Alex Harries's diary

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...

Since the whole point of us Sabbs having a presence on the front page of UPSU.net is to let the students of Portsmouth know what we're up to, this is a (slightly edited) version of the report us Sabbs present to the Board of Trustees meeting, which takes place monthly at the Union and is used as a way of us all reporting on what's happening with the Union.

Although I'm sure not even the terminally bored would want to read this, here it is anyway. Enjoy! ;o) 

August report – Alex Harries, Media & Publications Orifice

My first three weeks in office have been a very busy period of work, with a lot of travelling around on training and our Sabbatical “tour”, and accompanied by an inevitably steep learning curve.

This month’s highlights include…

• Sabb tour: I think the whole team gained a good deal of insight into the workings of the differing ways in which Students’ Unions have to prioritise their resources and efforts as we visited Liverpool, Sheffield and Birmingham SUs. To this end, I believe the UPSU is very fortunate in a number of respects in terms of its successes and strengths as a Students’ Union,
• Communication in Action training: this was a good opportunity for me to learn some of the key aspects of my role as a communications officer, and to gain an insight into various methods of prioritising and focusing my workload. The course also gave me another opportunity to examine how other Students’ Unions various media operations have taken shape, and the reasons for their development, helping me to develop a clearer understanding of the UPSU’s media position and its relative strengths and weaknesses,
• LGBT society: I have been working closely with the Union’s LGBT society to determine whether our website can offer them the feature set they require in order to communicate with their members, and to allow them to provide an appropriate online web presence,
• Pure:FM society: the Union’s student radio society are in the process of re-branding, involving a change of logo and online presentation. I have been focusing on working as closely with them as possible to ensure their work is completed on time in order for them to be a fully-functioning arm of UPSU Media in time for the start of the year,
• UPSU.net: I have spent some time this month further developing the Union’s website presence, with major updates to a number of pages including the Get Involved and sports clubs homepages in order to provide a clearer and better-advertised service in these areas. I hope to be able to continue this hard work in time for the Union’s major areas to be highly presentable and content-rich in time for the start of our Freshers’ marketing phase, beginning around mid-September,
• Media Executive: discussions have taken place with the Sabbatical team and trustees about the benefits and need for a Media Executive to lend direction and guidance to the Union’s media presence. Having discussed this at length, I am confident that the introduction of a Media Exec can bring a powerful and tangible benefit to the Students’ Union’s presence both on campus and to wider audiences, and will be working hard to realise the exec committee as early within the academic year as possible,
• News: I have also spent some time on finding ways in which students and staff (at the Union and University) alike can quickly and easily submit news to the Union, to allow a greater focus on news-led media to develop at the Union. We can now boast a very simple news system which allows even the least experienced members of the Union’s contributors to create news articles on the UPSU.net website to a presentable standard, and will be creating documentation and publicising this system further during the run-up to the start of the academic year,
• Media Review: the often-spoken about Media Review pr...
  
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This evening's Adventures From The Bottom Of A Pint Glass/Wine Bottle marked the official goodbye to the 2006-2007 Sabbatical team, and the beginning of the 2007-2008 Sabbatical period.

I'm too tired (read: "not safe to drive") after a day of training with the NUS's Jim Dickinson - a man so full of beans first thing in the morning, watching him is like trying to stare at the sun - to go into any grandiose précis of The Big Picture for the year ahead, not that we've worked such a thing out, or to write out beautifully crafted and wonderfully worded Thankyous to the out-going Sabb team, so here's as much as I can muster...

Adrian "Fraggy", Chris "Yorkie" Yorke (or "Big Nose", if you prefer), Diana "Disney" Langford, Mike "Potter" Rayner, Elle "Fairy" Gray and Jodie "?" Austin - thankyou for doing what you did for the last one (and in some cases two) years. Personally, I'm sorry I didn't get a chance to sit you all down and bounce some of my mad-cap ideas off you, but your input over the coming months in my projects is not only welcome; it would be greatly appreciated, so if you can still stand to be in the same room as me, do drop by and share your opinions ;o)

Elle, Andy, Kat, Darby and Ben - let's f***in' 'ave some!

p.s. If, for some reason, you've read this far and you haven't a clue what a Sabb is (clue: it's not a Swedish car...), this and this might help. Or not...

/Al - my head's going to be really sore tomorrow morning...

Do you ever have one of those days when everything's happening so fast it's impossible to take enough mental notes to remember something for later? I've been having one of those days weeks months, and things are showing little sign of slowing down any time in the near future.

This week, I have mainly been updating vast swathes of webpages on UPSU's democracy, get involved and media pages; trying to do some housework in the form of the mass mails, some code changes, and a couple of news articles; attending the UPSU AGM (where was everybody?); trying to convince a stack of people that they *really* need to be a bit more open and honest about a situation which might or might not be building into a bigger situation*; and hearing how another situation which might have become a *really* big situation has been peacefully resolved (until the next time it happens, of course).

Meanwhile, in pixel-land, my notes pages are rapidly filling up with "blog entries I must do" notes, and the UPSU bugs list seems to be getting longer at the same speed my ever-increasing to-do list does now thanks to an upgrade to our database, plus Mike Cooter and Fraggy have just about finished the last ever issue of Pugwash (for this year, of course).

In amongst all this I'm trying to find a flat for next year. I went to see a lovely place today which looks beeyoooteeful. It's a bit small, and my bedroom wouldn't be big enough to kiss a cat in, let alone swing one. There's also a table and chairs which look suspiciously like they've been "acquired" from the Union, but I'll deal with that if and when I move in.

Still, it's all good fun. I worked a total of 32 hours in the first two days of this week, and my arms didn't drop off, so at least what my mum always told me - something about hard work not killing me - wasn't a lie after all. Dread to think how much caffeine and nicotine I took in during that period, though.....

Hope you're all having fun out there, and don't have nightmares :o) 

* I'm considering creating a "Vague News" section for the news section which has no facts whatsoever. I reckon it would be very quickly filled since I seem to talk so much about so little... ;o)