The first day of a two-day meeting at The Node near Hitchin to discuss the future of the Hertfordshire Infrastructure Consortium. This was a steering group from HIC looking at how infrastructure services should develop in the County over the coming years to 2014 and beyond.
Pictured above are (clockwise from bottom left): Kate Belinis (CDA for Herts), Julie Street (Stevenage Volunteer Centre), David Fitzpatrick (Herts Community Foundation), Steph Gallagher (HIC Development Worker), Ian Richardson (Broxbourne and East Herts CVS), Andrew Burt (HCC who joined us for the first morning's session), Jacquie Hime (North Herts CVS), and myself. Missing form the phto are Eliud Matindi (Herts BME Partnership - delayed by car trouble), and Chris Lee (of Dacorum's Raise the Ceiling Project who facilitated the two days - and took the photo).
We spent most of today surveying the literature (we each had a 1 Gb memory stick of documents), finding our feet, performing a SWOT analysis, discussing key themes, and talking through Visions and Missions.
It was hard work and progress was rather slow. But where progress was made, it was good solid progress with unanimous support. I felt we were doing the right things.
The venue was fine apart from a noisy “fun day” organised by Jeans company Ted Baker for its young staff. At the buffet lunch I discovered that members of the public can no longer serve themselves hot food due to “health and safety”. I pointed out to the young waiter that at home I am perfectly able to serve myself hot food and have been doing so for years without a serious incident. I’m in my 40s, for heaven’s sake. But it wasn’t his fault of course. What sort of world are we creating?
Another cause for grumpiness was that there was only a very poor mobile phone signal and no working payphone. I managed a very scrambled conversation with Maria about A Midsummer Night’s Dream – just sufficient to discover that the event was being booked for 14 September.
HIC had a few relaxed “break out” sessions during the day and the evening was devoted to a meal together. I was the only delegate not staying overnight and left at 9:00 abandoning several very useful discussions.
