The book what I wrote (well co-wrote, well co-edited and part-wrote)

“Books aren’t written. They’re rewritten.” Michael Crichton

I’ve been a little quiet on the blogging front over the past few months, partly because the first term of the academic year has been as mad as ever, but mainly because I’ve been very busy writing two books. One, on the classic BBC TV series Tenko, is an ongoing project, but I’m very pleased to say that the other, snappily titled ‘Personalising Library Services in Higher Education: the boutique approach‘, see how it trips off the tongue (!), which I’ve co-edited with Elizabeth (Libby) Tilley, and written several chapters for, has now been submitted to our lovely publishers: Ashgate.

I don’t use the word ‘lovely’ lightly, I became a small press publisher myself as a result of poor treatment at the hands of publishers who displayed neither courtesy or understanding, so to discover that a big commercial publisher like Ashgate has people who have been as interested as they have been responsive has surprised me no end. What is more we have been allowed, nay encouraged, to produce the book that we wanted to write/edit.

We only missed the initial deadline by a month or so, which reminds me of my favourite writing quote: “I love deadlines. I like the whooshing sound they make as they fly by”  Douglas Adams.

So what did I learn from the experience. Well, as it happens, quite a lot:

1. Editing a book is categorically NOT easier than writing one by yourself. If anything, it’s more work as there’s more liaison, more checking, more difficulty achieving coherency and consistency, more compromise. More everything basically! Definitely not the easy option.

2. If you’re going to write or edit a book with someone else you need to get on incredibly well with them. I have a pretty good imagination and can see all too clearly how horrendous the last year would have been had I spent it working alongside someone who didn’t pull their weight or who felt differently about the process and the end goal. Libby and I have been startlingly on the same page throughout and this may just stand as the most evenly split 50/50 effort project I’ve ever had the good fortune to be involved with.  We’re not about to pick out curtains (we’re both happily married) but, boy do we get each other.

3. Some passages you will rewrite a painstaking number of times, others will be right first time. I thought I knew this already, now I definitely know it. This is just the way it always is when writing it seems (for me anyway).

4. Sensory recalibration (get me!) We humans automatically correct mistakes in sentences more than we realise. We even forgive the absence of words in sentence. Honestly this phenomena has amazed me while writing this book and has reminded me why my wife is the proofreader rather than me.  It’s a skill I just don’t possess. Is her sensory calibration-ometer on a lower setting? (Did you spot the missing word?)

5. References are easy (if you do them properly). You would have thought we librarians would have had this down, but those good intentions really bit us on the bottom! I shall bear the scars for some good time yet.

6. Get your co-editor to do all the formatting. Result! Again, consistent formatting not my forte, but remember that 50/50 split? I did all the referencing.

7. Dropbox IS the best thing since sliced bread. We just couldn’t have done without it. To be technical about it: approximately a gazillion times better than GoogleDocs.

8. It ain’t over until it’s over (and by that I mean ‘right’). In order to end up with a hopefully coherent manuscript we suddenly had to do some ‘seat of your pants’ writing. We didn’t want to have to write more at such a late stage -we’re talking a few weeks ago -but the book really needed it and we realised we couldn’t ignore its plaintive cries for help.

9. Keeping the magic alive (!) I guess a bit like a PhD student and their thesis, the topic of which they spend so long with, you have to be passionate about the content. We are both still champions of the approach we advocate in the book and the process has strengthened our resolve not diminished it.

10. Theory into practice. You can’t write about something without putting your money where you mouth is. Well you can, but it would have made us feel distinctly uncomfortable. We didn’t want this book to be an academic treatise, we wanted it to be practical and applicable, offering ‘top tips’ along the way. As we say in the final chapter we suddenly realised that we needed to put more of our ideas and suggestions into practice in our respective workplaces. Once we did that we discovered that they really do work in practice. And we’re not finished yet – next week we’re running a workshop for our teams on personalised customer service.

I should add before I close that we are indebted to our wonderful chapter and case study authors and several other Important People who will be properly and fulsomely acknowledged in the published work.

Now that  Ashgate are busy readying the book for publication  (July this year we’re told) I’m able to devote my full writing attention to the Tenko tome (cast pictured below) in which shipwrecks, suicide and Singapore slings abound. A world away from librarianship, unless your library is way more interesting and exotic than mine!

Andy

The Value of Blogging

If the evidence at Judge Business School is anything to go by, blogging is categorically not dead. Yes it may have had its original zenith back in 2004, but my current feeling is that this may just turn out to be its new golden age.

Earlier this week I hosted a blogging forum entitled ‘The Value of Blogging’ at which a diverse cross-section of bloggers – myself and Meg Westbury of Information & Library Services, the director of the Master of Finance programme, a PhD student and the school’s Facilities Manager - gave presentations to an audience of over 30 support staff, students and faculty about their reasons for blogging. I was keen that the event incorporated bloggers from a good cross-section of the business school community with a view to exploration of different motivations and drivers.

I kicked off the event with a prezi which introduced the five presenters and the format of the session (each presenter had 8 minutes to present and 2-3 minutes Q&A time), before explaining why I started to blog back in May 2009. Essentially because:

• I was receiving information but due to time and volume constraints was not processing it
• I was keen to speak out, comment upon and better explore professional issues
• I saw it as a opportunity to make connections and take up new opportunities

I also let the audience have a glimpse inside my Very Small Brain with a very unacademic diagram detaling my personal blogging process, before going on to examine what makes a good blogpost.  I argued that it wasn’t neccesarily about hits (as fun as my Jedi Librarian post is, at the end of the day its fluff), or comments (my most commented upon post: Explore, Dream, Discover, was a rushed effort that I probably should have refined more before posting), but instead posts which:

• recorded and shared valuable learning
• said something that needed to be said, or which
• helped me to work out where I stood on an issue

I went on to state that for me blogging is a profoundly personal process that helps me to organise my thoughts and explore ideas, applications and, occasionally, controversies. I concluded by saying that I’d found blogging to be more about the journey than the destination.

My presentation is reproduced below:

Dr Simon Taylor, the Director of the Master of Finance programme, was the next speaker. He elected to give us a tour of his blog ‘Behind Blue Eyes‘ (referencing The Who song not the Limp Bizkit one!) explaining its financial focus and how it had evolved from a more corporate blog. Simon’s blogposts are often triggered by other blogs he has read and he deliberately keeps his entries short and therefore digestible. A good example being ‘Love, China and Ikea‘. He went on to reveal that he spends more time reading blogs than books before showing us a few  more representative posts ’Rogue trading 1931-style‘ and ‘The economics of Scotch whisky‘ - an industry which involves a discounted cash flow model apparently, something he was happy to admit probably fascinated him more than it would the audience.

3rd year PhD student Aoife Brophy Haney was next up. She presented us with her blog Researchology which is is dedicated to the craft of research and seeks to answer questions like:

• What does it mean to be a researcher?
• How is research creative and how can that creativity be sustained?
• What do researchers do all day long?

