Thursday, August 30th, 2007
There has been a small change in the entertainment scheduled for the next meeting. Unfortunately, James Collins will not be able to keep the appointment with us but the folks over at the VCQA team in VE have offered us a 2-for-1 deal and have agreed to let Patrick Scott and Miles Atkinson come out to play for the afternoon. Below is a brief introduction from Patrick & Miles and an invitation to post any questions you may have before the meeting.
Hello and welcome to you all. 
We are Patrick Scott (Training and development Coordinator) and Miles Atkinson (Business and Development Assistant). Together we aim to support VCs going through the accreditation process and continually improve the quality standard. We’d really welcome the opportunity to introduce ourselves in the flesh and tell you a bit more about the key support services we’re offering. In addition, we would relish the opportunity to engage in a frank and creative discussion about the long term future of VCQA. We would like to explore questions such as:
- If VCs and VE were better resourced what type of QA would we put in place? How would it be different to what’s currently in place?
- How would a QA system look like with different levels?
- How would the VC network respond to fake volunteers contacting VCs randomly as part of the QA process to test what sort of service is provided?
You may of course have a few of your own question for us! Here’s to an engaging discussion on the 20th September.
Tuesday, August 14th, 2007
A few updates for the members to keep the momentum building.
James Collins @VE
As members know James has agreed submit a brief post highlighting the issues around VCQA & ASDAN that he wished to discuss at the next meeting. This had been scheduled to go up last week - unfortunately I’ve just been informed that James is off ill and is not likely to be back in the office until the end of the month.
He has promised to make contact once he’s back on the job and members can look for a post in early September. This should leave plenty of time to digest his comments and possibly propose a few questions before the meeting.
Other Places
Just in case any members were looking for a bit of online reading - Mark Restall from Volunteering England seems to be posting his own thoughts on volunteer-related topics.
Early Day Comments
Overall response to the new site so far has been lukewarm but it’s early days yet. Remember that this is about building a sense of community amongst a group of organisations that have common interests - members will only get back what they put in.
With that thought in mind the comments function is now open to the public. It seems that the requirement to register/log-in before being allowed to leave comments only served to confuse people. The downside of this is that the site is more susceptible to spam - but we will keep an eye on this. The upside is that it will be easier to engage when you have an urge to share. When leaving comments please try to follow two simple rules:
- When giving your name (this is required) please make reference to the CENTRE/BUREAU/AGENCY you work at - not everyone knows everyone else by name.
- Please be consistent in how you fulfill rule #1 above - if you are ‘Michael @VC Slough’ then always try to be ‘Michael @VC Slough’ ….not several variations on the theme. Again, this will help everyone understand who you are.
Friday, August 3rd, 2007
The next meeting of the Network is scheduled for 20 September and will be held from 11am to 3pm at the MIC Conference Centre. The venue is near Euston Station (see map) and should be easy to reach for those coming in on public transport.
Members should watch for an email invitation (which will be sent out through the the free web application called MyPunchbowl.com) and be sure to use the link in the email to let us know if you plan to attend.
James Collins from VE will be attending the meeting to discuss the new ASDAN Certificate and the next cycle of the VCQA process. We will post a short entry from James early next week outlining the topics he plans to cover - so check back and post any comments you have in response. We’ll check these before he meeting to ensure that James is well prepared.