Content: Third Day

Three of the sessions from Day 3 were regarding conflict management, developing your personal strategic advantage when looking for work, and communicating between Gen Y and the Baby Boomers. I enjoyed these sessions but found they were a bit introductory, and believe I would have appreciated a bit more depth. Overall, they were a good entry point for some interesting topics.

Networking Event

Day 3 had a dinner/networking event with about a dozen local business leaders. This was a great time to network and meet some interesting individuals. I had the opportunity to chat with a representative from Shell, so it was pretty cool to pick his brain about Shell’s business model in our area.

Hello folks,

It’s been an interesting start to the year here at NAITSA.  I’ve been out of the office at conferences and retreats almost as much as I’ve been in the office.  To make things more interesting, the office is undergoing window replacement, so things are in shambles.  I’ll include a picture of what things look like when I figure out how to add pictures.

Myself, the Vice Presidents and the NAITSA staff have been working feverishly to get ready for the upcoming year.  A big part of my summer so far has been the negotiations of the NAIT/NAITSA agreements.  This is a long process; however, I am confident we will come to an agreement that works for both NAIT and NAITSA.

Another big part of my summer so far has been my involvement with the Alberta Students’ Executive Council (ASEC), our provincial lobby organization.  I was elected the Vice Chair of the organization and we’ve been busy brainstorming lobby priorities and campaigns for the year ahead.  Keep your eyes and ears open for something we’re calling “Volunteering to be Debt Free.”  I’m incredibly excited, as this could be something huge for students and communities.

I’ll be in the office for a couple more days, then off to the last conference of the summer in Red Deer, where the ASEC Board will finalize our lobby priorities for the year.

Feel free to send me an email, drop in to the office or give me a call if you have any questions or concerns.

Oh, and Germany lost out of the World Cup.  A sad day indeed.

It’s been a while since I’ve blogged so here I go.

Leader’s Hall

Things that were great about it: Excellent networking opportunities, great hotel and conference venue, beautiful campus, and a few good sessions. Of the good sessions, there was Drew Dudley, a former executive and Shinerama coordinator from out east. I found him to be an entertaining, engaging, and interesting speaker with lots of good stories and life advice, but there wasn’t a whole lot of professional development out of it. He was a good choice for the first speaker of the conference though, as he was relatively inspirational for new executives. I suppose maybe because I’ve already got a year behind me I didn’t find his session as helpful as maybe a first year executive might. The next useful speaker was Jeff Rybak (on the last day). He gave some insight to CFS and talked about how to work with your administration, and gave some good advice on who to speak to on campus when you’re looking for info. Unfortunately, his advice comes from a University, which didn’t help me out a whole lot. The last part of the conference that I felt was good was the Round-Table discussion on the last day, where it was an open and honest conversation about the quality of the conference and what can be done better in future years. I felt that it was incredibly productive and that future conferences will be able to build off of our feedback.

Things that weren’t so great about it: One of the speakers was Steve Pilote, who talked about a lot of different things, in particular personality types. He broke it up into four different types. I was definitely a three way tie between Ponderer, Elaborator, and Harmonizer, with Commander pretty close behind. Frankly, I did not find that session particularly helpful. I think the reason all of us are in the leadership positions that we are in is because we are a healthy mix of all of these personality types – not just one. I hate these personality labels. I am not a harmonizer. I am not an elaborator. I am not a ponderer. I am not a commander. I am Tessa. I have my own strengths and weaknesses that may or may not align with some of those labels. But I refuse to label myself or anyone else as one of those. Just my two cents on that session.

Overall, what I got out of Leader’s Hall was mostly the networking opportunities. Never having been to a national student conference before, it was fascinating meeting other student executives from around the country and hearing what we have in common and what differs between the issues we deal with and how our institutions and students’ associations actually run. The idea-sharing with the other executives was also really valuable.

One thing I must mention is that I am very jealous of the University of Calgary because of the following:

I wish we had a classroom like that at NAIT. Virtual Reality Research Laboratory sound AWESOME!

Moving on…

NAIT is replacing all of the windows in the NAITSA offices. Unfortunately, this means that we have been displaced from our regular working space. It’s frustrating to say the least, especially with only having access to my email through my phone. This makes my job a bit more difficult than usual since I am connected through wireless rather than hardwire. Working off of a Mac means I have no access to the VPN network – which means no email to my computer unless I’m hardwired. I’m being patient though, and doing my best. My office is actually just about finished, only it reeks like fresh commercial paint and the fumes are likely to make me pass-out if I were to work in there for more than an hour. So for now, I sit in our front lobby with my laptop on my lap doing what work I can.

So what have I been doing during all of this construction? Working on SMART goals have been a big thing. I’m working on policies, which is a goal I’ve carried forward from last year. I’ve been reading a lot of them and writing a lot of them and bothering my co-workers for feedback on a lot of them. I won’t be the only person sick of policies by the end of the year. I’m also working on drafting updates to some of our bylaws that are in dire need of it so that when Senate is elected in September we can get right to work. I’ve got lots of other stuff on the go as well, but I won’t go into it now.

