Sorry for ignoring you, I promise I will do better!

I apologise for the lack of activity on my blog for the past month or so but work commitments have made me an absentee blogger. I would have posted but the seventy hour weeks for the past month have meant I have turned into a power sleeper and all round dull boy.

So what has had my attention for the past four weeks? Projects by the bucketful, you know how it is, a little like waiting for a bus, Wait for ages then three come a once.

The main focus of my attention has been an awards ceremony for the Vocational Qualification Awards at the college where I work. Now Oldham College has never been an organisation that ever does things by halves, it was a herculean task to produce and last Wednesday it went ahead to rave reviews.

Event Production is not a job for the faint hearted and being an Event Producer you are the guy were the buck stops should it all go Pete Tong. The secret to the job is you need to surround yourself with a great team of people who will always exceed your expectations and are not frightened to tell you that what you are proposing will work or not. It’s not essential but they also need to regularly tell you that you are clinically insane for undertaking such an idea in the first place and then prove to you that it can be done.

Now that’s not to say that some very intense conversations take place but it’s important that no one wastes time sulking or being precious, but in the end this working methodology leads to presentations and events that people remember and a piece of work that will look great on your resume.

Now once you have your team in place the challenge is to wrap them around the students so that they get the experience of taking part in a large scale presentation. That is what I like about working in vocational education, you get to see young people develop and learn new skills and gain confidence whilst learning doing the job.I think it is important for young people to experience first-hand the pressure that certain jobs inherently involve, it creates a discipline within individuals that would be hard to achieve in the classroom.

So with a twenty two man crew last Wednesday at 7.30 they all knew that what they needed to do and when to make the show a success.

Now I am lucky, not only do I get to develop these young people but I get to meet the other students who won the awards. It is their moment in the limelight, their fifteen minutes of fame a chance to shine in front of their peers and families, and that is a fantastic experience.

Some of the individuals who won awards had incredible stories to tell. A Lady who was an Iraqi Family Court Judge who came here three years ago is learning English and is helping out in a local Advice Centre, The Student who has been caring for his terminally Ill father and still completed his studies without ever missing a lesson.

The list is endless, everyone has a story but the one thing they all have in common is that they all turn up and study with the collective idea that education will improve their prospects in life. On that point I have to agree with them, the quickest way to improve your lot in life is to work hard and get an education and if you find a job that you love you have it made.

So I congratulate our winners and commiserate with the nominees, who hopefully will have another chance next year.

To my loyal band of followers normal service will be resumed as soon a possible.