ACTION & INSPIRATION

Routes into enterprise

This post is part of the ongoing commentary on the workshops I am conducting with Media Studies students at York St John University. The workshops are based on the Digital Footprints programme I have developed for HE, FE and Secondary Schools. You can read more about it by clicking here.

What is the larger picture?
In case this is the first post you are reading about the project, I have included a brief description of what is going on. I am working with second year media studies students at York St John University to create a web-presence for one of their departmental magazines. The students have been divided into 7 groups and each will pitch their idea for the web-presence. Along the way, they are also required to define an identity for their group by establishing the context within which they are operating. They also have to create a chronological record of their work/thinking through a blog. This will have an impact on their pitch.

Week 2!
We are now on week 2 of the programme. The initial exercise of self-reflection and subsequent formation of digital identities through the use of keywords produced some interesting results. At first it was difficult for the students to take a step back and reflect on their strengths and professional aspirations. But after a lot of discussion most of them have achieved some degree of self-awareness. This has had an impact on the way they are communicating their ideas to other members of a group. When I walk around the room I am happy to see some engaging debates taking place.

One voice…
Although individual students are aware of their professional aspirations, some groups are finding it difficult to merge these into a single, coherent voice. There are a number of reasons that can account for this, but I would like to focus on one particular aspect. Let me take the example of a group that includes an aspiring business manager, artist, fashion designer and a public relations officer. When it comes to communicating their professional aspirations to the other members, each student has mentioned a very specific career that is based on their perceptions of it. For example, fashion designers are glamorous, public relations officers lead exciting lives and so on. Unfortunately, every other member in the group has a different perception of the career, which has created a lot of confusion. This issue has been conveniently side-stepped by clubbing all careers into an umbrella term – marketing. So the group decided to work as a marketing agency.

From Marketing to Trend Spotting
I know just about enough of marketing as a profession to realize that it involves a period of rigorous academic study accompanied by extensive field work. When I put this to the students they were a bit disappointed. So we started discussing other career options which could act as a conduit to their marketing career. Along the way the students began voicing their professional aspirations in more personal/subjective terms. It emerged that every member was quite attached to the idea of trend-spotting. This immediately opened a number of additional avenues – A&R professionals for music companies etc. Once again students were disappointed by the lack of immediacy. You cannot just become an A&R executive. So we started looking at entrepreneurial avenues. Since they were all interested in trend spotting, I asked them to have a look at whatFace Hunter does. The man has built up an international reputation for himself by obsessively taking photographs of people from across the world and cataloguing them on his website.

This struck a chord with the group who were able to see a tangible/credible career based on their personal aspirations that did not fall into a pre-defined category. All ideas about marketing agencies and such were abandoned and the group began discussing how they could contribute their individual insights to create a convincing online trend-spotting agency.

Enterprise Development – scaling professional aspirations
This brings me to the point that even though enterprise development has gained a lot of importance in HEIs there is too much focus on the end-result rather than the journey. In order to become successful entrepreneurs students don’t necessarily have to conform to pre-existing standards. There needs to be a greater focus on self-reflection and awareness. This coupled with flexible thinking can create a readiness for opportunity rather than a sense of expectancy. Realize what you are good at, think of ways through which you can achieve professional satisfaction and then go for it!

Cover Art from the Solus 3 album

Time to take a break from educational projects and talk about other work. I am happy to announce that work on the Solus 3 project is going well. This time I am working with the very talented @hyggedesigns to create the album artwork and a website for the band which hails from London.

The album, The Sky Above The Roof, will be available for purchase on iTunes in a couple of weeks time and I strongly recommend you get a copy. Each track is packed with such wonderful tension, there is a story bursting to be told! Every track could very well be a unique voice in a complex tale. This is truly atmospheric music folks.

A few weeks ago on my way to Sheffield when I put the album on, the journey took on a very interesting hue. Everyone in the train carriage became a character actor with a bit-part. Anyway, that is enough from me. I will put out an announcement on twitter when the new site is up and running. In the meantime you can sample a track from the album:

Blow Harp from The Sky Above The Roof

@Solus3 are on Twitter if you wish to follow them.

The image used in this post is taken from the album artwork which has been created by Jan Dunning. The release will be available as a vinyl, a CD and through iTunes.

Notes on the OG

After a day of tussling with the intricacies of the Opportunities Gateway, I am happy to report that it is finally beginning to take shape – a fact confirmed by a member of the Learning Directorate who was pleased with the progress. Now that we have created a solid foundation for the Gateway, we will be opening it up for discussion. Over the next few weeks we hope to get a better sense of both staff and students’ expectations. I am slightly nervous when I think this exercise may result in having to go back to the drawing board. This is because since its inception the Gateway has been a repository of various ideologies, which means it probably means different things to different people.

The focus of my work has been to see how the main underlying principals – to encourage reflection on the student experience and create a readiness for opportunity – can be achieved through the Gateway web-resource. What makes this process tricker is that it has to run in tandem with the services offered by the Learning Directorate, which in turn face the common constraints of time, manpower and resources. I find this mix of functional and ideological aspects very exciting. It has been a very interesting experience to create something tangible after the dozens of conversations that have taken place over the past few months. Just a few weeks ago I was sitting in on a steering group meeting furiously taking notes as people defined their expectations from the Gateway. The tone of the meeting was such that when I had a look at it a day later, some of my jottings took me by surprise. For instance, I have absolutely no idea what the phrase ‘ideological extrapolation’ means. I went through the list a couple of times and then let the ideas settle at the back of my head – hoping for some problem solving to take place in the subconscious.

This morning, sat in front of a blank A1 sheet of flip-chart paper, there was only a slight moment of confusion on how to proceed. After a few false starts, I tried to define the Gateway through the relationships it seeks to promote. That is between the staff, students and the wider world. Fortunately, this approach was spot-on and within a few hours I went through a number of iterations of the Gateway framework. Obviously there still are a fair few loose ends which need to be taken care of. But I think that what we have is sufficient to create the first public face – a wireframe for the Gateway. The challenge is to see if this survives the first round of feedback.

We have a student focus group scheduled in a couple of weeks which will be followed by another steering group meeting. I shall post more notes on the development of the Gateway over the coming weeks.