Birthday #2: Cumbernauld - Tuesday 27th May

Bank Holiday Monday saw the seminar team flying up to Scotland in order to set up for the first of the week at another new venue in Cumbernauld. A slightly odd location, sat on top of a hill overlooking the motorway, with a golf course tagged on the back, but the place itself was excellent.

The day also saw the occasion of James' 30th birthday - a little unfortunate that Tebs had to spend a 'big b-day' working but we did little bits and pieces throughtout the day to make him feel a little special (as opposed to just "Special"), including a pic of him at our last Xmas do (reproduced below, of couse), birthday banners in his presentation room and a complimentary G&T in the place of his morning tea. (Well, more accurately for JT, the 37th tea of the day he normally has during the break after the first session).



The big other item of note was a little presentation we did in the morning for Mike Smith from Scottish Borders, who was the first person ever to get a mark of 100% in the RM Certified Network Manager exam - pretty impressive given the challenging nature of the questions! Bill took the 'official photo' duties, so I will have to edit this blog once I get a copy from him. In the meantime - well done indeed Mike!

And no blog entry would be complete without the obligatory "photo at end of day", again mercifully free of RM staff gooning about. You can also see Mike "Mr 100%" Smith grinning broadly in the back on the left (and well he might, with a fine mane of hair which jealous souls like me can only dream of...)

Birthday #1: Barnsley - Friday 23rd May

Wow, this day was something of a blur for me, but largely for personal reasons. It saw not only the first time at the new Yorkshire venue, but my entering into the final year of my 30s, so I started with a certain amount of trepidation on both counts! Add to that the fact that I did a runner half way through the day for something of a mission and you'll forgive me if it was all a bit blurred.

The venue turned out to be great, with loads of space, especially the breakout area which is significantly larger than the slightly cramped conditions we had at Leeds. Hopefully this is one we can keep returning to, since everyone seemed happy with it.

With my "half day closing", Tony Bodfish kindly stepped into the breach and covered my Infrastructure session for me, which I'm extremely grateful for. I understand he had a bit of an error happen with the SNMP management of one of the switches during a demo, but I'm sure he did the usual professional job those of you who've been on any of his training courses will be familiar with.

I was off at lunchtime to drive like a man possessed to Birmingham airport in order to get a flight to Milan, as an Italian friend of mine was getting married, and had unbelievably booked the date without checking the seminar timetable first. Some people just have no sense of priorities... The whole wedding thing went great, but sadly the pics all went the way of the seminar ones when my phone went strange.

Fortunately, James did the end of day wrap up and thus the responsibility of the 'photo of the room' fell to him and his considerably more reliable phone. This time, no members of staff waving in the background, though we do have Mike lurking like some evil brooding presence at the back, though thankfully sans pipe. By the look of the picture, it seems like I wasn't the only one to do a runner before the end of the day - then again, it was a sunny Friday before the Bank Holiday weekend ;)

Here we go... Runcorn Wednesday 21st May

Hello again at last. My luck hasn't been great this round - since the last post I seem to have spent my time either doing seminars or having migraines - there's clearly some Faustian pact going on here but it's probably best I don't think about it... Regardless of the foibles of my head, let's dive into the backlog of non-posted blog entries, starting with Runcorn.

It seems a little far away with all the rotten weather we've had of late, but it was a lovely day in the north west when we hit Runcorn for the first of the larger venues. All was well, and Mike was doing good having overcome his "Presentation Virgin" nerves on the Monday. Even our setup of kit went better than usual - all done in about 3 hours, including a super-efficient unloading of several tonnes of kit from the lorry in only 35mins in order to beat the arrival of three coachloads of American tourists (although what they were doing sightseeing in Runcorn is unclear, given I thought they only ever did the tourist "axis of evil" of London-Oxford-Stratford, then straight back on the plane).

I did have a funky series of photos of the setup, showing the demo stands in various states of assembly, but after the Great Phone Corruption, they've all gone :( You'll just have to imagine them, I'm afraid.

The day itself went very well, with plenty of familiar faces and some good sessions. We picked up some handy tips, too, but in the general disappearance of things, I've lost track of the exact details of who said what where, so I'm going to put a single big update entry of all the tips and tools we've had so far after the individual entries, if that makes sense... Don't worry - if you passed some info on, it'll come in the later blog.

The other predictably missing photo is of the unexpected end to the day. Just as the intrepid people about to do the Certification exam were starting, the fire alarm went off in the hotel, leading to an inpromptu bit of sunbathing for everyone. Again, I'm afraid you'll just have to imagine the sight of a car park full of RM staff and customers milling about randomly waiting to have the false alarm confirmed.

Having waved everyone off and packed up, we spent the evening watching the Champions League final, hoping there was some way that both sides could lose - the team contains Oxford, Arsenal and Liverpool fans, so not exactly committed to the continued domination of English football by the Red and Blue Menaces ;)

A grovelling apology...

Hello again the Blogosphere.

You might've been wondering what the hell happened to the seminar blog entries after Newcastle. Well, the short answer is I hadn't had the opportunity, but the full list of "the dog ate my homework" excuses is as follows:

1. A very hectic first week.
2. Having to leave halfway through the Friday at Barnsley in order to go to a friend's wedding.
3. Spending all weekend at said wedding.
4. Straight back out on the road again.
5. Gaps in between above 4 largely filled by migraines.
6. My new phone having a bit of a wierd one, corrupting the entire memory and deleting all the photos on it.

