Andrew's blog can now be found at standrewspresident.wordpress.com - this will be integrated into the Association website soon

What to do now? 11/10/09

When I first started this job, I thought I had a pretty good handle on how to organise things - I'd been a student for four years, been in charge of the Saint, been on the Uni Hall committee, had jobs during all the holidays. I would never be described as 'completely organised', far less likely 'tidy', but I got things done, somehow.

But there is one fundamental difference that set this job apart from the others, and will probably set it apart from my future 'career' - and that's the independence it has. I work as part of a team, with my fellow Sabbs, but I have no 'line manager' (a phrase I'd barely heard before starting here). Noone walks into my office in the morning and gives me tasks; there is no stable daily routine; I am very rarely delegated tasks to do (by Association Board, SRC and SSC, for example). I am, essentially, my own boss; the master of my own activity.

Which is a hell of a lot of fun. Still is, 16 months into the job. But it came with a suite of its own problems - the largest of which was the complete unsuitability of my previous organisational abilities to handle what can often feel like a 24-hour responsibility. The scraps of paper and mental lists of things-to-do that had sufficed for several years were soon utterly washed away by the ever-growing list of things to do, remember, say, write, act upon. The transition from 'full-time student' to 'person with job', even if that job is to represent students, is not an easy one to master. The sprawling, heterogeneous nature of my job definitely didn't help. And worst of all, it took me a long time to figure out what was up - to realise that while I was doing my job, there was a way to do it better.

I’m not going to turn this blog post into a boring essay on time management - you can find those on a million other websites - but attempt to give some insight into how I try to keep a handle on all the responsibilities that are the day-to-day grist of being Association President. And no, I didn’t magic up a system myself - I did some research, asked a few questions, even read a book on how to ‘be productive’(when I found the time).

The upshot of this all is that I now have a pretty nifty piece of software (‘Things’) that lists my ‘areas of responsibility’: groups, bodies, ideas, processes, arms of the Association that are firmly in my patch. You can see a picture of the ones I’ve identified so far, to the right - and that’s a list that grows and varies as we go through semesters and initiatives here in the Association. Alongside those, I have a list of projects - tasks, etc. that I’m working on (pictured), and the final level is actions - the ‘next thing’ to do on each project.

That means that if I take a look at an area of responsibility - let’s choose ‘Redevelopment’, because I talk about that enough - I don’t have to rack my brains to think ‘What now? What would help the Redevelopment process right now?’ I can click on Redevelopment, and it opens a list of all the projects that comprise that area of responsibility - which I’ve created previously, after meetings or planning sessions. I can see ‘Schedule of Accommodation Requirements’, which is a document our space planners need to start laying out how the interior of the new Association building will look. I click on that project, and it opens up a list of the actions needed to complete it. Top of the page: ‘Compile list of all departments & services’. There. A discrete action I can do.

That’s just one of the hundreds of ‘actions’ I have on this app, a computer program that does one thing: it takes all the list-making and remembering off your shoulders, and frees you up to actually get things done. I could go into detail on this, but I should really get cracking on those 101 other things to do - and check off one action that I’ve just completed, a recurring rule I set up a couple of weeks ago...

The Association's Finances, 30/09/09

Today, we held a meeting of the Association's Finance Committee, a subcommittee of the Association Board that meets around six times a year. Finance, as this committee is usually known, keeps an eye on the Association's cash flow, bank accounts, major spending projects, and budgeting.

Yeah, this is pretty dry stuff, but you'd be surprised at how complex the Association is as a business, with all of its trading departments - Bars, BESS, Catering, Travel, Design, Print Shop, etc, as well as the finances of the Students' Representative Council (Accommodation, Education, Equal Opps, Welfare, Sustainability, Community Relations, External Campaigns) and the Student Services Committee (STAR, Mermaids, Ents, Debates, Charities, Volunteering, Design Team, Postgrad Soc, and our 120 affiliated societies). Add in salaries for the dozens of staff, building maintenance, buying equipment, and so on, and things get complicated pretty quickly. That's why our proposed budget for the 09/10 year is thirty pages long - and that's just an outline of our incomes and spending.