Aoife admitted she was pretty early on in her blog journey but was positive about the medium as a means of clarifying her ideas and thinking about her voice, but also as a way of helping her family to understand what it is she does. She explained that she was quite happy with her small readership and with just letting her blog evolve over time  and that she hoped it might help her to identify people to work with in the future. She admitted that she had trouble integrating blogging into her research life and also that she had some reservations about the content she put up given that ideas are crucial to an academic’s livelihood. I find the blog a great read and recommend her post on Academic Storytelling.

Joanne Black provided a change of tone, offering the audience exactly what I knew she would: light relief. Not that the session had been dull up to this point, but Joanne has a, er, unique take on the world. Interestingly she began to blog as she felt that there just weren’t enough characters for her on Twitter. She spoke about her two blogs (thereby immediately beating us all hands down!) the first, Not Just About Shoes, which she freely admits is about random stuff. Her hilarious post  ’Strictly Done Dancing‘ exemplifies why I’ve become an avid reader of her output. I wish she had more time to write this blog so she might become a female Charlie Brooker, but as she said in her presentation if she did she’d have to do without frivolous activities like sleeping.

Her second blog, ‘a house, a job, a TV licence‘, which grew out of the first is all about the hit BBC Three supernatural TV series Being Human of which she is THE global expert (I kid you not – she’s written a book and everything). Interestingly she revealed that this second blog has in a way become a ‘professional’ blog as she is selling the book and her writing through it, but this isn’t to say she doesn’t get personal enjoyment out of writing posts there. I particularly liked, and could identify with, her concluding explanation as to why she blogs: “it keeps the voices quiet in my head”.

Meg Westbury gave the final presentation and chose to examine why it had taken her 6 years to get around to starting a blog, Library Pie, and the difference between doing things because you ‘should’ or because you ‘want’ to. She felt that there was a stronger blogging culture in the UK than in the US, certainly among librarians anyway. She has found that the blog has helped to get her ideas ‘out there’  and has enjoyed the luxury of reflection that the process brings. She also mentioned the phenomenon of writing authoritatively on a subject and as a result being perceived as an expert. Her presentation is below:

Questions were taken after each presentation, but there was also time for a brief plenary at the end. The main questions asked were as follows:

• How much time blogging takes up? (Answer: Most presenters started out with ridiculous intentions and then pared down to a more manageable posting schedule)
• How do you grow your readership? (Answer: Twitter, connecting with other bloggers)
• How formal or informal should you be? (Answer: more informal than formal, good blogging is about voice and character)
• Should keep your identity secret? (Answer: entirely up to you, but would again depend on blog content)
• Was there any cost involved? (Answer: only time)
• What about the quality of the information you are offering? (Answer: quality and value is highly personal, but today critical evaluation of what you read is more important than ever)
• Should images be copyright cleared? (Answer: Use Flickr Creative Commons for licensed images).

Overall I think the audience and the presenters found this opportunity to share and discuss very welcome and I am already planning a similar format session on another topic for next term.  Many, many thanks to my fellow bloggers for their engaging presentations. Keep blogging!

Not presenting, but teaching (or how I learned to stop worrying about which platform to use)

I don’t know about you, but I feel I’ve always used PowerPoint fairly innovatively. Way back in 1997 I remember surprising a class of executives with a PPT consisting only of full slide images overlaid with minimal text – a style which is of course now ‘PPT de jour’.  Unfortunately, as we all know, familiarity breeds contempt, so when Prezi came along, after 10 solid years with PPT, it was little wonder that I initially seized upon it like an excited schoolboy…

• A huge canvas – oooh
• A path rather than linear slides – ahhhh
• Rotation – oooh
• YouTube insertion – ahhh

Well you get the idea with that…  So, anyway, I was quickly sold on almost exclusively creating and presenting prezis. And didn’t they go down well?! For one thing,  I felt that I was having to do less work (after I’d spent the time figuring out how it worked) as the prezis seemed to be prompting more intrigued and engaged audiences and a higher appreciation of my presentations. Yes there were one or two people who complained of feeling queasy but they were very much in the minority, the majority of feedback was along the lines of “Awesome presentation!” and “What software are you using? I’ve gotta get me some of that!” I should explain that I chiefly present to MBAs.

However, a few weeks ago I found myself in a bit of a position. I’d been ill, away at a two-day course, and had a ridiculously full email inbox and simply didn’t have the time to create a prezi for a presentation to the MBA class the very next day on research methods.

The Holy Grail, yesterday.

The presentation was a big deal to me as it was one of those ‘Holy Grail sessions’ , so called by me as it was embedded into the curriculum and also involved:

• a faculty member being present giving their seal of approval
• compulsory attendance
• and, at the end of the presentation, the launch of a week-long information skills project that I’d had the freedom to devise myself

It doesn’t get much better than that does it? Well in fact it did as I had a rather wonderful extra resource on hand – the multi-talented Ange Fiztpatrick just before the end of her time as my maternity deputy (if you ever get the chance to work with Ange seize on it with both hands – she’s bloody amazing!)  I was planning that we would teach the session together. But as I’ve said, there was no time to create a prezi, so… I had no choice but to reluctantly fall back on PPT, using the tried and tested ‘full screen images with two or three words of text model’.  Between us we planned the session from scratch, sourced appropriate images and put it all together in a couple of hours or so. We felt criminally underprepared but had no choice but to go with it and sat together in my office to have a runthrough. Right from the word ‘go’ the presentation just zinged. Despite the fact that we were both tired (and my voice was steadily getting worse) we were really bringing the information alive, playing off each other, bringing in quips and asides and at the end of it we were frankly pretty confident about how it would go.

'The Loife' demonstrating stool technique

The following day we arrived for the lecture clutching stools that we’d just filched from the Computing Lab and proceeded to set-up for the session. We had decided to perch on stools, not because we wanted to look like a boyband ready to stand up at the key-change, but because when we ran through the presentation in my office it had been more like a sedentary, almost cosy, fireside chat and we didn’t want to mess with what had felt like a winning formula. Anyway, the next 50 minutes in Lecture Theatre 3 stands without a doubt as one of the most relaxed, hilarious, interactive and rewarding moments of my career thus far. It was like the scales had fallen from my eyes. This was teaching rather than presenting. And to my surprise the PPT helped with that, and not because of the fact that it was PPT but because we were using it as more of a backdrop. The focus instead was on the teaching and the conversation with the audience. I knew of course that this was the theory but had never experienced it so clearly in practice, perhaps because I’d always had too much time to prepare before and had subconsciously chosen not to be so brave.

The multi-talented Ange with her business journal of choice (photo © Rachel Marsh)

There’s no two ways about it, Ange and I were pretty euphoric after the session, we had been more loudly applauded than we could ever have anticipated, there were smiles all round, the faculty member was thrilled and many students came up to us before we left just to say a personal ‘thank you’. One of them even told us that it was one of the best lectures they’d attended on the MBA so far!

