Posts associated with VITAE, the researcher careers people
I mentioned a while back (in this post) that I’d applied for a paid blogger job with VITAE, the organisation that supports UK researchers, but didn’t get it because I couldn’t make an induction session in London. To my delight I was contacted a few days ago and asked if I was still interested. So I’m now on the official team until it’s reviewed at the end of March.
The theme of the blog is staff development and career support for researchers, but people seem to be interpreting that quite broadly. My first post as one of the core bloggers has just gone up here – The Coffee Club theory of departmental sociability. It’s a bit frivolous, but with the current economic climate doing what it’s doing to the UK HE system I thought something lighthearted might be in order.
I’ve got to do three posts each month, comment on other people’s blogs, and encourage other people to visit the blog and comment (so off you go now, there’s a dear). It’s not going to enable me to retire early but it’s nice to be recognised. This is my first paid writing job, unless you count a poem I got published in the skateboard magazine RAD when I was 14. So in all, I’m quite pleased.
VITAE (a UK organisation to support researchers) recently advertised for paid blogger positions on their career development blogs. I wasn’t successful in my application, as I couldn’t make it to their training day in London, what with me living in France and all. But they said they’d publish the submission from my application and it’s now up: ranting about powerpoint overview slides. Seriously, I have, in the past, considered adding a slide to my conference presentation which says:
The other thing I’ve considered doing is photographing every overview slide in a conference and turning all 30+ of them into an animated gif. I guess I’d better wait until I’m better at taking photos without flash though, as it could get a bit distracting for the other attendees…