The proposed Association Budget, 09/10. Still not sure how to rotate these pictures, evidently.

Jillian and her Cash Office staff (Gail, Lynn and Kim) have spent the summer putting all this together, in conjunction with Dave (General Manager), the Sabbatical Officers, and the heads of each trading department. It's a big project, one of the central planks of how the Association is run - setting the financial parameters of student activities & campaigns, giving people targets, satisfying regulatory requirements, and demonstrating to the University that we are more than capable of handling our money. It's from this document that all the money flows, a turnover totalling over £3million. As an example, in one section, money is divided up by the Budget, allocated to the student societies, parcelled out to the Socs Committee, then distributed throughout the year by Carley, the Societies Grants Officer and Matthew, the Director of Student Development & Activities - and that's how student activities like Refet Afrique, Rocksoc, LGBT, Asian Fashion Show, Breakaway, and so on are funded. And those listed activites are just a few thousand out of a seven-figure sum!

The members of Finance Committee are myself, Georgina (Director of Representation), Dr Frank Quinault (Chair of Board), Graeme Scott (former University Court member and chair of our Redevelopment effort), Kevin Grainger (local businessman), Christine Miller (Association Administrator) and the aforementioned Dave and Jillian - so we're drawing on plenty of experience and financial acumen when scrutinising planned spending! Thankfully, Finance agreed to pass the budget, for final approval by the entire Association Board (which has a student majority) later in October, at which point it will available online.

Student activities page of the Budget.

Finance Committee also discussed the performance of the Association compared to last year's budget (verdict: great!), the position of the Association's bank accounts and reserves, insurance, the website, and the new front doors & games room. It was a long meeting, which involved industrial amounts of tea, coffee, cakes and numbercrunching, but it was ultimately a success.

So there's another snapshot of daily activity in the Association. Before I took this job on, I barely fathomed the extent of behind-the-scenes activity that underpins everything the Association and the student body does. I think it's worth publicising the complicated machinery that lies behind Freshers' Week, every society, the Bop, the Bar, Bess, campaigns, advice services, and everything else we do - and it's all contained in this year's Budget.

Andrew's Blog, 28/9/09

Over the past year, I've been spectacularly bad at updating this blog. That's because the Union's website was pretty ugly and hard to navigate, and I eventually became numb to it and always thought I had better things to do.

My office, middle floor of the Union

But no longer! The website has been revamped, the summer is over, and a new academic year is beginning. I've even tidied my office after Freshers' Week carnage, and there's no better time for me to kickstart this blog thing, and this is the new start.

But where to begin?

A snapshot of how things are at the moment seems appropriate. I'm 15 months into the job (having been re-elected as President and started my second term on July 1st). A million and one things - projects, plans, schemes, and little tasks - have been and gone since my first day, and more arrive every minute. While I'm not going to go into everything that's been and gone, at the moment, I intend to use this blog to keep people up to speed on the big things that are currently going on each week - or more often, depending on when I update it. For hour-to-hour stuff, you can keep up with my Twitter feed - @StAPresident, or the Union's general feed (which is usually me) at @StAndrewsUnion.

So what are the big projects at the moment, on the evening of the first day of term? For me, they are (in no particular order) hall committees, the website, the next meeting of Association Board, the next meeting of SRC and SSC, the Association's strategic plan, and of course, the Redevelopment. For most of these, I need to produce a paper - an actual document outlining my views, gathered in consultation with staff and the appropriate students. Ideally, these papers would be accepted by a committee or two, and then they'd be formal Association policy - and then the real action happens, where our staff, sabbaticals, elected officers and volunteers get into gear and turn words into action. That's the trick, I learnt pretty sharpish in my first days - I can produce as many papers and emails as I want, but unless there's actual actions and goals set, it's all hot air. Getting a paper passed is just the start of doing something, not the end.

