Ephelyon

If you can't, you might want to train up the staff you do have in the new areas you expect them to cover (and make sure the team is right-sized to accommodate the extra duties). That might work out cheaper overall and would be a good way to account for the public money being spent. However, public money or no public money, there's no excuse at all for misemploying staff in the way that we still often find in this sector. Reasons I can understand, excuses I can't.

I quite agree with cross-training as has been mentioned, and the odd helping hand is fine absolutely fine as long as it doesn't set an immediate precedent for everything ever in the future (a big problem here). We just need to be sure that others don't muddle up the roles for us!

IT and AV should certainly work closely together, but there should also be an understanding that they're not the same skillset (we aren't talking better or worse, just different). Yes, often in schools anything with a plug comes to IT, but I'm actively against that. It's not a way to properly employ people and schools do need to get their heads around that. It's true that sometimes you will find people who happen to have both skillsets or can turn their hand to the other enough to meet the school's needs, but I fully disagree with it becoming accepted as the norm because it shouldn't be. It's like telling a doctor they're now also a dentist "because that's what the practice/surgery needs", it's plain rubbish and devalues both professions.

I don't agree with IT and AV being seen under the same hood and never have. That's probably because I don't really know the first thing about the latter though.

@ZeroHour, I think the problem is back again this morning... :/

Quite a disturbed mind by the looks of things. Reported all three videos now, though I must admit the "How to be an Eco School" one is quite funny when it turns into random Xbox hate...

Looking at moving on, then? Blunty's right, there's this one on there at the moment that you might like: WM Jobs - Job Details

Don't tell @X-13!

Thanks, that's fixed it! What was it, out of curiosity?

EduGeek currently loads REALLY slowly at work, though not at home, and the cause of the delay seems to be the ad-loading scripts on each page. Wondering whether County have just throttled the bandwidth to ad sites or whether anything has changed ad-wise...

My reaction exactly...

Here, have some of mine...

From 9 to 5 for about two years, I was sitting on a stool with no backrest (the kind you get in school Science labs... in fact, that's where it was from) against a drawer unit with no space to shove the legs under in a converted prep room with no natural lighting and (over one summer) no air-con. Considering the state of me now I think it might have actually knackered my back, but I was too young and stupid to think it might be causing a problem at the time.

Registered now and going to the first meeting.

Here the teaching staff refer to each other as Sir/Miss or Mr/Miss in front of the pupils interchangeably here. We're in an area where Mrs sounds like Miss anyway and no-one seems to mind. However, they refer to myself and my Technician by our forenames; consequently, so do the kids. The new Head isn't at all keen on this, but it doesn't look like it's going to stop.

It's just chips and cheese. No further condiments necessary!

They're pretty decent in my experience.

So is Progresso, though quite a few people have had issues with it so far.

Isn't it annoying how users don't always report problems when they occur, so you can fix them? :P

Same problem here too, worked around it @Domino's way.

We were in the exact same situation a few years ago (with Frogmail), except ours is an internal Exchange setup. The script I submitted to the RM Neon competition was designed to solve exactly this problem and remains in use at our site. Theoretically it should work for Office 365 as well as you can use PowerShell commands in just the same way. Feel free to PM if you'd like more info. That SalamanderSoft thing looks interesting, will take a look...

You too!

Fair enough, it makes sense Only comment I'd have to that is maybe we could have a certain amount of spaces for camping, with the rest needing to hotel it (which some may prefer to do anyway of course). A mish-mash of all the potential activities you've listed there sounds good!

If it were only England we were talking about, Leicester is pretty much slap bang in the middle.

@Bradlys, who's still at Insomnia, says: If it's more of an EduFest type experience, can we look towards regional ones in the future as well? He's in the very-much-other-end of Kent.