Why am I telling you this? Well not because I want to make it clear how fab Ange and I are as presenters, but because like the kid from South Park, we learned something that day: to concentrate more on the delivery, the conversation, the connection, the humour, and much, much less on which platform was the best to use and how to make it do clever things.

The fact that the session could have worked equally as well with a prezi was perfectly highlighted by the fact that one of the students came up to me at the end and said “I love the presentation software you use when you teach us. What is it?” My reply was: “Errr, that was PowerPoint, but before now I’ve been presenting to you with Prezi.” Student: “Oh, right, well, that was a great lecture anyway.” You see the platform hadn’t mattered at all.

BLA 2011 – Members’ Day (Part 2)

“Keep your fears to yourself but share your inspiration with others” (Robert Louis Stevenson)

The most enduringly popular element of the annual Business Librarians Association conference are undoubtedly the sharing sessions in which BLA members present on projects in which they have been engaged at their institutions. The Leslie Baldwin award is presented to the best sharing session and this year’s six contenders made for a very strong field. This time around the sessions were all scheduled to take place on the new ‘Members’ Day’.

1. Alasdair Stewart – The Enterprise Zone at Stirling University

Alasdair presents The Enterprise Zone

Alasdair presented on the new Enterprise Zone at Stirling (defined as an area designated by the government with an aim to restore private-sector activity by removing certain tax burdens and relaxing statutory controls). A high-level decision was taken to make it happen and then Alasdair was handed the reins to actually make it work. The audience ‘oohed’ and ‘ahhed’ at the 360 degree tour of the attractive new space for the EZ, especially at the sight of the inviting nearby loch glimpsed through the windows.

Events held or planned include a Student Leadership Programme, ‘Women into Business’ and clients like HSBC and Sky.

Working on the EZ has led Alasdair to evaluate his role at Stirling. It also made him consider how we can make an impact outside of our organisations and whether we are building enough relationships with external bodies. The tour is available here

2. Heather Peake – The Knowledge Interchange Online
Heather, from Cranfield University, talked about a new online area for executive development clients called KI Online. It incorporates a healthy mix of Cranfield content and third party information resources and is for both personal development and commercial use.

Heather Peake

Defining users was important to make information providers less concerned about licensing their products for access. Providers include Emerald, Datamonitor 360, OneSource and GetAbstract. There is also some free content available on the site for anyone to access.

Other premium content includes different e-learning modules (not designed to answer everything on a subject matter but intended to be introduction only) of which 5-minute tasters are available for free.  There are also ‘Hot Topic’ videos and ‘Critical Guides’ in different subject areas.

Future developments include ‘Smart guides’ on mobile phones, customised KI Online portals for specific courses, and also a move on to iTunes-U. Find out more about KI Online at this webpage or via this video introduction.

3. Barbara Humphries – Research services: making an impact

LSE Postcard for PhDs

Barbara talked about the development of more personalised services to their researchers at LSE, specifically their new research postcards (the example we saw had a large quote: “Sometimes a scream is better than a thesis”). The postcards have a return slip for PhDs to fill in with details of their thesis topic. Staff found it easier and more effective to go out and approach students with this postcard rather than stand behind an induction stall as had happened in the past.

The completed postcards were given to the liaison librarians and academic support librarians wrote about relevant library resources for each student – personalised to each one – taking an hour a time.  A high 50% response rate was received and the postcards were followed up with 1-2-1 consultations. Library staff also put research students in touch with each other on the basis of the topics they detailed on the return slips.

Impact on library staff included:
•         Increased awareness of research areas
•         Information received on most popular resources and how collections are viewed
•         Information to help with selection and collection reviews
•         Increased visibility
•         Promotion of library resources
•         Building relationship with PhDs

This project was written up for a Sconul Focus article and will also be examined in my forthcoming book on personalising library services.

Posters
Halfway through these sessions we had a break in which as well as grabbing a coffee we all had a chance to read member posters including one I produced ‘Beyond the Library Walls’, a much more readable and accessible  version of the poster I had produced earlier in the year for the Cambridge Libraries conference about our Information Point in the Common Room initiative.

4. Marion Kelt – SMILE: a New IL training package
Marion talked about the new SMILE online course at Glasgow Caledonian University intended to help students with their academic writing skills and information literacy.  SMILE was originally created as a JISC project by Imperial College London, Loughborough University and University of Worcester.

Marion and her team have added elements including: a unit called ‘What is a student?’; online database tutorials; systematic reviewing pages; information on how to assess a research article; writing up your literature search using PRISMA. Advice on the ‘digital footprint’ made by students is being added soon.
SMILE is now on Blackboard (branded as GCULearn), regular drop-ins are held, and it is going to be incorporated into wider teaching.

GCU are now offering SMILE with other institutions under a Creative Commons License and BLA members were invited to apply. Access the open access version of the site.

5. Meg Westbury –“ It looks too professional”: a fresh take on library websites using WordPress
Our very own Projects Officer at Judge Business School presented next on how we have developed a new front-end service on a WordPress.org blog. Meg told the story of how we first moved from an uninspiring portal to a WordPress.com blog. Although this initial blog was a step-up it had a number of problems: it was too newsy to be engaging; database access took too many clicks; it didn’t push our social media; the banner logo was too large; and navigation wasn’t straightforward. Also Meg found that she couldn’t get ‘under the bonnet’ enough in order to customise it to our needs. The answer was to move to WordPress.org which meant far more flexibility.

After choosing a “clean and clear” theme which could be adapted to our needs with better navigation and spacing, Meg populated the new site with more information-rich content, seamless access to databases, Wikipedia-style subject pages (e.g. Company and financial info.), instant chat and LibraryThing widgets; links to most popular resources; and high-quality images.

An example screen from the new Judge site

I reacted to this first iteration of this new site with the, now infamous, words “It looks too professional” (hence the title of Meg’s talk) because I was fearful that it was so good that institutional feathers would be ruffled by us taking a higher professional,  and non-traditional, profile which had not required any extra-I&LS team support. However, much any of us might be recognised as information gurus on the surface, it’s my experience that non-library staff everywhere are much happier about, and less threatened by, us if we fulfil the ‘stamp, shelve and shush’ stereotype. And I’ve found this can be a subconscious rather than conscious reaction too.

Getting back to Meg’s talk, she concluded by detailing the usability testing with students which led to a refinement of the first version to make it less busy and incorporate clearer contact details. The revised version has gone down very well with users. The site can currently be found here, but we will be moving to a new URL as part of the JBS website before the start of the new academic year.

6. Stephen Bull – Lights, Camera, Action: making an impact through a promotional library video
Stephen Bull of the University of Birmingham was the final presenter of the day. He detailed the planning and production of a new 5 minute film promoting Library Services. It was envisaged that it would showcase: study spaces; print and electronic collections; remote access; training and help, and would be used on open days, at inductions, and on the Library website.

