I think because I've been involved with BITs with both of you and with the Learning Technology Supplement.
One of the things that I really wanted to, one of the things that I thought about and being part of Information Services was because we were so big, it was important for us to showcase people because behind the technology and behind the systems and behind the services were real people.
And I remember talking to Jeff and Dawn Ellis, who was, who became the editor of the first iterations of the magazine.
I remember saying, it's a really crucial thing.
We need to make it people focused.
And I think some of that came from you Nick.
Oh, good.
Because I remembered the legacy of what you were trying to do.
That was important to you, as well, wasn't it?
Oh, yeah. Yeah.
Why was it important to talk about the people behind, behind all of this.
I just, people need to feel valued and their work. is valued and they may not realise, people are very bad users generally very bad at expressing appreciation of something they like, but very slow to do that.
Very quick to criticise if something doesn't quite work.
I didn't want to be part of an organisation that didn't feel the appreciation from its users.
So it's important to try and make everyone aware that the work they were doing was really valuable.
And that they should be pleased really with what they've achieved.
The remarkable things that in some cases, were way ahead of what other universities could do.
I think Edinburgh University had a lot to be grateful to IS for over the years, and I wanted everyone in IS to know that.
It's great that we could continue within the magazine that kind of legacy that was created right from the very inception of BITs.
And, you know, I remember we, I'm going to flick forward a little bit.
So we came, I was reading, I was on the bus and I was reading the Metro, and the Metro had a section in it that was 60 seconds with somebody.
And I remember coming in to the editorial meeting and going, I think we really need to have a 60 second interview with somebody from IS within every issue because I'm not asking them about what their work was or what their jobs were, but asking them things about them and what they find interesting and what they do so that we really focus on the human aspect of the people, our colleagues, not just colleagues, they're people that have lives and you know, it's good that we know what that is.
So yeah, that was kind of one of the things that we were able to do.
I do kind of regret that I think that we didn't have enough, we have such a diverse, you know, set of people within IS now.
And I don't think we kind of covered enough of that diversity, but, you know, we were trying to get there certainly. |
