Hello everyone,
A few weeks into my placement and I decided it is time, I will be kind enough to share my experiences with you all (lucky you!!).
I’ll start things off by introducing myself. My name is Issa Maimoun, some of you already know me (congratulations) and some of you don’t, but I’m sure you’re looking forwards to. Blogging is already proving to be more fun than I had anticipated, and even though everyone would love to, and we can keep talking about me for much longer, we won’t. Since this is “PR393 reflective blog” I’ll get right into and start talking about my internship.
My work placement took a slightly different form from most of other students’ placements as I am not entirely sure who I’m working for, but very certain as to whom I’m working with - you’ll understand this soon enough.
I’m working with Dr. Jim Elliott (Associate Director, Student Relations) and two other student volunteers (Natasha Seymour and Matt Kelly) on the (ACEN) Australian Collaborative Education Network’s National Conference: WIL Work Integrated Learning, which will be held at Curtin University the week starting 27th September 2010. (Keep in mind this is the second class free week, so while all of you are enjoying your week off and “studying hard” I will be flat out busy, for real!)
The ACEN is a network of academics, researchers and practitioners in the higher education sector, government and community representatives and professionals involved in work integrated learning (WIL) throughout Australia. For more information on ACEN please Google them, or if you’re too eagre to jump on their website or too lazy to Google them then please click here: http://www.acen.edu.au
Now that you’ve had a look at the website and educated yourself about the ACEN, I’ll move on to talk about our team. The four of us (Jim, Tash, Matt and myself) are responsible for organising and running the conference and the activities associated with it from simple things as morning tea for the guests and conference show bags to the conference dinner which will be held at the Government House Ballroom (now is when it starts getting exciting).
If you’ve been paying attention, I mentioned earlier that my placement was different from others, and that is because we don’t have an office or a room where we do all the work. The conference team meets once or twice a week, discusses what needs to be done and by when, allocate jobs and everyone runs with that over the following week completing their jobs at their own pace (as long as we get the job done before deadlines). The following week we meet again, report back to Jim and raise any issues which we may have faced, and of course if anything urgent pops up all four are always in contact via email and phone.
The conference will run over five days (September 27th – October 1st) with some workshops taking place at Murdoch University on the 27th and at Curtin University on the 28th. Wednesday 29th is the official first day of the conference with our work starting at 8am till well into the evening at the conference dinner starting at 6.30pm. The day will be packed, starting with registration and welcome coffee followed by the official welcome and the main events including presentations, workshops, discussion sessions with breaks for tea, lunch and so on through out the day ending it with a formal dinner at the Government House Ballroom.
The Thursday 30th will be more of the same, however there will be a soiree and two book launches taking place later in the evening, the first written by Steven Billet and the second by Caro-Joy Patrick with the topics of the books focusing on Work Integrated Learning.
Finally, October 1st will be the last day of the conference. Once again starting early with a keynote address followed with workshops and discussion sessions and ending the conference mid afternoon with busses and taxi taking delegates to their hotels.
A month away and the pressure is on, plenty of work to be done with deadlines fast approaching. One of the tasks I’m responsible for now is producing a conference booklet which will be given out to all the conference delegates including information about the conference as well as information helping interstate and international delegates find their way around Perth and Curtin Bentley campus.
Keep an eye out for my next post in which I’ll talk all about the conference booklet!
Many Thanks!
Issa Maimoun.
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