Next Week and Later

Next week, all of the Executives will be at the Alberta Students’ Executive Council Goal-Setting Conference being held in Red Deer. The week after I will be back in my office (that hopefully won’t be filled with paint fumes) and will be spending that week catching up on work I missed and continue making progress on the many projects I have on the go.

And that’s the update. Cheers!

-Tessa

Content: Second Day

The sessions at the conference which began the next morning were absolutely great and featured a Shinerama legend, Drew Dudley. Drew has years of experience and insight around what we can do to put on great events as well as tips to succeed in our year with the Students’ Association. I felt as though Drew was a master VP Campus Life who has moved on and grew on so many levels. From changing what might be weighing your organization down, to risk management, idea generating, to life advice; I really enjoyed Drew’s speech and thought he was the perfect person to have speaking at Leaders Hall.

One session which was met with a bit of controversy was an info session/workshop on four different personality types. The session was put on by Steve Pilot from People First HR. In his workshop Steve was letting us know about 4 different personality types, the ponderer, commander, harmonizer, and elaborator.

I was an elaborator, which means I’m always excited about a bigger and brighter tomorrow. I contribute great ideas and am usually the life of the party. Now my weaknesses are that I’m usually all over the place with my ideas. I can bring awesome ideas but move on and bounce all over the place. In all honesty, that pretty much sums me up in a nutshell. I know that might be a bad thing, but recognizing our strengths and weaknesses was, in my opinion a huge reason why we attended this conference.

So what does that mean moving forward? I need to find a ponderer to balance my attention span out. The ponderer does, pretty much what his title suggests, which is ponder. Always thinking about the possible outcomes and thoroughly weighing the options before committing to an answer. The ponderer usually pays attention to the details and takes pride in their work. Basically I was told that I should surround my self with at least another ponderer so that they can insure the ideas we come up with are followed through. Because its like I said, I have a hard time finishing.

Now one thing I noticed is that our team, the NAITSA team only had Govind and I in the elaborators group. I can’t remember where Tessa was but I know Tim was in the ponderer group so I think that means Tim and I should be working together on some things, well by some things I mean I should go to Tim for some advice when it comes to some of my crazy ideas because I think his insight may actually be crucial to my year being successful, we’ll have to see.

To Lead

Leaders Hall

I’m impressed. It all began with leaving NAITSA in a rental, picking up the other execs and then traveling down to Hotel Alma in Calgary. Hotel Alma is located on the UofC campus. Their brand new hotel on res is pretty impressive I must admit. They even have small plastic keys, which were pretty neat. Hotel Alma was the headquarters for the 56 student leaders and 20 school represented. There was a mix of Alberta, Saskatchewan, BC, Ontario and even NS schools, colleges, and universities alike being represented and it was quite inspiring to be around some of the leaders of tomorrow; some of the people who are going to change the world, now that’s a good feeling. Below is a picture of the welcoming committee and my self.

Gallivan had a huge part in organizing and fund-raising this event, as well as U of C, SAIT, and Conestoga College. Together they delivered. Gallivan was there to meet us as we arrived with employees and also one of the founders, John Gallivan and that really sent me a message. They actually care. Not only with warm smiles and great service but we were all each given great leather notebook carrying cases which must have cost at least $80.

From there we were treated like royalty with welcoming beverages, maps of the city, free transit passes and cool bracelets.

Food

Here is an area, which in my opinion, could not have been better. We had sushi, roast beef, scrumptious potatoes, cool finger foods and complimentary drink tickets for each meal. The food was great and had a nice differential touch (again the sushi).

Fed breakfast, lunch and dinner, I don’t think there was a single meal that was sub-par. Except maybe the watery looking scrambled eggs the last morning lol. Below is a picture of what our table placements for our sessions looked like. Sorry I never thought of taking a picture of the food:(

Summer is often interesting around NAITSA. It’s also a bit odd. I’ve had a few students visit me, but the institution is usually very quiet. We don’t have any big summer events, our restaurant and bar, The Nest, is closed until late August, and there are generally less staff in the office on a regular day as people take their much needed vacations scattered throughout the summer. Don’t be fooled though… just because we seem to be quite quiet around here – we’re still working hard. The past little while I’ve been doing some work with the Faculty Development and Performance Evaluation task force and getting some major headway with this group of amazing and inspiring intellectuals. I’ve also been working on developing my SMART goals for the year ahead (I’ve got some pretty cool stuff on the go) as well as working with the Registrar and some others to get co-curricular transcripts implemented.

One of the most exciting things coming up for the four executives is the upcoming Leader’s Hall conference, a conference dedicated to the professional and personal development in student leaders across Canada. I’m mostly excited for this because I’ve never been to a national conference, so the networking opportunities are incredible. The other neat thing about this conference is that this is Leader’s Hall’s first conference. I have high hopes for the conference, especially with Gallivan (NAITSA’s Health and Dental provider) is sponsoring it.

Other than that, not much else is happening until mid July, when we head out to Red Deer for the ASEC Goal Setting Conference. I’ll post about that one closer to the date.

