Bethan Goes A.O.C Crazy
Wednesday 19th November was the second day of the AoC (Association of colleges) conference.
I arrived at Birmingham’s ICC travelling briefly through the beautiful German Christmas market stopping myself from buying hot chocolate and heading through to the wide open spaces of the exhibition halls of the conference. There were so many people! This was my first visit to a conference and there was so much going on, every stand was bright and enticing trying to lure people in with freebies and friendly smiles. I made my way to our Fair Train stand, we were set up next to:
Engage Visually – “Graphic Facilitation & Graphic Recording. Bringing thoughts together and ideas to life“
NUS UK – The national union of students bringing out the NUS Extra card and also the NUS Apprentice card making it more affordable to go out and do the things you love while saving your hard earned cash. It was surreal for a little while watching people toing and froing from each stand, admittedly I was really nervous and dreading messing up, but it didn’t take long for me to pluck up my courage and venture into all the exhibition stands.
FE Week definitely provided some of the best enticement… FREE COFFEE!!
Once starting up a conversation in the coffee line with Gail from NCFE I found my nervousness dissolved and we had a really pleasant discussion until we swapped business cards and promised to stop by each other’s stands. With a new found confidence I was soon darting to stand after stand and laden with promotional goodies.
I was feeling brilliantly positive with every person I was engaging with they were all being extremely helpful and receptive of what Fair Train can do, I was running out of our Training Provider information packs at an alarming rate so it was back to the Fair Train stand to load up on my business cards and packs.
I started going to bigger names such as OCR, they were extremely interested in what I had to say and were amazed I was only apprentice, I was having some banter with Gemma on the OCR stand about my own OCR qualification I received back in school and with that she was taking my name and email telling me she would be talking to her seniors and would be in touch after the conference, hoping to set up a meeting with Beth our CEO.
For my first time at a conference I felt I had gained so much from the experience, it was great to be actively out there talking to people who have been doing this kind of stuff year in year out. It’s made me determined to be able go back and to do better.