They say the best way to see the city that you live in is to pretend that you are a tourist and that you are seeing things for the first time. Do you have to travel far to have new experiences?
My friend Elizabeth lives in Cardiff and she told me she was visiting the city where I live, Birmingham. As soon as she mentioned this to me I got so excited and offered to show her around. Rather trustingly Elizabeth put herself completely in my hands for the day and went along with the whole thing!
I love organising and making plans and setting schedules and times and very soon a precision timed tour of Birmingham was on a spread sheet waiting to be executed.
But what do they say about the best laid plans.....? I only went and lost my printed timetable on the morning itself. Minutes before Elizabeth stepped off the train I realised that somewhere between having the day's schedule in my hand hot off the printer and travelling to New Street Station that this vital ingredient of the day had gone missing. But all was not lost - hurrah! I have a good memory so I was able to piece together my plans for the day. Yay.
I had to give some thought into what parts of the city to show Elizabeth and the tour would be a bit biased towards where I know, and what I like, but I did try to bear my friends likes and dislikes in mind too!
Thank you to Elizabeth for a wicked day and to my friends Marty and Sas who I haven't seen for far too long, but we got a chance to catch up on Saturday night over a traditional Birmingham dish, the Balti! Whoop!!! :)
September was undoubtedly my busiest month this year and I want to capture a record of it just in case my memory fades on me.
A lot of them deserve their own blog posts really, and I'd like to think I'll go back and cover some of them in more detail but hey, it's October already. A brand new month to fill!
There were lots of highlights and here are a few of them.
I also managed to meet up with my Tweety Friends before the big walk.
I met up with @getgood and we went to a cool bar that had beds!
And of course I was drawn to this Tweety Friend cushion. Twitter mad? Me? ;)
And I finally got to meet a long time twitter friend Elizabeth @realityminus3 We enjoyed a hearty Wagamam's dinner, drinks and a great chat! A lovely evening.
I got an invite for a trip along Birmingham's canals from BCU's Press Office. It was like a net working event, only on a canal boat, with drinkies and nibbles. Despite living in Birmingham for quite a while now, I'd only ever been on one canal boat trip many years ago, so I thought it time for another one. It was a lovely evening, with lots of new and interesting people to meet such a media peeps and lecturers.
It was a huge conference with a lot of key note talks to cover and speakers to interview. It was interesting to see how much output, as a team, we were able to deliver across all the mediums.
A post conference glass of wine with @getgood (she pops up everywhere!) and @clarewhite. Belles of social media reporting ;)
Long weekend in Palma with my mum
Three nights away with my mum @createdineire and taking on the Palma Live Challenge set by bmibaby. I love these types of social media and travel collaborations. bmibaby asked their friends and followers what I should see in Palma and set my itinerary. I reported live on my adventure. I've gathered all my updates in one handy blog post here, and my Palma review is live on bmibaby's blog too!
Bed Jumping in the bloggers room at @horizonte24 hotel. It's a must! ;)
Metapod Kaleidoscope Course - Day 1 of 5 days
This is a course run by Fierce Earth and Helga Henry is my mentor! It's a bit of a change to have a mentor (I like it!) as it's normally me doing mini mentoring sessions with folks that ask for my help.
It’s aimed at senior leaders in selected businesses to focus on commercial skills and business growth in a way that is congruent with your artistic and cultural development.
It's named Kaleidoscope as it helps to change your perception/view of y our business. I think that's right. Anyway, it's certainly worked after only 1 day of the 5 day course (there's 2 x 2 days coming up in November). It's not very often I talk 'business' and plans with anyone. I have an idea, figure out what I want, make a plan, and go for it, very generally speaking.
Already I can feel my perspective changing, and I must admit, it feels a little unsettling. It's thrown me a little. Before the course I had a set road ahead, and now I'm questioning it (which isn't a bad thing at all); Am I
on the right road? Am I working as efficiently towards my goals as I thought? Is there another way, a better way? What can I remove from my life/business? What's superfluous? What can I add? And although I do feel a little unsettled, I'm going with it, accepting these new feelings, being open to change and getting excited about what will happen next!
We got crafy on the course. Always a winner!
Whoops, I've run out of blogging steam tonight! I think I'm going to have to break this post up in to a few parts. There's a lot of pack in! :)
