I have decided that it is a good practice to periodically pause, reflect and share with readers of this blog what I have been doing.  I realised back in April that you may be interested in hearing about the things I do which don’t normally appear in my blog posts.  It is also a good practice for me to stop and reflect on the past month and ensure that I remain properly focussed.

My biggest achievement this month has been to finish my Certificate IV in Training and Assessment.  Now I am a qualified workplace or VET trainer in Australia.  The course was more work than I expected, so I decided to drop other activities and concentrate on completing it as quickly as possible.  However, I did it thoroughly.  I not only did the course work in class and at home, but applied it by designing and delivering a CPD session for the Professional Historians Association of NSW and providing coaching in twitter to someone working in public relations. One of the participants has written about the CPD session, Social Media for the Cautious Historian, on the blog of the Professional Historians Association of NSW.

During the course I delivered two sessions drawing on the course, BSBITU401A ‘Design and Develop Complex Text Documents’. We had an eclectic class – people from banking, telecommunications, health, advertising and legal sectors etc.  I did not have access to a computer laboratory to conduct the training, so the participants brought in their laptops.  I had to deliver the training to people who ranged in ability from struggling with basic computer skills to the very competent.  The class was split nearly 50/50 between those using Windows or Mac operating systems.  Delivering the training in these conditions was challenging, but there was a lot of enthusiasm from the participants to learn and I was delighted to hear that some of them had immediately applied their newly learned skills at work.  This is a good sign that the training I delivered achieved its goals.

Now I can combine my skills, experience and qualifications in research, IT, public relations and training to get work in a variety of fields.  Over the next few weeks I will be connecting with my network in order to secure a full-time position.

June wasn’t only about gaining a qualification.  Just a few days ago Reconciliation Australia awarded my blog post, Reflecting on Reconciliation Week 2013, a prize in their Reconciliation Week social media competition.  This occurred on the day of the change of Prime Minister.  Judging by the hits this post received on that momentous day I gather some people were glad for some non-political news!

Immediately after the course finished I visited Melbourne and spent most of my time attending to family matters.  I took time out to visit an exhibition at the State Library of Victoria with fellow blogger, Lisa Hill.  I intend to blog about that soon.

Currently I am experimenting with cloud computing; building a WordPress.org site from scratch in the cloud.  I am assessing whether it can give me the functionality I want and how easy it is for people with limited experience with WordPress to manage.

Frantic July Coming Up!

We just one week away from the highlight of the year for Australian historians – the annual conference of the Australian Historical Association.  It will be held in Wollongong 8-12th July.  I hope to blog about the conference during that week and will be joining other participants to bring the conference to you via twitter using the #OzHA2013 hashtag.  I will be tweeting under my personal handle, @perkinsy, and for the Professional Historians Association of NSW under their handle, @pha_nsw.  Feel free to join in the conversation from wherever you may be in the world.  To get an idea of what it is like to follow a conference in this way, you can read my post about following the American Historical Association Conference from Australia.

At the end of this conference there will be a digital humanities ‘unconference’ called THATCamp #OzHA2013.  It will be on Saturday 13th July.  I’m on the organising committee and would love to see some readers of this blog at this event.

THATCamp #OzHA2013 is open to anyone who is interested in digital humanities whether they are a beginner or an expert, whether they work in a university, museum, archive, library, art gallery or are an independent researcher.  It is a working conference where participants propose sessions before the event through the THATCamp website.  On the morning of THATCamp the participants decide what the program will be and actively participate throughout the day.  You can read about my experience of a THATCamp in Canberra a couple of years ago.  I found it was a wonderful way of learning some good skills and meeting some wonderful people.

Registrations for THATCamp #OzHA2013 are now open.  As it is on a Saturday you can make it a day trip from Sydney.

Blog Posts Written in June

And of course I have been blogging throughout June.  Here is the list of posts I have written for both this blog and another blog:

• 3/6/2013 – Recognised by Reconciliation Australia: Reflecting on Reconciliation Week 2013
• 6/6/2013 – Book review: Australians: From Eureka to the Diggers by Thomas Keneally
• 17/6/2013 – Exhibition review, National Archives of Australia: Design 29: Creating a Capital
• 22/6/2013 – For the blog of the Australian Women Writers’ Challenge: Histories, Biographies and Memoirs – Roundup #5 2013
• 27/6/2013 – Exhibition review, Australian National Maritime Museum: East of India: Forgotten Trade with Australia

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I’m looking forward to the next few weeks as they will open up some new opportunities for me and I will meet lots of great people.  If you happen to be in Wollongong 8-13th July you know where I’ll be.  I’d love to meet you.  If you know of anyone (or business or organisation) who would benefit from my skills I would appreciate an introduction – email me at perkinsy1 at gmail dot com.