There, I think that just about covers it. Sorry, it says "grovelling apology" at the top, but this has turned more into a "pouting, bottom lip sticking out excuse-fest". Must be a side effect of doing blog posts on a Sunday morning before leaving for work ;)

Right, I shall catch up with all the previous entries over the next day or so, though sadly without the photographs for some of them after the "Phone incident". Now though, I need to finish packing my stuff and be ready for the off in a tic - Coventry here we come!

Newcastle - Monday 19th May

Hello again!

Well, that's the first one down, and no disasters :) The day itself (certainly from our point of view) went better than it had on the first of the round for many a year, so I hope those of you who attended found the same. A few little mishaps behind the scenes, but we're pretty practiced at hiding those and doing the 'swan impression' Mike talked about in his guest post the other week. Certainly it was an interesting experience having some very posh portaloos out the back of the hotel as they were having work done on the regular ones, but the floor lighting up the steps to them certainly won me over. (Then again, I'm easily impressed by these kinds of things).

The photo at the top of this entry shows everyone in the main room at the end of the day - hopefully you'll be able to spot yourself in it, and be able to put up with Tebs waving his arms around at the back - I suppose we should be relieved he didn't do 'bunny ears' behind someone's head... If nothing else, we're warming up well for our attempt on the "Most people saying 'Cheese' at the same time" world record *grin*

"Tip of the day"

We all had some interesting chats with those attending, and we had a nice tip passed on in the Network Ninja session for an additional useful tool to make the work of running a network a little easier. If you go and have a nose over at http://www.spiceworks.com/, you can get a free download of their software which performs extremely useful tasks like software inventory, asset management and a help desk. None of us have had a chance to try it out, but it comes well recommended. Thank you very much to Richard Easton for the tip!

We're keen to hear any of your tips, tricks and other Ninja-like skills, so let us know when you are at your local seminar, and we'll put all the best ones up here.

Right, I'd better go - it's getting late (we've just finished setting up at Runcorn ready for tomorrow) and I need my beauty sleep more than most...

On the road again...

I'm writing this in the car on the A1 heading up to Newcastle for our first seminar of the round, and for once the weather looks like it's going to hold, so hopefully no unloading the lorry in the rain this time. Time for a bit of a catch-up...

This last week we've been putting the finishing touches to kit and sessions, with rehearsals opened up to the whole company, so we've got some good feedback from all over, along with an opportunity for those unable to attend for real to see the content of the sessions. All this should mean that by the time you see us, we're properly practiced and ready to go.

Friday saw the start of the physical aspects of the round, with Shaun turning up with our great big lorry and trips all over the business park to pick up equipment, stands and flightcases and load them up in the twice-yearly game of 3D Tetris. This time we managed to complete it without damaging or destroying any kit or ourselves, which is something of an improvement on the normal state of affairs! This is either a very good sign or merely to lull us into a false sense of security in advance of some more serious injury later in the round.

I managed to grab a couple of photos during Friday:

This is Shaun and his lorry, freshly cleaned and primed for being filled with stuff. Shaun's doing a pretty good job of hiding his continued disappointment at having to put up with us lot, and of course dealing with Liverpool's anticlimactic end to the season.

Somewhere in this stack of containers is the Secret Storage Facility where a lot of our kit hides between rounds. It's a case of security through obscurity, since there's a sea of containers in all directions - kind of like the end of Raiders of the Lost Ark, but with less whip action.

Here we mid-load, with the caterpillar of flightcase being trundled out ready for the exciting journey up on the tail lift (something we never tire of riding on, to be honest).

Now we're out on the road, we'll be attempting to have a blog entry for every venue we do, with interesting stories, photos and other bits and bobs from during the day. We've just invested in one of those clever little mobile phone internet dongle thingies that you plug into your laptop to give internet access on the move, so we may even manage to type and post en route. Technology, eh?

Right, we're just passing Durham so I'd better go and start my stretching regime in a vain attempt to keep my ageing bones in one piece. Ah - right on cue, it's just started raining. Marvelous.

"Here is the Newbs"

Right, as promised, we've got a guest blog entry this time round, with Mike 'n00b' Oakes sharing a little of what it's like to join the team, so no more rubbish from me this time... Over to you Mr Oakes:



Chris is distracted with his new funk CD so is no longer clipping me around then ear telling me I don't know I'm born.

James has gone for a meeting, so I'm no longer subjected to having back of my chair kicked and being wedgied.

I just gave Bill the CC4 VMWare image so he won't keep staring at me like I've just broken his Xbox and made a joke about it.

So while they are otherwise engaged I thought I'd tap out a quick blog entry on my experiences as newbie in the team. Having come from a support background where everything is quite regimented it's been quite a shock. Equally, the pressure to get things right is immense. It's easy to underestimate just how much thought goes into the writing for a start. For instance, my session content changed entirely three times. You have moments where all of a sudden you lose all heart with what you're doing and need to change it. Stress levels up and down throughout.

As mentioned in Chris' earlier post I have been resonably calm, as I have been kindly given one session rather than two or three (they aren't so bad to me after all). However, the foggy calm is starting to lift and the jittery nerves are starting to pop up and jab me in the ribs. Things happen very quickly with this team in comparison to other places I've worked: don't pay attention for a day and you're well behind the news.

Something that struck me most was how hard working this team is. Like swans paddling upstream, as serene as we look, underneath the paddling is frantic and fast paced.

Right, the funk has finished, I know James is going to come back needing someone to pick on any minute and Bill wanted to listen to something that I don't think is the reggae I put on, so it's best I duck out now...