I had been planning for Skills London (largest UK skills and Careers event), and it's stressful keeping everything organised. My budget was £2K to cover all costs, it seems a lot but you'd be surprised. I chose and ordered DiVAs promotional merchandise for the event. It's surprising all the ways to promote your company, from mugs to fuzzy logo bugs, you name it, they can brand it. In preparation for the event I was also coordinating our stand at a careers event at Anglo European School. As you can imagine, I've been a busy busy bee.
After all my preparation it was just my luck to contract the plague the week of the events. Okay, I didn't have the plague but I felt pretty awful. I missed our school event :( but had no time to feel sad, Skills London was 2 days away and I needed to get better QUICK.After digesting every Caribbean medicinal concoction you can imagine, I dragged myself to work and got down to business. I like to forward plan so with not much to do I focused on the finishing touches.
I redesigned our student flyers; they arrived and looked awesome, as did our new branded carrier bags and
oyster card wallets. Someone at Skills London said the oyster cards were 'SWAG', I was well chuffed.
Skills London is a brilliant event, both to exhibit at and attend. There was a huge footfall and our flyers flew like hotcakes. It was a great networking opportunity; so many companies were interested in us.
We've also been invited to a careers event at a school in Croydon and I have meetings in my diary with potential new clients and partners. Check me out; I need to get a Filofax. I'm attending these meetings on my own so you can imagine, I'm feeling very grown up these days. Overall, Skills London was a major success. I was relieved to be rid of the pressure of organising my first event that didn't end up in flames.Previously, A New Direction asked us to speak to some young unemployed people in search of job opportunities. There were around 6 people in the room. I can't stand public speaking, so was a tad anxious. Strangely once I started, I couldn't stop rambling on. I found it easy as I was talking about my experiences, to people in a position I was in, not too long ago. I wanted to inspire and advise them. In the end I really enjoyed it and would like to do something similar in the future.
I finally had my first week at college . My first workshop was Video Production. I've been looking forward to it. Throughout the week we covered all the process's involved in a production including, pre-production, filming and post-production.
We filmed vox pops in Edgware Road Market, which I loved. It was exciting talking to different types of people and anticipating their answers and reactions to our questions: "Can you define love?" "Do you have a pet?". I filmed the majority of the vox pops which gave me a chance to work on my camera skills.My favourite part was the post-production; I've been dying to get my hand on some Final Cut Pro (FCP) software. I've never used it so had a little explore whilst editing my footage. I felt quiet intimidated using FCP in the past but it wasn't as tough as I thought it would be.
I will definitely purchase the software to continue practising. Come the end of the week I was really proud with my final product. Now I'm even more enthusiastic about filming and editing creative footage.
In more current news, I recently conducted a live Q&A about apprenticeships on Twitter. I thought it would be a creative way to get people interacting with DiVA's Twitter while answering FAQ's. It went pretty well and we got a load of followers out of it.
I've got a meeting with my assessor Mark Gurney who's helping me secure some interviews with some pretty amazing people for our new DiVA Inspire segment launching soon. I could tell you the names of who we'll be interviewing but that will spoil the surprise. I guess you'll have to stay tuned.
In the meantime, check out the interview I did with our apprentice Mulenga Kasoma who has been offered a job by her employer.
Well it's the end of 2012 and DiVA are closing up for the Christmas Holidays. So I'll see you all on the other side. Have a Merry Christmas and a Happy New Year. Toodles :)
FaceBook - Selene Shaw (Selene Diva)
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