In the meantime, other than work, I’ve been enjoying both the rain and the heat that we’ve had for the past few weeks here in Edmonton, and I’ve been watching the World Cup like crazy. I’m one of those insane people who actually wakes up early to watch the games at 5:30 and 8:00 in the morning. I’m also insane in that I cheer for three different teams. I cheer for Italy because I’m Italian, and you can’t not cheer for your country of heritage. I also cheer for England because I’m also English, and again, I can’t not cheer for my other country of heritage. And finally, I cheer for Brazil for no real reason except that they’re an awesome team.

I know there’s one team that I’m NOT cheering for, and that’s Germany. The only reason I’m purposely not cheering for them: to annoy Tim, because he seems to think they’ll win the cup. I like to cheer against him, and it’s pretty fun.

Finally, something you should definitely check out if you’re interested in writing, is Writing Excuses, a podcast by Brandon Sanderson, Howard Tayler, and Dan Wells that lays out their tricks, tips, and pitfalls of writing for aspiring authors. Each podcast is only fifteen minutes long because, as they say “You’re in a hurry, and we’re not that smart”. It’s definitely worth listening to if you’re into writing.

Otherwise, have a wonderful week and hopefully I’ll be posting again in another week. Cheers!

-Tess

If you haven’t heard of Leaders Hall that’s quite all right because it hasn’t existed until this year. This year is the first year it’s being implemented. I have to say that so far I’m impressed with the event. I have received professional, personalized emails twice now from the concierge service with a pdf compromising personality tests as well as conflict management information. Going the extra mile is key in today’s world with social media and the ability for the consumer’s voice to be heard by almost anyone.

We’re in a world where your actions and the quality of your product is under a microscope, and where anyone can spend 5 seconds to look up a service to see if the proof is actually in your pudding.

So with that said I have to give Gallivan their props on this one. Who’s Gallivan you might ask? They’re the company that takes care of our student Health and Dental program when you register at NAIT. As far as I know they provide health and dental to quite a few institutes across the province. But regardless I’m very excited to be going to this event. We have some sweet keynote speakers such as Kelly Hrudey from Hockey Night in Canada, and some leadership HR folks with tons of experience.

I’m particularly excited to meet some of these speakers and find out if we could possibly get them in here. For the students of NAIT to experience someone like Kelley Hrudey perhaps?

One of my smart goals this year is to have a leadership summit. This summit would probably be around a day in length (the details aren’t worked out yet) and I’ve been looking for engaging speakers to recruit and speak. This, I feel, could be a great opportunity to snag some engaging speakers.

So This Wednesday will be the test of faith. You can be assured I’ll be writing about my experiences at Leaders Hall and whether or not Gallivan has outdone themselves, or if they’ve started a work in progress.

Don’t be shy to leave some posts, we want to hear from the students, and this is a great way to do that.

Tyler

Hey everyone! We’ve been busy here at NAITSA since getting back from our retreat in Jasper.

I’ve grown to love the NAITSA board room over the past month or so, all of our planning has been going on in that place haha. So far the events and brainstorming has been going very well. We’re really excited to bring you some experiences that you can not only have a ball at, but put on your resume!

Sign up to be a frosh leader and take that step to get involved in a leadership role, companies love it. If you are extroverted and love to pump people up then this is an opportunity of gold for you!

I’ve taken up some squash in the past couple of weeks and I’m loving it! There’s some people who are playing with me in the office (Govind) and it’s really going well!

Well that’s all I have for now but I’ll keep you guys posted!

Oooh yes, sign up online at www.nait.ca for a First Year Experience (FYE) orientation and I’ll likely see you there since I’m giving the NAITSA 101 in there after school and on weekends.

Not only will you get to meet your favorite exec but you’ll also learn pretty much all you need to know to get through your first year of school, I highly recommend it!

Alrighty hopefully I’ll see ya there!

Tyler

May is a time of change here at NAITSA. This is the time that your student leadership changes over and the people you elected back in February actually “take office”. For all executives, May is a month of training, team-building, and generally learning our jobs and what it is we need to do to succeed and represent the students the best. It’s an interesting change in the office, that’s for sure.

We’ve got a solid Executive Council this year and you should be excited! Returning from last year with me is Timothy Jobs (President) and adding to our team, brand new this year, are Govind Pillai (VP External) and Tyler Bernard (VP Campus Life). We’re all pretty open people who you should get to know! Our doors are always open!

Like I said above, May is a time of change here at NAITSA. We’ve got the end of the fiscal year coming up, the Campus Culture team is hard at work planning the next year’s worth of events, all of the Executives are learning our jobs and doing multiple other things at the same time, and it’s the end of the academic year. One thing you might want to note is that if you feel like you have been inaccurately assessed for your grades on an assignment, project, exam, or entire course from this past semester and you want to appeal it, you can! Please email me (tessac@nait.ca) if you do, because the sooner the better!

So keep a watch on NAITSA’s blogs, forum, and newsletters for information on events, student governance, clubs, and tons of other stuff!

Enjoy this beautiful weather that we’re having! Cheers!

~Tessa