Some interesting facts and figures included:
-          More than 600 emails were sent during the project
-          210 hours were spent on planning and editing
-          3.5 days filming
-          7 hours footage obtained
-          5 days in the edit suite
-          Project lasted 4 months
-          4.5 minutes final length

On reading these stats I couldn’t help but feel that the Warwick model we heard about on Day 1 in which a video camera was given to students seemed much more cost-effective. Nevertheless Stephen told us that the film was considered to be a success and that it had received many views.

Most interesting was what he and the project team learned from making the film: the amount of work required for such a short film; that the film should be short, but the final product needed to be viable for 2-3 years; that in-house advice from media-savvy colleagues was invaluable; student talking heads were more effective than narration and that these students needed to be briefed in advance.

Stephen ended the presentation by showing the film and very professional it was too.

"I'd like to thank my manager..."

The Leslie Baldwin Award
I was very pleased to hear Meg (pictured left) announced as the winner of the Leslie Baldwin award for the best sharing session. Given she also won a Kindle on the first day it really was her conference.

Thank You
Because I know just HOW MUCH goes into these events I’d like to say a big ‘thank you’ to Chair Emma Thompson and conference organisers, Maria Mawson and Alison Lahlafi, and the rest of the BLA committee. Great effort everyone: BLA2011 was a vintage year.

BLA 2011 – Impact, value and stress seals… (Part 1)

View from my gigantic hotel window

So another year, another BLA (Business Librarians Association) conference and Sheffield 2011 is set to be a very different experience for me. For the past 4 years I’ve attended as Chair which involved heaps of work before, heaps of work during and heaps of sleeping after. This year I’m here as an ordinary delegate and so far (hand-on-heart) it’s been Completely Lovely and not just because I can kick back and spend more time at the bar! More importantly I can now fully engage with the content and there’s a lot more time for me to talk to other delegates and the sponsors. Only once so far have I wanted to leap up and sort something out but ultimately, you’ll be relieved to hear, dear reader, I resisted.

One of the obvious highlights of BLA 2011 was the hotel itself – the Mercure St Pauls next to Sheffield Town Hall and the Peace Gardens. My amazing hotel room window view (above) looked out on both and was a nice bonus. Arriving early I also had time to use the hotel gym and pool, my first serious exercise since my 3 Peaks adventure and I was pleased to discover that my knees have now fully recovered.

Another highlight was before the conference proper: the Proquest User Group at the hotel, fronted by (fellow 3 Peaker) Phill Hall and new colleague Mark Ayling. This was a chance to learn about ABI Inform developments and specifically information about new content coming our way. I was pleased to see more market research and economic data was forthcoming and resolved to input direct links to different sections of the database on my return to work to make sure our students and staff are getting the most out of what is fast becoming a very valuable resource once again (for the first time, in my opinion, since the ABI ‘glory days’ of the mid-90s).

Antony and the 'Ladder of Loyalty'

Most delegates would I’m sure agree that Antony Brewerton’s very visual session on advocacy, branding and communication was the best presentation on Day 1. For me, although it was entertaining, a little too much ground was covered and the sort of strategies that were being detailed should already be bread-and-butter to the engaged librarian. If you’ve not embraced marketing and branding by now what is your excuse frankly?! However, there was still much to enjoy. My favourite elements were: the Ladder of Loyalty – turning potential customer into customers and ultimately champions and partners; the video of students talking about the University Library at Warwick which was bravely created by just handing out the camera to students and seeing what they came up with (!); his advice on seeking out talented individuals; and his reflections on the OCLC 2010 Perceptions of Libraries report (including the depressing bottom line that we are still perceived as just being about books, books and more books). How true it is that whatever we do, lots of students and many of our non-library colleagues regularly revert to default old-fashioned perceptions).

A new ‘Question Time’ format session fronted by our very own Dimbleby (BLA Chair – Emma Thompson) was a great new initiative. I’d previously submitted a deliberately provocative question and mine was first up:
“Is there a danger that we’re currently just playing at improving the relevance of library services to our users. Isn’t it time we adopted a radical and completely different approach in order to ensure our continued existence?”

Question Time with Emma Dimbleby

I felt that the responses from the panel were on balance a bit too defensive and rather complacent about both our professional future and what is currently being achieved. I didn’t push the point when asked to respond to the panel after they’d each had their say, partly because I couldn’t see them acknowledging there was an issue and partly because I want to keep a low-ish profile this conference (there were bets from BLA mates on my Facebook page as to how long I could keep quiet for and I like to think that I have surprised them all by managing several hours!). Worth mentioning the excellent contribution of Steve Gianonni of EBSCO to the panel (above right) who provided an external but informed perspective and yet remained endearingly humble about the value of what he had to say. Keep this format next year please committee.

Natalie and Lorna at the first night dinner

For the informal first night dinner I went back to my roots sitting next to five librarians from the North, three of them working on Tyneside, my old stamping ground. I didn’t quite revisit my old Geordie accent even when the contentious quiz results were announced (it used to creep back in when I got excitable). Strangely the team with people who worked and lived in Sheffield won this Sheffield-themed quiz! We reckon we got 19 out of 20, 18 if we were marked ridiculously tightly. The winning team with it’s (ahem) Sheffield-based members got 19. We woz robbed. It didn’t stop us finishing off their leftover chocolates later on though – we’re not that proud! I’ll probably get over this particular injustice in a year or two…

Day 2 kicked off with Shelia Corrall whose presentation had a great deal of valuable content on measuring impact and value with reference to measures like Kaplan and Norton’s Balanced Scorecard. Unfortunately the academic theory-heavy style of the presentation was a bit of a turn off for me, but I will certainly be looking at her PPT post-conference. Personally I think your PPT should make a visual impact (ironic as she was talking about impact) rather than include slides and slides of data and models which are openly acknowledged by the presenter as impossible for the audience to read. I’d rather have Antony’s image-based slides any day of the week. Having said that, it’s high time you were using Prezi Antony – it seamlessly plays video (getting around the problem you experienced) and is far more dynamic than PPT.

Freebies including Key Note's 'stress seal'

I think I got around nearly all the sponsor stands over the first two days and as well as being updated on latest product developments (Key Note’s additional UK company content being particularly worthy of note) and explaining our budgetary constraints, I picked up some rather nice freebies including a furry frog from Emerald, a rugby ball from Perfect and a ‘stress seal’ from Key Note – all for my son John of course. Key Note, as usual, won the best freebies award: Hotel Chocolat chocolates – good move.

Perhaps most zeitgeisty and on topic was Huddersfield University’s Library Impact project presented by Graham Stone. Graham was to have been accompanied by Dave Pattern (@daveyp on twitter  – well worth a follow) but he was unable to attend at the last minute. Their project (in which the BLA’s very own Alison Sharman is also involved) has sought to establish a direct correlation between library use and student attainment and pleasingly was a solid piece of thorough research. Their blog is here.

