Week 8 - Guest Writer James

Last week’s update:

Last week proved a busy week for the conference team in Belfast and Dublin. Our new-style event ‘CPD Fest’ last Thursday certainly covered all the bases for lawyers in need of CPD training. With the emphasis on learning here at Legal-Island we’re sure to do an even better job with next year’s CPD events.

This week’s news:

This week Barry has meetings planned with Willa Mawhinney from Allianz, Tara Mullholland from QFM, David McAvery from Serious PR and Tim Lewis (Recruitment).

Scott attended a joint CIPD/Chief Executive’s Forum breakfast seminar on Monday. The guest speaker was Norris Gilliland, a Director at Peoplematters consultancy in Scotland. Norrie looked at various ways to develop leadership skills, particularly in the public sector/community sector interface and gave various examples of how his ideas had been applied to great effect in Scotland in developing community involvement in public sector initiatives.

On Thursday Scott will be meeting Beverley Lowry, ex-Head of Communications at BA about her role at the Northern Ireland HR Conference on 22 April 2010. He will then attend a Skills for Justice event on developing an integrated training strategy for the legal advice sector in NI.

No events in the programme this week; however, the countdown has started to the first of our five Annual Review Conferences, to be held on 5th November in the Red Cow (Dublin).

That’s T minus ten days folks!

Week 7 - Guest Writer Jayne

Last week we had another busy week with our first full day conference in the new Training Centre here at Legal-Island. Donna Kirkpatrick, our Office Manager, attended the event - Project Management (in conjunction with Parity), and found the course thoroughly worthwhile.

Meetings, Networking and Events:

This week Barry will be meeting with Peter McBride of Carecall. On Friday he will meet with Gail Fairley before rounding off the week with a Thank You dinner for O'Reilly Stewart, to thank them for all their hard work at our first Education Conference which took place in September.

Heather and Scott will be hosting Legal-Island's CPD Fest on Thursday at the Holiday Inn in Belfast. This promises to be a great day. While Jayne will be in Dublin hosting Fixed Term Contracts, Varying Contracts of Employment Law and Data Protection at the Red Cow Moran Hotel.

Scott will also be meeting the Managing Director of Great Place to Work Institute UK on Friday to discuss working together next year and their role in the Northern Ireland HR Conference 2010. On Monday Scott will be attending a joint CIPD/ Chief Executive's Forum breakfast entitled "People Matters - Tomorrow's Leaders".

As always, plenty going on at Island House!

Week 6 - Guest Writer Heather

Last week we had our very first seminar in the brand spanking new Training Centre here at Island House which was a fantastic start. This week we are holding Project Management here in conjunction with Parity which will carry on from our great beginning!

Meetings, Networking and Events:

Barry will be meeting with Linus Murray and Jim McBain in Belfast on Tuesday. On Wednesday he is travelling to Dublin to do CPD training with BCMHanby Wallace Solicitors and meeting Anna Broderick from Eversheds for lunch all of which should present us with plenty of networking opportunities.

Scott is meeting with Joe Blair on Tuesday about the possibilty of running customer care courses in our training centre.

Jayne will be attending a course on High Impact Presentations in Leopardstown.

Plenty of meetings and lots of training this week so...Onwards and Upwards!

Week 5 - Guest Writer Julie

This week sees Legal Islands very first In-House breakfast seminar on 'Twitter', held in our new Training suite. Our very own Barry and Pamela will be speaking at this event. Not to be missed!

Meetings Networking and Events:

Barry will be meeting with David Fagan from Eversheds, Sandra Masterton-Power from BCM Handby Wallace, Garry Goldsmith from Hudson Talent Management, Hannah Carney and Deirdre Mulligan from McCann Fitzgerald and Cliver Byrne from NAPD.
Followed by a meeting on Wednesday with Mike Bennett an education guru.

Scott is busy working on our new programme of events for 2010.

The marketing team of Pamela and Michelle are making preparations for the new Legal-Island events brochures for the first half of next year (2010).

Wednesday is 'Delivering Workplace Investigations' in the North hosted by Heather. Jayne has a busy week ahead hosting the following events in the South, 'Health & Safety, Conducting Workplace Investigations and Managing Training & Development'.

Onwards!