and videographers (is that the right term?) running around at pretty much every elections-related event, a massive amount of visual media, a great deal of coverage in Pugwash News, not to mention Pure FM's involvement in interviewing the candidates live on air and broadcasting the hustings candidates' question time events in the evenings last week.

I'm amazingly proud and grateful to all of our student volunteers for all their work in the last few weeks - we have, for the first time, a lot of video footage (and there's more to come, which will be used as teaser-material for next year I hope), and there's been an almost constant stream of photos and updates going online from elections-related events.

(You can check out the elections photos, videos, and Pure FM podcasts, and our elections minisite - the largest ever at 75 pages - here).

This year, we've seen roughly a 15% rise in voter turnout despite the poor weather and the end of term (who doesn't know at least one friend who went home half way through this week suffering from parental withdrawal symptoms? ;o) and, although candidate numbers were the same as last year (fourteen candidates), the distribution among positions has been almost diametrically opposed, with last year's least-contested positions seeing the largest numbers of candidates this year.

A couple of people have observed that this year's line-up has been a very marked "pitched battle" between sports clubs and societies and, while I can't comment on how accurate that statement is - it is, after all, a pretty narrow-focused assessment of a candidate to say that they're a "sporto" or "society person" (or "soco"?) - the figures do seem to show that the candidates who received the most votes in each position are all well-known fac...

This evening was the first of the four candidates' question times, with video being recorded (I think?) for the first time. Tallie Kane (reviews editor), Jacob (news editor), Luke (web editor) and Hannah (Pure FM sec) came along and helped out, broadcasting the evening's events to literally billions* of listeners, and videoing the night's proceedings - hopefully the videos should be up on our YouTube stream soon (i.e. once I or another kind soul processes them).

The evening is always scary for the candidates, so a big pat on the back to the girls and guys for doing so well tonight. A few are going to need to be trained to talk louder into the microphone, but that's nothing a little adjustment of the mixing desk can't fix. Alternatively, the "sound engineer's limiting stick" can be used to similar effect... 

Tomorrow night we're doing something very similar over at Rees halls for their residents. I'm told space there is limited, so it's more an opportunity for residents to come down, wonder what the hell we're doing and ask the candidates some questions rather than a bring-all-your-supporters-along-and-make-lots-of-noise night. Not that I mind either way - all I have to do is sit behind a sound desk and try not to get into (any more) trouble!

Thursday and Friday night will see the elections candidates at the Union, so that should be a really good night and will see Pure FM "OBing" (broadcasting live) and the Pugwash News bods recording and interviewing. Ooh, that reminds me, we have loads of interviews from tonight we need to sort out, as well as the candidates' segments.

If only I had half a clue about video editing... Oh dear...!

In other news (ahem), the latest issue - issue 11 - of the newspaper arrived today. It's looking good, although the editorial/pre-press process still needs a little tweaking.

Newspaper "oopses" 

This also appears to be as good a place as any for me to publish some "oopses" from the newspaper... 

I'm guilty as charged of cocking up Jacob's article with the inaccurate 'Frewen Library wins "Best New Building"' headline - apparently the Frewen part is the old building - the new building is simply The University Library. Sorry Jacob!

We also have some images on the PWs front page of the paper credited to "some guy with a camera", and an article has been attributed to the vaguely-titled "Union Council Chair". My apologies to the two hard-working bods involved. The cause of the mistakes will be looked into, and a suitable scapegoat found and made an example of. Possibly...

* potentially, of course ;o)

Just a quick question - have I scared everyone off from running for my position or something?

There's only one candidate for Media & Publications Officer ("MAPO") this year - last year there were 4, and the year before that there were two...

What gives?!  I'm confused...

A happy new year to you all out there in readerland. We're in the middle of putting together issue 7 of Pugwash News, the first (hopefully of many!) for 2008.

I hope you all spent at least some of your free time over the holidays taking a break from coursework and/or the obligatory part-time job almost every University student I've ever known has had to take on to pay the bills.

Students are generally regarded as one of the most hard-core groups of job-hunters, accepting offers of employment as diverse as turkey inseminators (eww) and deckchair assistants (a position better suited to the summer months, admittedly), and anything in-between.

I've spent my Christmas taking a good look at what makes student employment tick, looking at students' union "job shop" websites across the country, as well as some of the larger ones including Monster and The Grauniad... sorry, The Guardian.

This hasn't been because I'm getting cold feet in my current position as Media Officer, but because I've been working hard on the new UPSU JobShop website. The old website's done us proud, with thousands of students finding part-time work each year through the Union - and not a single turkey-farm job in sight - but for technical reasons, the old JobShop website hasn't seen any development over the last few years, and has to run on a separate web server away from the rest of the UPSU.net website, making it difficult to really highlight the wide range of part-time jobs our JobShop is so popular for across the rest of the website.

Hopefully it’ll all be done and dusted and ready to turn on (at upsu.net/jobshop) around the third week of January, fingers crossed!

We’ve also got a massive archive of back-issues of Pugwash magazine and Pugwash News online on the Pugwash website - there’s loads of great articles in there from previous years which are still as relevant today as they were when they were published, and are well worth a look (during breaks in revision, of course!).

I've also spent some of my hard-earned on a new pair of DJing headphones, as my last pair fell apart after 12 years' use, so at last I should be able to start putting together some new mixes to listen to, play on Pure FM, and annoy everyone in the Sabb office with ;o)

There’s a point to this rambling stream-of-consciousness, of course: with the Sabb Elections beginning in the next couple of weeks, and voting in the first week of March, I’ve been thinking about what makes a good Media Officer.

I’ve got a bit of a web design background, have a passing acquaintance with DJing and radio production, can use Quark and Photoshop to knock out something approaching a half-decent publication, and even know which way round to hold a camera.

Similarly, previous Media Officers have boasted skills as wide-ranging as video production, radio presenting, news journalism, management experience (and something they call “people skills”, although I’m not convinced they’re any more real than the Tooth Fairy or Santa Claus… ;o), artistic flair… the list goes on.

There doesn’t seem to be any particular “theme” here though - UPSU Media Officers don’t seem to have a common interest, hobby, past-time or skill, apart - possibly - from a masochistic streak when it comes to working hard.

Generally speaking, what sets Sabbatical Officers apart from your average student? It’s as simple - and as vague - as this:...

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...