In short, these guys have nearly proved the correlation. Their research throws up lots of interesting questions and we broke out into groups to discuss them. Our group mainly discussed whether the high-achieving students choose ‘better’ resources or whether they are ‘better’ at choosing resources?

After an interesting exploration of the experience of postgraduate Chinese students by Professor Bradley Barnes, including the recommendation that we need to educate them more before they arrive so that they are more aware of cultural differences , there was a presentation from Sigrid Gimse and Toril Sigstadstø of the Norwegian School of Management.

Toril Sigstadtso

As they discussed another great library student video , their successful embedding of information skills on the curriculum (involving a mandatory 3 hour workshop on research methodology followed by an exam) and the finding that students preferred online chat to face-to-face communication, Sigrid’s and Toril’s style was upbeat and optimistic and therefore very refreshing. Also, despite the fact that English was not their first language they impressed by managing to crack a few jokes and get some laughs. I found this perspective from beyond the UK to be a very positive thing and hope they will be the first of many European visitors to the BLA conference…

Next Time: The members sharing sessions from the final day of BLA 2011.

Not just a pile of bricks

“You can learn more about a person in an hour of play than you can from a lifetime of conversation” - Plato

Endless possibilities...

I don’t know about you, but for me there’s something innately comforting about Lego. That it fits so neatly together, its pleasing iconic design, the way it transports you back to a time when both play and possibilities were endless…

I’m currently enjoying the ‘Lego Experience’ a second time around through my son John. I don’t know how many ‘Rebel Alliance bases’ I’ve built so far for his Star Wars Lego figures but we’re definitely into double figures. The current base is white and very Empire Strikes Back (Hoth-esque if you’re a devotee).  A few weeks ago, for reasons I won’t go into here (but I do here) my wife and I happened to be entertaining the actress Caroline Blakiston, who played Rebel Alliance leader Mon Mothma in Return of the Jedi, and it amused me hugely that one of ‘her bases’ was in the same room. I half expected her to criticise the accuracy of the build! John has a lot more Lego than I did as a kid, mainly because I still remember how much I craved and coveted friend’s larger Lego collections (Simon Brown – your Space Lego circa 1983 was truly a wonder to behold) and this time around I’d kind of like other kids to crave and covet his. The huge vat of Lego we bought off ebay has certainly helped with that!

Gavin Wedell and helper (copyright Gavin Wedell)

Anyway you get the point – I think Lego rocks. But why am I blogging about it? Well, I recently heard about a Lego training session being run for business school faculty by one of our MBA students who has worked as a corporate trainer, with clients including Diageo and Vodafone, one Gavin Wedell. Gavin was one of those lovely MBAs who nodded in all the right places during the induction sessions, completely gets what we’re about and is a great advert for what is a largely misunderstood breed of student. I should make it clear that Gavin isn’t just randomly dumping Lego in front of people in these sessions and hoping something creative or good happens, he’s actually – now let me get this right – an officially certified facilitator of the innovative LEGO^® Serious Play™ methodology, having been trained at LEGO’s U.S. headquarters (I love that they have a U.S. headquarters, with Lego figures on guard presumably). What is LEGO^® Serious Play™ I wondered? So I took at look at their site and read their their promotional blurb:

‘An innovative, experiential process designed to enhance innovation and business performance. Based on research that shows that this kind of hands-on, minds-on learning produces a deeper, more meaningful understanding of the world and its possibilities. [It] deepens the reflection process and supports an effective dialogue – for everyone in the organization.’

One of my models in which a mystified cat looks on as I contemplate bridge-building

This description taken together with the fact that I knew Gavin was ‘one of the good guys’ and that my team needed a fun summer training session (and of course the fact that – Hey! We’re talking about Lego here) motivated me to email Gavin and ask if he could run a session for us. Gavin was fantastically accommodating. Not only was he keen to tailor the session to our specific needs, but he was very flexible about a date and, best of all, he refused payment. I knew we were on to a winner by the team’s gleeful reaction to news of the workshop: smiles all round which suggested many happy childhood hours with The Lovely Bricks.

My expectations were already high at the start of the workshop. but I could not have anticipated just how much fun and, more importantly, insight and productive team-building would arise from the session. First up we were tasked to build a tower, a tower which, on receipt of new phoned-in instructions from Sir Paul Judge (via Gavin), suddenly had to be rebuilt at 90 degrees (to reflect how priorities and directives can suddenly change). More model-building followed as we used the bricks and figures to reflect challenges in our current job, before we all switched seats and had to describe each others challenges on the basis of each other’s Lego models alone.

Sarah's model (as the outcome of our wider model)

What surprised me was:
1) just how good everyone was at building with Lego (special mention must go to Natasha who had never used it before, but immediately employed it in such an eloquent and creative way that it almost left me speechless with admiration);
2) how the models we built spoke volumes about our challenges – it seems a lego model also paints a thousand words
and; 3) how much we already understood about each other and were willing to understand and empathise more.

The final half an hour saw us bring together our individual models as one over-arching strategy for the team going forward. By this point our models had been named by each of us with attributes that were means of overcoming the challenges we currently face. So, for instance, Sarah brought ‘open communications’, Natasha brought ‘hope’ (or the ‘Helicopter of Hope™’ as I prefer to call it!) and Ange brought ‘blending talents’ to the table. Surprising again was that the end result was strategically viable as a way forward for Information & Library Services within our institution.

Team (with Natasha holding the 'Helicopter of Hope' TM)

Post-session emails of thanks, individual comments and tweets from team members suggested that our LEGO^® Serious Play™ workshop had been a great success. The only caveat I would add is that we’re currently very lucky to be in a team which really IS a team – respectful, appreciative of our differing talents, empathic – our challenges are more from without than within and several times during the session I thought ‘Ooh!” at this or that element which could well have been awkward, if not downright uncomfortable, in other teams I’ve worked in or led. Having said that, I do think the methodology seems robust enough to deal with that, especially if you have a facilitator as good as Gavin.

So where does this leave me and Lego? Well, I am of course now looking at it in a whole new light. Why do I build rebel bases for John in a particular way? Why do I adopt a rigid colour scheme? Why do I always build in an arms store? Why do I only ever have one door? What does all this say about my personality?  Sometimes a rebel base is just a rebel base – isn’t it? Now I’m not so sure.

Gavin Wedell can be contacted as follows:
Email: gavinwedell AT gmail.com | LinkedIn | Twitter

EBSLG 2011, HEC Paris: Innovation in Libraries (Part 3)

Day 3
The last full day of the conference kicked off with Philippe Colombet of Google Books who detailed Google’s long-held plans to digitise the world’s books (currently at 15 million books now scanned and available). Some introductory stats on devices used for accessing the web included the fact that in 2011 sales of smartphones have now overtaken desktops and notebooks combined. As this session was little more than a history lesson followed by details of Google Books’ plans going forward, there was little challenging content here, however, it was particularly interesting, if not downright surprising, to hear a stance on obsolescence which suggested that once you had bought and e-book from them it was yours for life regardless of platforms and devices. Philippe concluded by saying that Google Books don’t have “a foot in the street” yet when it comes to the academic market. Watch this space.

