DorjeM

SA Hotel Trat, Thailand Online services for those who are travelling tend to be all about the supplier, or middle man, and not really for the person who will actually use the service. For 8 months now my family and I have been travelling from the UK back across the world to New Zealand. Every few days we have been looking for a new hotel. And the hotel sites , and the cheap room sites all have their flaws. So when we found the website for the SA Hotel in Trat Thailand we exclaimed loud and long how good it was. http://www.sahotel.in.th/ I'll warn you now it isn't pretty - but if like us you've looked at a lot of pretty hotel websites and still not really been able to make up your mind if it is the right place to stay I feel for you. The best online presences for hotels are invariably those run by people who own and live at their own properties, and who are doing something different. A case in point is Les Manguiers  http://www.mangokampot.com/  which again isn...

After three years and six months at Lincoln University I am now officially unemployed and heading away on a gap year for grown ups with my family. I started at Lincoln University in the position of Online Services Manager in October 2009. In April 2012 I became the Applications group manager as well as the online services manager. A friend in the US said “a Mexican promotion – two jobs, one salary”, which it was but it was more than that as well. I became responsible for a team of six people who helped me and whom I hope I helped. It is them and the other people I worked with at Lincoln University that I really tried to express my thanks to in my leaving speech. I’m blogging my speech because my dad asked for a copy and several people were unable to attend. It starts using the Maori language and ends using the Tibetan language. ---------------- Te whare tipuna e tu nei Te University e takoto nei Tena korua Nga hau e wha Nga iwi e tau nei Tena koutou katoa Thank you...

Wow - it's rolled around again. Intranets 2013 registrations are about to open and this year you can bring the intranet / digital workplace love into your personal life [which I'm sure you all do because you live and breathe intranets 24/7] via the Intranets2013 FaceBook page https://www.facebook.com/Intranets2013 15th - 17th of May in Sydney you'll be able to experience the best Intranet conference in Australia, Austral asia, the world - that I've ever been too. http://www.steptwo.com.au/conference This year Sam Marshall (Clearbox consulting) , Matthew Phillips (Intranetizen) and Kim Sbarcea are presenting. Looking forward to it.

Just one of the many great slides used during the team presentations. Today each team presented their case studies to the Faculty members (those running and presenting the conference) and to the other attendees. Five teams with five very different approaches to presenting the same material. Each of the teams during the week had perceived different aspects of the material we have had presented to us. And so Carrie's presentation, which went into Rashomon effect , played out in large. The material that resonated with each group, they reflected back through their presentations. So we ended up with five different views of the past five days, through the presentations. All were funny, some were inspired and a couple were wonderful. Prior to lunch and heading home, the summing up included a couple of great end of event exercises. The first provided the opportunity to set goals and have them followed up on. The later one gave every person a chance to express themselves in the cont...

Hot damn I finally got a swim. By the end of the day to day my team, team sky, was pretty burnt out so Andrew, Abbey, Yasna and I plus a couple of others did the pools. There are three. We should all probably have been working but we probably aren't ever going to get the chance to talk and swim at the same time again. Three very interesting (for me) and different sessions today Carrie Regenstein of Carnegie Mellon - took us through successful influencing. Marnie Hughes-Warrington of ANU - gave us a tour de-force of what a great presentation can be. Passionate, direct and inspiring. It covered a Deuputy Vice-Chancellor's view of senior managers issues and design principles for a modern university. She also answered some curly questions from the attendees. Judy Stokker provided a building block for all attendees - how to actively manage your career. The Caudit cocktail - thanks to Nimrod / Karina and team green Active and Reflect have been two common themes ...

A wonderful stow away in my luggage - family support. Something interesting happened to us today, we became productive teams. At the start of the week we were put into (mostly random) groups that by the end of the week are expected to work up and present on a case study. The team I'm part of, team sky, has dipped its toes into the case study prior to today but this morning most of us were reading it after breakfast. Throughout the day it became a pivot, so much so that we ended up working on it for three hours, from the end of formal events until after the bar opened [Doh!]. A lot of what we covered this morning, and our Belbin team roles work yesterday came into play. This morning Liz Gosling had yet another stand out activity which really got everyone in the room, and each of the teams we're members of thinking pretty hard. What was great was that David in our team came up with a left field suggestion, which it turns out has only happened once before in the past 5 ye...

Today's focus was on leadership. Dinner Tuesday with the CAUDIT Leadership Institute team We covered leadership for and of change with Nick Tate first off. This was followed by Peter Nikoletatos on the Situational Leadership framework, what being a CIO is about and how to manage challenging staff. Willie Pritchard followed lunch with Interpersonal communication, a look into preferred styles and those of your coworkers. Liz Gosling rounded out the day with a big session on Effective Teams and our own Belbin team traits. Beach cricket and a meal out in Kingscliff finished everyone off. Due to some technical challenges I missed the beach cricket, but that did mean I had time to fill in session feedback surveys and have a brief look at our homework case study. Nick's talk on change management I appreciated as it was done using slides like those I prefer, lots of bold images. Nick has a dry and very wry wit which he used to great effect in his talk by setting the audienc...