A CPD Review of the Year

Reflections...

CPD is an essential part of being a chartered professional of any type. So I’m pleased to announce I’ve just submitted my CILIP revalidation statement. For those of you unfamiliar with CILIP processes, when you charter you are expected to maintain your professional development by annual revalidation.

I admit that this is my first formal revalidation. It’s not that I haven’t been keeping up-to-date, just I hadn’t informed CILIP. This year has been different for two reasons; they broadened the types of valid CPD, so time spent on reading, presenting, social media etc all count towards the minimum 20 hours; and at the end of last year they launched a virtual learning environment to help with the administrative process.

Where is my Parnassus on Wheels?

Books…I’m not going to tell you precisely how much I’ve spent on books this past three months. Mostly because I don’t know and doing the maths scares me silly. Suffice to say I’m doing my dissertation and to save time, I bought some of the more obscure titles to save me time and having to go to the closed at weekend libraries.

I don’t have an excuse for the latest addition to the Clare Brown Institute but it confirmed a few wacky ideas I’ve been having recently. Picture this.

It’s that mid-afternoon lull, where you have that head fug, poised within a post-tea, pre-coffee vacuum. I’m sat at my desk, struggling with a conference paper. The phone rings and it’s one of my favourite lawyers. As ever he is very enthusiastic. He started by thanking me for my help and then got distracted by things he’d read at the weekend. The first was a story about a young talented writer who died recently. The second was a book that he had picked up randomly.

The Art of Writing; Or the Science of Writing

'Stop it with all the damn metaphors'
Kirk to 'Bones' McCoy in irritated exasperation 
Star Trek: Into Darkness (2013)

Science writing has held a peculiar interest for me this week, given my Trekkie credentials. I've seen the new Star Trek movie twice and have contemplated buying the original 'Wrath of Khan' to compare the change in writing and production styles. However for the purposes of these notes, the quote above is the perfect introduction to the Birkbeck Science and Writing Symposium, 21 May 2013.

A universe of cheese and worms

A rare group of people – two poets, a playwright, an astronomer, a science/history/cultural academic, two actors and a cartoonist - were brought together not just to discuss the way they communicate their ideas but to actually demonstrate and showcase their skills. I’m not going to simply narrate what each person said but try to highlight themes. What I must say is, so often at academic symposia the emphasis is on the presentation of paper after paper with little or no presenter animation. No matter how interesting the topic, my eyes glaze over eventually but not here, not this time, we were off; starting with the Big Bang. Before I come on to the themes, I want to dwell a little on the poets and their poetry.