The mobile technologies roundtable discussion was a session I was eagerly anticipating as over the past 6 months it has become very apparent that we librarians must embrace the challenges and opportunities presented by the sudden prevalence of smartphones and tablets. Here at Judge we are currently developing an app for our services (which is now likely to be part of a business school-wide app) and have ensured that our new blog/site is mobile-friendly. Talking to an app developer yesterday, he predicted that as many as 70% of our new intake of students will have iPhones or iPads – we have to be ready for that. Anyway, back to the roundtable… Unfortunately, it quickly became obvious that the session had too many presenters and that this would therefore leave little room for questions and furthermore that they were all going to broadcast rather than interact and debate with each other. A bit of a missed opportunity.

The mobile tech roundtable which was, in truth, more of a straighttable

Nevertheless there was a lot of good content on offer such as: the difference between a GUI and a NUI (natural user interface) which is evocative, unmediated, fast and contextual; an exploration of whether students actually know about and use twitter (whihc would lead neatly into Anna Drabble’s post-lunch session) – apparently they don’t at France’s University of Rouen; the clear disparity between what a user wants and what the library offers (in terms of device delivery) with e-books being a prime example; the iCampus ecosystem for mobile devices at ESSEC; the migration of heavy printed study packs to lightweight iPads for MBAs at Manchester Business School; and the aim of the same MBS library service to be viewed by their users as the “go-to guys for app knowledge”. Dominic Broadhurst (of MBS) took the right approach to the session with a concise information-rich and funny presentation (see the video he used of an MBA-type at interview below) that was realistic as to how much information any audience can take in at once. Sadly others took more than their fair share of the time available and seemed unaware that less is often more.

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Three overall issues struck me during this mobile tech session: 1) how much the personalised approach to users was talked about (a good job since I’m currently co-writing -editing a book on this very topic!); 2) an unnecessary distinction between the sort of learning that takes place remotely via devices remotely rather than in more traditional places – in my view this is the same learning: boundaryless learning if you like; and 3) the adoption of smartphones and tablets despite the fact that they are not a direct replacement for a laptop or a desktop – meaning that information and data is now more current and transitory. Lots to think about there.

Social media - hardly a meteoric impact on researchers as yet

Anna Drabble did well to keep the audience with her in the traditional post-lunch snooze slot with a well-paced and informative session which saw her detail the results of research that Emerald were commissioned to undertake on the real impact of social media on researchers. The main headlines :
- there is a huge gap between awareness of social media and actual use
- social media is finding application at every single stage of the research process
- all age groups use social media
- social media makes research workflow much broader with improved communication and dissemination
- the researchers world is becoming more complex so metrics and authority matter more
- researchers have concerns about non-peer-reviewed content
One of Anna’s most memorable revelations was that in a 4 hour discussion on social media with a group of researchers on their workflow, librarians were not mentioned once. Ouch! We have some serious work to do.

Between this session and the evening trip into the city I decided to take a plunge in the hotel pool – a very refreshing dip, partly because it wasn’t heated!

Maxim's Paris

Next up was a very special visit to Maxim’s, which is owned by Pierre Cardin. I’d visited Maxim’s in Brussels while researching a book about the 70s wartime BBC TV series Secret Army which was partly filmed there, but never the more famous and original Maxim’s Paris. The art nouveau museum that is located on Maxim’s upper floors was totally unexpected and we enjoyed an entertaining tour of Cardin’s priceless collection before retiring downstairs for wine and hors d’oeuvres. After Maxim’s we enjoyed a late night coach tour of the capital, which included a quick stop off at the Eiffel Tower, much too iconic to ignore. Spirits were, shall we say, er.. high, during this tour as there was plenty of wine on offer in Maxim’s.

Graves et le pain

Day 4
The final half-day of the conference was taken up with the Group’s business meeting at which several members who are retiring said their goodbyes including: Xavier Baumgartner (EBSLG Secretary); Francoise Cousseau and Isabelle Sabatier. We also thanked Pascale Pajona of INSEAD for a successful three years as President – most notable for her fostering of networks and relationships between librarians globally and her bravery in tackling the consititution (!). Two affiliate members of the Group were also formally approved at this meeting – Cass Business School, City University London and University of Edinburgh Business School (Jacqui Gaul and Deborah Morrison respectively) who have already contributed a great deal to previous conferences and the British meetings of the Group.

The lunch that rounded off this year’s excellent conference included some very special Graves Bordeaux – the perfect end to our sojourn in Paris. A big ‘Merci’ to Agnes Melot and her excellent team at HEC Paris and to the EBSLG committee for their work all year round.

Delegates at EBSLG 2011 on the HEC Paris campus

EBSLG 2011, HEC Paris: Innovation in Libraries (Part 2)

Day 2 (continued)
Lunch on the second day provided an opportunity to meet Anna Drabble of Emerald (@anna150 on twitter), Head of Digital and Product Development at Emerald Group Publishing, who was the only other person tweeting at #ebslg11 (although there were plenty of lurkers). As well as our shared interest in the impact of social media we discussed the specific matter of live-tweeting at conferences. I find that it helps me to process the events I attend and, of course, it gives access to the event for those unable to attend. I wrote about this issue at some length after last year’s BLA conference and upon reading that post again, apart from being amused to see I was still resisting an iPhone back then (I couldn’t live without now), it made me realise how much more accepted device-use is at conferences, just one year later. I distinctly remember dark looks at last year’s EBSLG when I got my laptop out, but this year, loads of delegates were on iPhones, iPads, laptops, even if only two of us were tweeting.

However, we’re not all the way there yet… one sponsor made the mistake of demanding we switch our phones and laptops off at #ebslg11 - ironically during the mobile tech roundtable! – presumably on the basis that we weren’t concentrating. I refused on the basis that I was tweeting (others could have refused on the basis that they were taking notes) and realising his mistake, he quickly, and unconvincingly, pretended it had been a joke. Today’s speakers need to realise that devices are now part-and-parcel of their teaching experience. If it makes some of them try harder to grab our undivided attention then that can’t be a bad thing! Although doing so by making a whole conference hall do aerobics and air-kisses is probably not for every speaker – apologies Cambridge librarians, but I just couldn’t resist it.

Thorsten Meyer of the German National Library of Economics (ZBW) was the first speaker after lunch (and now the new president of EBSLG – congratulations!) on the topic of Open Innovation, the process by which customers are actively integrated into the innovation process via Web 2.0. At ZBW open innovation has been employed by ZBW labs and for an ideas competition: The EconBiz challenge. Essentially, ZBW is sourcing input form the outside world in order to improve and develop new and existing products. One soundbite from this session that I particularly liked (tweeted by @anna150): It is important to have good ideas – but an idea is not yet an innovation…

Veronique Mesguich, Library Director of the Leonardo Da Vinci University spoke next. There were plenty of ‘take-aways’ from her session. Firstly, the simple statement (that I think I’ve been saying since circa 2001): ‘We are in the age of access not property’. Secondly, the observation that librarians are more like teachers and teachers more like librarians (because the latter are searching for, and retrieving, more data from the web with which to present). Finally, the fact that librarians now have many new territories and, because of this, collaboration with those already in these territories is key. She talked specifically about ‘soft empowerment’ as her preferred approach to this collaboration.

