It’s been awhile I know and although I’ve found it hard to put pen to paper (who even does that these days) it’s not because there hasn’t been lots of stuff going on.
Anyway I shan’t go back over all of last year’s events rather I shall start at the end of last year with the IPEM open strategy review. The CEO and VPs thought we might get a wider response from the IPEM members by arranging a TCon. Makes sense right – on paper – no need to arrange a day off work, 30 mins at lunchtime or at the end of the day, a set list of subjects to discuss 1. Regional structures 2. Volunteering 3. Policy work 4. Public engagement. But no, niente, nada, zip……
Well not exactly I think 4 individuals phoned in; 2 on each day apart from the exec and then written notes from a couple of regional groups. So what did we do wrong? and yes quite clearly we are missing a trick, but what exactly?! Rosemary Cook our wonderful CEO will be summarising the results of the strategy review in much detail in the next issue of SCOPE or may be in the newsletter but briefly…. Nearly all of the suggestions or requests put to us are already been carried out or provided by IPEM but no one can see or hear us….How disappointing…
But then how do I find out what’s going on at IPEM ….. it’s not easy I admit, even being VP. Most of what I find out is from attending the trustees meeting and the communications committee meeting that I chair! Oh and gossip :) No I don’t regularly visit the IPEM website and yet I should – it’s all there.
And No, I don’t really bother reading the newsletter either – it just looks a bit bland but it's about to be re-launched – all beautiful and shiny and new - look out for it soon. I do flick through SCOPE when it arrives. I like SCOPE and so as it turns out do most of the membership. But since it comes out quarterly it's not exactly an up to the minute vehicle.
One place I do get a lot of info from – not necessarily just IPEM related - is TWITTER. I can hear the groans already…. I’m quite a late comer to twitter and an even later comer to facebook but I’m not going to talk about facebook because that is my private personal space. So what and how is twitter. My initial reticence to twitter was because I couldn’t understand why I would want to read 140 characters of drivel since what on Earth can you say in 140 characters. But a friend whose opinion I value greatly, recommended I just try it and anyway Stephen Fry – the nation’s favourite - tweets all the time. Here’s a snapshot from my timeline
As you can see I mainly use it to collect links to other more in-depth info that I can read later. My twitter account is very work related – politics, science and healthcare. You can create more than one account so if you have one already you don’t have to mix work and pleasure. You can also create an account that doesn’t identify you and in general I recommend that you put as little personal info on twitter (or facebook) as you can get away with. Once you have an account you don’t even have to tweet you can just follow everyone else. Once you feel a bit more comfortable then you can start to re-tweet things you think are interesting, although, unless you’ve got any followers no one else will see it. But as you begin to build up a theme people will find you since twitter will ‘advertise’ your account to other like minded people. The disadvantage of this kind of social media is that, depending on how many people you are following, 100’s of tweets can go by that you never see but that’s OK, you can’t read everything and anyway the good stuff often comes round again. However, To make sure that you don’t miss the important things, what you can do is allow twitter to interact with your smart phone so that it texts you when a particular account has tweeted e.g @ipemnews. So now whenever the ipem office tweets a piece of information, and it’s not that often, I get to hear about it without even having to login to twitter.
Have a go – it’s not nearly as heinous as you might imagine. Happy Tweeting.
Anyway I shan’t go back over all of last year’s events rather I shall start at the end of last year with the IPEM open strategy review. The CEO and VPs thought we might get a wider response from the IPEM members by arranging a TCon. Makes sense right – on paper – no need to arrange a day off work, 30 mins at lunchtime or at the end of the day, a set list of subjects to discuss 1. Regional structures 2. Volunteering 3. Policy work 4. Public engagement. But no, niente, nada, zip……
Well not exactly I think 4 individuals phoned in; 2 on each day apart from the exec and then written notes from a couple of regional groups. So what did we do wrong? and yes quite clearly we are missing a trick, but what exactly?! Rosemary Cook our wonderful CEO will be summarising the results of the strategy review in much detail in the next issue of SCOPE or may be in the newsletter but briefly…. Nearly all of the suggestions or requests put to us are already been carried out or provided by IPEM but no one can see or hear us….How disappointing…
But then how do I find out what’s going on at IPEM ….. it’s not easy I admit, even being VP. Most of what I find out is from attending the trustees meeting and the communications committee meeting that I chair! Oh and gossip :) No I don’t regularly visit the IPEM website and yet I should – it’s all there.
And No, I don’t really bother reading the newsletter either – it just looks a bit bland but it's about to be re-launched – all beautiful and shiny and new - look out for it soon. I do flick through SCOPE when it arrives. I like SCOPE and so as it turns out do most of the membership. But since it comes out quarterly it's not exactly an up to the minute vehicle.
One place I do get a lot of info from – not necessarily just IPEM related - is TWITTER. I can hear the groans already…. I’m quite a late comer to twitter and an even later comer to facebook but I’m not going to talk about facebook because that is my private personal space. So what and how is twitter. My initial reticence to twitter was because I couldn’t understand why I would want to read 140 characters of drivel since what on Earth can you say in 140 characters. But a friend whose opinion I value greatly, recommended I just try it and anyway Stephen Fry – the nation’s favourite - tweets all the time. Here’s a snapshot from my timeline
As you can see I mainly use it to collect links to other more in-depth info that I can read later. My twitter account is very work related – politics, science and healthcare. You can create more than one account so if you have one already you don’t have to mix work and pleasure. You can also create an account that doesn’t identify you and in general I recommend that you put as little personal info on twitter (or facebook) as you can get away with. Once you have an account you don’t even have to tweet you can just follow everyone else. Once you feel a bit more comfortable then you can start to re-tweet things you think are interesting, although, unless you’ve got any followers no one else will see it. But as you begin to build up a theme people will find you since twitter will ‘advertise’ your account to other like minded people. The disadvantage of this kind of social media is that, depending on how many people you are following, 100’s of tweets can go by that you never see but that’s OK, you can’t read everything and anyway the good stuff often comes round again. However, To make sure that you don’t miss the important things, what you can do is allow twitter to interact with your smart phone so that it texts you when a particular account has tweeted e.g @ipemnews. So now whenever the ipem office tweets a piece of information, and it’s not that often, I get to hear about it without even having to login to twitter.
Have a go – it’s not nearly as heinous as you might imagine. Happy Tweeting.