For some real detail of what these things mean, here's a little blurb on each of those aforementioned projects, a little intro to the issue involved - any questions or comments, please email me (pres@)

Early notes on hall committees

Hall Committees: The University currently collects Hall Subs, and gives them to hall committees. These hall committees then put on events. Sounds simple? Alas, no. The figures involved are astronomical - at least £250,000 over all the halls. This money is then spent by Hall committee members (significant percentages of it on alcohol) with basically no auditing or risk-assessment oversight. While I was a Hall Treasurer (Uni Hall, 07-08) and saw no issue with this, it's unfortunately not a situation the University will tolerate much longer, and the clock is ticking on the current funding method. So, the Association is looking hard at the future of hall committees - we want to save these institutions, who do so much for their students, and preserve their traditions and individuality, but at the same time meet legal and regulatory needs. Over the next while, I'll be bringing together the Association Cash Office, the Sabbaticals, the Senior Students, and the University, to map out the best way to organise hall committees without stifling or discouraging them.

Website: The real grunt work on this job has been done by Oli, the Association's Design and Marketing Officer, and what's left now is to continue transferring content (the good stuff, anyway) over to the new format, and encouraging students to actually read it. An ongoing task, to say the least.

Association Board: Board is the highest governing body of the Association, and if you've never heard of it, I'm not surprised. I'd barely heard of it until running for President. Board stays out of political matters (leaving those to the SRC) and running of activities & most events (leaving that to SSC). Board does nuts & bolts things like staffing, charity law, budgeting, and general governance. It meets six times a year, and the major part of Board this month is passing our annual Budget. It's worth knowing that Board has non-student members, but always has a student majority. We'll be working in the long term to improve awareness of Board & its activities amongst the students - and vice versa!

SRC and SSC: SSC meets tomorrow (Tuesday) at 7.30 in the Committee Room, first time since last semester. I'm proposing one motion, but it's a pretty dry, procedural one about minutes. I'm really just looking forward to having all the SSC back again, and hearing their plans for the semester. The trick with SSC and SRC is to minimise the bureaucratic nonsense and promote the fun, active stuff - well-thought-out awareness campaigns, proposals for changing University practices, or improving our services to societies and groups such as Charities and Debating.

Strategic Plan notes. I have no idea why this is sideways.

Strategic Plan: Not just corporate talk, but the document which throws our metaphorical/organisational cap over the wall and obliges us to chase after it. In it, we'll set out our long term plans for every part of the Association, and from there, we'll map out in actual, concrete actions how we'll do it. Our last plan was passed in a student referendum in March 2007. It was a five-year plan, but an update is long overdue. Watch this space for more details.

Redevelopment: If I had to sum up the future of the Union in one word, this would be it. The wholesale refurbishment and revamping of the entire Union building. The new front doors are a mere taster of what we're planning - recladding the whole building, knocking out all internal walls, reshuffling our shops & services, upgrading every single facility we have. This is as long-term as our planning gets - and momentum is building up. We've made a lot of progress in the past year, as the University has finally hired us space planners & architects, and consultation is beginning. As one of the architects said, we need to stop painting go-faster stripes on the building, and put in a whole new engine. Redevelopment is, and will always be, top of the priority list for me - and it's a project that will likely last through the next few presidents.

Those aren't the only things going on in the middle floor of the Union building. Georgina is working on the 'Seven' campaign, about passmarks, as well as 1001 issues that affect students - welfare, employment, accommodation, immigration, and much more. Matthew is shepherding his subcommittees and societies, all 120 of them, in putting on their semester's events and meetings. Phil is recovering from an incredibly successful Freshers' Week, and planning more events - Multicolour on Tuesday, Bop on Friday, and live events throughout the year. Staff such as Dave and Jillian are driving down the costs of our purchases, such as beer, food & clothing; Bruce is keeping the building in shape; Iain is inducting dozens of new staff; Julie is taking bookings for the Barron; Christine is scaling a mountain of paperwork and keeping the organisation in shape, and the dozens of other staff are keeping the huge machine that is the Students' Association going. And this was only day one...