I personally find that because ‘the game has changed’ and librarians now must actively embrace technology and marketing that I am perceived as encroaching on other departmental territories more and more and it is a challenge to square that with all parties. I agreed with Veronique and, later, Dominic of MBS, that communication, listening and building relationships is key. Unfortunately there is sometimes little difference between positioning and empire-building in the eye of the beholder. I guess I just have to try harder to be understood and to make it clear that what we’re about offers the opportunity for collaboration and a fuller overall service to our users and does not constitute a threat. After all, we’re all cogs which go to make up a larger organisational mechanism.

The remainder of the afternoon was given over to the Bazaar of Ideas which this year saw the following projects/topics explored: implementation of an open-source LAS system at INSEAD (Pascale Pajona) – very neat it is too; a database of research publications at University of Paris Dauphine (Andre Lohisse); library book events and social reading at HEC Paris (Sylvie Marion); Manchester Business School’s excellent Business Research Plus blog service (Dominic Broadhurst); more on the EconBiz challenge at ZBW (see above); development of the Cranfield Research Information System (CRIS) (Mary Betts-Gray); use of Twitter at EADA library (Carolina Sanmartin); and finally, my own presentation on our adoption of a WordPress blog as the new front-end of our service here at Judge.

Thanks to my switched-on team the demo involved some instant chat (a component of the new site) in French for the benefit of the continental audience. As each of us taking part in the Bazaar had to present 4 times with the audience circulating, I found it interesting to see how I could improve on my content and flow as I progressed, with the third session probably  the best and the first outing definitely the weakest. Practice absolutely does make perfect. The prezi presentation I used is available by clicking on the image below.

The Hall of Mirrors, Palace of Versailles

The day was rounded off in style with a virtually private tour of the Palace of Versailles which is usually heaving with visitors. The Hall of Mirrors was my  particular highlight due to its historical significance as the venue of the signing of the Treaty of Versailles, although it was also great to see the door through which Marie Antoinette fled when the French populace stormed the palace at the outset of the Revolution in 1789.

Versailles was followed by a return to the HEC Campus in Jouy-en-Josas and the gala dinner at the CRC castle at which the company and  food was superb and the wine flowed freely.

Next time in my final #ebslg11 post (Part 3 of 3): Google Books; the impact of mobile technologies and social media, and a visit to Maxim’s.

EBSLG 2011, HEC Paris: Innovation in Libraries (Part 1)

Graves wine, an endearing robot dog, exploration of the impact of social media and mobile technologies, Pierre Cardin’s priceless art nouveau collection, the Versailles Hall of Mirrors, and a refreshing dip in an inviting hotel pool – just some of my personal highlights of this year’s packed EBSLG (European Business Schools Librarians Group) conference, with the theme of ‘Innovation in Libraries’, which took place at the HEC business school Paris.

Day 1
On Wednesday 22nd June, head librarians and library directors from all over Europe descended on the HEC business school campus at Jouy-en-Josas, just south of Paris.  I ended up travelling with Chris Flegg from Said Business School, Oxford and we made a good team as we journeyed across Paris from Charles De Gaulle Airport by train, with Chris, who was born in France, taking on language duties while I navigated. Arriving late afternoon, there was just time for a quick freshen up and change of clothes before the ’Welcome cocktail’.

The hotel on the HEC campus

This took place in the hotel (which was connected to the HEC MBA building where all the conference sessions took place) and was fronted by our host Agnes Melot, Library Director of HEC and Veronique Malleret, Faculty Dean. It was great to reconnect with colleagues and meet new ones too, including Matthew Kelleher of IMI, Elena Kosareva of St Petersburg University and Elke Parrez of Gent Management School.

Day 2
The next morning we were welcomed to HEC by Laoucine Kerbache, Associate Dean of HEC Paris who offered a memorable story about a student who left a 50 dollar bill in his thesis for anyone to take if they read it, only to return some 25 years later to find that the bill was still there!

The first keynote speaker was Etienne Krieger, Affiliate Professor at HEC who focused on how entrepreneurs need libraries, drawing on the example of the use of the HEC library by HEC’s Centre of Entrepreneurship and Innovation. It was affirming to hear him recognise the importance of information to the innovation process and describe us librarians as information architects rather than passive custodians.

Bruno Rives and his robot dog

Next up was Bruno Rives of the Tebaldo Observatory, a Paris-based consulting agency specialising in trends and usage of new technologies. There was common agreement that Bruno’s presentation was the most entertaining and engaging of the entire conference due to its often mind-blowing content and an incredibly cute robot dog. The dog was a static prop to begin with, but he later came to life and responded to his owner by stretching and wagging his tail. Take a closer look at the robot dog.

We were also privy to some other prototype devices such as re-usable electronic paper with obvious application in a library setting as signage, maps, or even wallpaper. The paper can also be used to transmit information to user devices. We went on to watch a video which demonstrated ‘augmented reality’ by presenting us with a cartoon boy called Milo who responded intelligently to a person via a television screen, begging the question whether whole swathes of professionals – not just librarians – are required in person any longer? You can watch the 5 minute Milo video, which I discovered post-session to be regarded by some observers as a fake demonstration, below:

Carolina Sanmartin examines the e-paper

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Bruno described all this technology as disruptive and, interestingly, cited twitter as the most important tool of all when it comes to developing disruptive technologies. He also sagely observed that users don’t know what they want until they see it because technology changes, and disruptions occur, too fast.

Thanh Nghiem

Thanh Nghiem, founder and president of the Angenius Institute presented next on the the concept of collective intelligence and social innovation, with particular reference to sustainable lifestyles. I was particularly intrigued by her description of ‘gateway openers’ in this area and the term “Me 2.0″ for those creative people who are socially aware and see connections and solutions to global problems. I also promised myself that I would check out those ‘social business’ models, which she mentioned, that I haven’t come across before: airbnb (a global network of accommodation offered by locals), letsdoit (a movement of people wanting to make real changes in their countries by tackling illegal waste and other issues), zipcar (car sharing as an alternative to car rental or ownership) and couchsurfing (an international network for making connections between travellers and the communities they visit).

