Phlegmatic

My personal choice for this year's You're Hired! winner has just posted on facebook that she's got through to the interview stage for the junior version of The Apprentice.

This is the girl I'm referring to:

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I was thinking* of buying one. I enjoyed using this thing http://www.amazon.co.uk/Kodak-1451491-Zi6-Pocket-Camcorder/dp/B001U77PUA/ref=sr_1_1?ie=UTF8&s=electronics&qid=1246213359&sr=1-1 at the You're Hired! final, but as you'd imagine, the quality ain't great (just about good enough for me to put together a highlights reel for YouTube hopefully).

I'd assumed that camcorders capable of proper television quality with nice optical zoom lenses and built in hard disks would be a lot more expensive, but this Sony one http://www.amazon.co.uk/Sony-DCRSR37ES-Handycam-Camcorder-Built/dp/B001PGXA0K/ref=sr_1_1?ie=UTF8&s=electronics&qid=1246213685&sr=1-1 isn't actually that much more in absolute terms.

Is there anyone out there who knows about camcorders and would be able to comment? The reviews look good.












* Anyone who knows me well will know that this is only the start of a complex research and procurement process. I've been thinking of hiring a qualified procurement professional to help with this sort of thing. If only I knew one...

Well, not exactly wild, but certainly frisky. I've borrowed one of these http://www.amazon.co.uk/KODAK-Zi6-Pocket-Camcorder-black/dp/B001U77PUA/ref=cm_cr_pr_product_top from work. Can you guess why?

Anyway, to put it through its paces, I took it with me when we walked the dogs in Tavistock this evening. Lots and lots of ponies. In a way, they are Dartmoor ponies, since they're ponies and they're on Dartmoor. Really though, they're Shetlands. Anyway, lots of them either had foals or looked as if they were about to. So I filmed some, and uploaded the video to YouTube:



Incidentally, the small stone hut you can see briefly off to the left was designed by Lutyens.

I see that next year, the BBC is to run a version of The Apprentice for 16 and 17 year olds.

Now where have I come across that idea before?


(I'd be cross if I hadn't nicked the idea from them in the first place!)

1kg of cedarwood oil: about £12
1kg of sandalwood oil: about £1,200

Look on contestants' faces when they realise they've used 450g of sandalwood oil instead of 3g of cedarwood oil in their soap mixture: priceless...

You may remember that one of the challenges at last year's final was to design a contemporary arts centre for Plymouth's Millbay area. This challenge was set by local architects Bailey Partnership. Part of the reward for the team who produced the best design was to see a professional mock-up of the building done by Bailey using the software they themselves use.

And here it is:

 

For the first time ever, we have a heat at a public school tomorrow (or an independent school at any rate)!


I've never been to a public school before, and have learned all I know about them from the Ripping Yarns episode 'Tomkinson's Schooldays' and the nightmare tales that Bunn tells me of the one she went to. I am expecting to find first years nailed to the walls, photographs of the inter-school hop, tales of teachers killing and eating sheep on the cross-country across the moor and a school bully who is allowed to keep scantily clad Philippino women as maids.

For last year's finals, we set the students two challenges: market trading and architecture (respectively buy stuff at a discount then sell it in Plymouth market and design a landmark art centre for Plymouth).

http://www.youarehiredplymouth.co.uk/info.php?in_id=10

This year we would like to do something different.

I'm asking you to make some suggestions.

The final lasts a day (last year's was 6.00am to 5.00pm). Contestants will be put into teams on the day and should not know anything about the challenge in advance. We have the use of a ballroom at the Duke of Cornwall Hotel and training rooms (and maybe even catering training kitchens) at Plymouth City College (an FE college). Challenges should test a range of skills that the local sponsoring employers look for in recruits.

The sponsoring employers are:
KPMG (accountants)
Bailey Partnership (architects and surveyors)
Cowlin Construction (builders)
The Herald (local newspaper)
SAHFOS (oceanographic science lab)
Brittany Ferries (car ferries)
Princess Yachts (luxury motor boats)
The Duke of Cornwall (hotel)

Suggestions welcome...

