Organising the CPD Exchange Week #3

A weekly blog on lessons learned by PDNorth Events Lead, Lou Mycroft

Once the venues were sorted, we set up an Eventbrite for the day. This ticketing service is a real boon for free events like ours, because there’s no charge, it looks good and you can generate signing in sheets and pre-event emails too. If it’s a pay-for event they take a percentage so you have to factor that in when you are setting the fee. It’s also really easy to generate a link which can then be shared on social media (and you’re not messing about with lots of emails). Once people start signing up, it becomes real.

The push now is to populate the workshops. Our PDNorth Professional Exchange Groups are packed with educators who love sharing and learning different ways to teach their subject, but not all have the confidence to do this outside the group. The Regional Leads have a job to do in identifying individuals to run workshops, then nurturing and mentoring them. We have some stalwarts – people who are on the bill each year and always bring something new – and we love them. But we’re also determined to amplify new voices. There’s so much brilliant work out there.

We’ve also got an imperative around finding someone to help us make a digital story – an everywoman film of one person’s journey through the Professional Exchange. We can design and storyboard, we can even do some filming, but we’re hoping to collaborate with a talented tutor or student, to help us pull the whole thing together. If you know anyone who might be interested, give us a shout!