In my next post (Part 2): open innovation; the bazaar of member projects/ideas; our private visit to Versailles and the Gala dinner…

Mountain madness (in which I tackle the 3 highest peaks in the UK in 24 hours)

NOTE: Although this blog is personal in that I use it to express my views and process my own thoughts about modern librarianship it is largely a ‘professional’ endeavour. However, I’ve decided to make an exception with this particular post as lots of the readers of my blog generously sponsored me in my attempt at the Three Peaks Challenge. You can still sponsor me here

After the first 100 metres up Ben Nevis I confess I thought I’d made a terrible, terrible mistake. I was tired, out of breath and utterly demoralised. How on earth could I climb this mountain let alone two more? I hadn’t done as much training as I’d wanted, due to an irritating chest infection (which forced me to cut my regular three mile run home after work) and the ascent already had me gasping. There was some comfort to be had in the fact that my training partner, Julie, confessed to being just as shattered as we talked about how completely different the gym treadmills were to the boulder-strewn paths we were now pulling ourselves up.

Phill on one of the early sections of Ben Nevis

I’ve climbed a fair few hills and mountains in my time but the last serious peak I’d climbed had been Snowdon back in 2001 when I was a sprightly 29-year-old. Was I still up to it? Also playing on my mind was the fact that all other members of the group were pretty fit and younger than me. Stuart had recently done a 10k run and plays football regularly, Phill is a rower and mountain bike nut and Ben completed the London Marathon in just over 3.5 hrs. It was going to be interesting keeping up with them.

Thankfully a more gradual stretch and a steadier pace soon had me feeling much less daunted. A rest stop at 600 metres was very welcome and saw the first of many high-carb pasta meals of the 24 hours (I won’t be eating pasta again soon).

Zig-zagging to the top

Zig-zagging to the top was some of the toughest climbing I’ve ever done, but short regular stops made it bearable. Also tweets of support were coming through and were incredibly motivating – it was like having a virtual support team.

One of the strangest things about this whole experience was that most other 3 Peak-ers were on their way down as we were on the way up – we must have started Nevis later than every other team, however, this would pay dividends later as we’d start Scafell Pike in daylight. What every person coming down had in common, was that each and every one told us a widely inaccurate estimated time to the top. One woman gleefully told us 40 minutes left and we ended up reaching the summit 1.5 hours later! Most however, seemed to double the actual time, thinking – no doubt – about how long it had taken them to get down from the top.

With the 'snow section' behind me

It was from people coming down Nevis that we first heard about the snow section ahead. Snow section! When we got to it, it was a killer to get through but at least we felt like proper mountaineers. Thankfully the summit wasn’t far ahead and I got a sudden burst of energy to make it to the top. Despite the initial gleeful tenor to the trip back down, the constant jarring of feet on the stone paths soon took their toll and halfway down we were nearly all complaining of ‘jelly legs’.

At the very top of Ben Nevis - the highest point in the UK.

About 200 metres from the bottom Julie really started to struggle as she found that her legs just wouldn’t carry her. By the time we arrived back at the main road it was clear her challenge was over. There was no-one more determined to complete this than Julie so it was really tough for her to take, but if your legs just don’t work anymore you don’t have a choice. I know she won’t see it as any consolation but at least she conquered the highest peak in the UK. The excellent Gordon, our driver and up until Julie’s retirement, the sole member of the support team, furnished us with hot pizzas before driving us down to the Lake District as Saturday became Sunday.

Arriving at the foot of Scafell Pike (the tallest mountain in England) at 5am in the morning I was seriously in two minds about continuing myself as my knees felt completely buggered and I idly wondered whether the support team might end up bigger than the challenge group! I decided I’d at least give it a go. As with Nevis I found the first section demoralising due to the steep ascent, however after the first hour the terrain became more gradual and grassy (very glad not to have stones underfoot for once) and the climb became almost enjoyable.

View from an upper section of Scafell Pike

In what seemed like a relatively short space of time, the four of us soon found ourselves looking down on tremendous views of the valley and lesser mountains below. As we neared the actual summit, after two or three evil false ones, it was my turn to be told to slow down, so we could all make the final push together. I put my sudden turn of speed down to the surprisingly restorative power of Fruit Pastilles. The summit, like Nevis, was misty and bleak with little to see in any direction, but our spirits were high, mine especially, after all I’d climbed the final peak, Snowdon, three times before and “it was a doddle”…

A shot of Phill, Ben and Stuart as they join me on the summit of Scafell Pike

The walk down Scafell was tough but eased for me by my decision to make wide zig-zagged paths in the grass wherever possible away from the main route. I’m convinced if I hadn’t that Snowdon would have been no-go for me. We completed Scafell in 4.5 hours, incredibly just as we had estimated, but at the bottom there was no support team in sight. The uber-fit Ben took it upon himself to find them. It turned out they were a kilometre down the road fast asleep. Bless. As you can imagine there was some banter to be had when the car arrived to pick us up.

A river runs through it / us

We’d known from the start that we’d be climbing Snowdon in the rain, but nothing could of prepared us for that final part of the challenge in North Wales: traversing a route that started off as a track and became more like a free-flowing river as the rain and the wind pounded the mountain side. I knew the Pyg Track well, but this might as well have been another mountain entirely as we made our ascent into the clouds towards a completely invisible summit.

Once again we seemed to be the last ones on the mountain and given the conditions for the first time we were thinking about mountain rescue and how if we injured ourselves there would be no easy way to get us off the peak. Of course we were all very tired by now and there were lots of stumbles and near falls. About fifteen minutes from the towering summit there was talk of stopping and turning back – it was that windy, cold and wet. The rain was like nails in our faces – I’ve never experienced anything like it.

At the top of Snowdon

Phill was particularly worried now as he thought I was slurring my words. I still hold that I was just talking and chewing a fruit pastille at the same time! I should point out that despite waterproofs we were all completely soaked to the skin so hypothermia was very much on our minds. However, we pressed on and somehow plugged away until we reached the top and clung on to the trig point at the top for dear life. I’m only surprised we don’t look more terrified in the summit photo! We elected to get down the mountain as quick as we could – every step was painful now and needed to be extremely carefully placed as the wind constantly threatened to blow us off the rocks – so we descended to the Miners Track, a flatter but longer route which was really the only option in these circumstances. An hour or so later we rounded a corner along this seemingly neverending path and finally saw the car park ahead of us. Despite the pain, Phill and I somehow found the energy to race each other to the car park gate! Competitive – moi? Gordon and Julie were waiting for us with a bottle of champers and many congratulations, before whisking us off to our inviting hotel.

Final time: 25:46. Given the various tribulations and weather conditions there was no talk of failure. We were all just amazed by what we had done. And as Phill said we did actually climb all three in 24 hours, its just that we didn’t get down the last one in that time.

My favourite photo from the Challenge: sunset over Ben Nevis

Thanks so much to everyone who sponsored me. Alone I raised just shy of £2000 and with Julie (a separate Just Giving account for our workplace): £835, all in aid of Great Ormond Street. There is still time to sponsor me – I’d love to crack that £2000 barrier if you can help out?

Would I do it again? Well at the bar that night there was already talk of the next challenge. We’d really bonded as a team and had had an amazing if knackering time. Till next year…

You can sponsor me here