Normally following a You're Hired! heat, I find all the winners and reserves that I can on facebook and send them a congratulatory message. This message also gives them the link to our website and invites them to join our facebook group so that they can keep up to date on news of the final and see if anyone they know from other schools has got through. The group and the website also have links to each of the sponsoring employers' websites, which will be useful to anyone interested in a job (which is after all the real purpose of the event).

In the last two days, I have sent out five such messages, each one different. On the basis of this, facebook has accused me of spamming and is threatening to disable my account. I can't send any messages now for an unspecified period of time (at their discretion).

Which is quite annoying.

I really do want to be able to invite the finalists and reserves to join the facebook group, but there doesn't seem to be a way to do this within facebook. I can invite people to join the group, but only if they are facebook friends or I have their email address and they are not already on facebook. I don't want to add all the finalists and reserves as friends at this stage.

Any ideas?

Today I have been speaking to:

a) the Institute of Chartered Accountants in England and Wales, who are "very interested" in supporting 'You're Hired!' and would like to explore ways to roll it out to other parts of the country;

b) JOLF's national Community Social Responsibility team, who are looking for a national school enterprise project to work on with the Institute.

I put them in touch with each other.

I feel this is step three in the approximately forty-seven steps that end with 'You're Hired!' becoming the leading national enterprise competition for sixth-formers and me getting the MBE for services to business education...

New schools this year:
Saltash Community College
Notre Dame Roman Catholic School
Torpoint Community College
John Kitto Community College
Plymouth College (our first independent school)
Tamarside Community College
Devonport High School for Boys


New sponsors this year:
Brittany Ferries
Duke of Cornwall Hotel
Princess Yachts International plc



The 2009 final will be held at the Duke of Cornwall Hotel in Plymouth on Wednesday 17th June.

You're the first to see this...

(I am slightly annoyed by a couple of typos, but hey, what can you do?)

The winner got her photo on the front page, and we got the whole of page 3 devoted to the final. Matt, the business editor, has said that there are going to be follow-up articles, possibly tracking VE.

http://www.thisisplymouth.co.uk/business/Victoria-hired/article-193696-detail/article.html

More to follow, but for now, here's the BBC's take, from their daytime bulletin (at about 6'56"):

http://www.bbc.co.uk/mediaselector/ondemand/england/realmedia/spotlight/plymouth/spotlight?bgc=C0C0C0&nbram=1&lang=en&nbwm=1&bbram=1&ms3=6&ms_javascript=true&bbcws=1&size=16x9&bbwm=1

Who cares about radio? Just heard that we’re probably going to be on telly!

Spotlight (BBC local news programme) tomorrow evening, or maybe Friday if they don’t get the chance to do the edit before 6.30 tomorrow.

Video presentation about the Flux500 competition (the UK's largest business competition for undergraduates, which I was one of the judges of). I don't think I've ever been interviewed on YouTube before!

St Boniface College heat: http://www.thisisplymouth.co.uk/displayNode.jsp?nodeId=133188&command=displayContent&sourceNode=133171&contentPK=19881953&moduleName=InternalSearch&formname=sidebarsearch

Estover Community College (I get a mention in this one): http://www.thisisplymouth.co.uk/displayNode.jsp?nodeId=133188&command=displayContent&sourceNode=133171&contentPK=19972937&moduleName=InternalSearch&formname=sidebarsearch


The earlier heats' coverage has gone from the website now, and yesterday's heat isn't up yet.

The biggest inter-university business competition in the UK is 'Flux'.

http://www.flux500.com/index.php

25,000 students from 100 universities have been whittled down to 10 teams of six from ten different universities for tomorrow's grand final.

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We held the fourth heat of You're Hired! yesterday at Estover Community College.

They did very well too, with a higher percentage of interested participants and a very low percentage of 'couldn't be bothereds' - just two or three out of 62 students.

We have another six finalists for the city final at the Plymouth Guildhall on June 19th. Five girls, one boy.

So far, out of our 24 finalists, only five are male. I mean, ok the first two schools we went to were girls' schools, but we only managed one boy at a mixed school and only four out of six finalists were boys at a boys' school!

Would anyone care to suggest a theory as to the relatively poor performance of 16 year old boys in business challenges?