Guest Writer: Vanessa

It’s another busy week for us here on the Island with the last NI Conference of Season One taking place on Thursday – it’s the sold out Agency Workers Regulations – your Questions Answered at the Hilton Templepatrick being ably hosted by Kerry.

Barry will be out and about, on Monday his day is full of internal meetings. Tuesday sees him out networking - meeting Mary Montague of Tides Training, Joan Davis of FamilyMediation NI and then Barry Fitzpatrick for lunch. He’s off to Dublin on Wednesday setting a new record for speed and distance networking, meeting Maeve Regan from NCLC at Coolock then Mary Kelly at Maynooth University followed by Marian Jennings for lunch at the Burlington. Thereafter he's meeting Austin Kenny from ICMA and finally Michael Lantry from Certification Europe before heading north for home – phew! On Thursday he's attending a breakfast seminar before flying to London for a meeting in the afternoon and an EBA seminar the next day.

I will be at the same breakfast seminar as Barry on Thursday – the launch of the Northern Ireland “Gold Star” Service Excellence certification scheme, which has been developed in partnership with the NI Consumer Council and the NI Chamber of Commerce for the purpose of raising customer service standards in the private sector across Northern Ireland businesses. Additionally I am meeting

Andrew Cuthbert of Omnisoft Services on Wednesday morning to discuss changes to the Legal-Island Event Registration System and Website.

Today Jayne has her usual internal meetings. She is meeting Omnisoft briefly and then has an internal credit control meeting on Wednesday. On Thursday she is attending Recipro Executive Learning at Crawfordsburn Inn from 8am – 11am, followed by meeting with Lyndsey from, BITC at 12noon at their offices, then back to the Island for an Annual Review meeting with the Conference Executives and Marketing Team.

One of our volunteering initatives comes to an end on Friday – when Kerry, Heather and Jayne will be attending Ballycraigy Primary Assembly to present hockey trophies.

Scott will be working from home on Tuesday this week. He is meeting Elaine Magee from Antrim BC on Wednesday and will be chairing our Agency Worker event at the Templepatrick Hilton on Thursday. On Friday Scott will be attending a meeting of the Mediation Council NI and other meetings in Belfast.

On Wednesday afternoon Ainsley will be volunteering and on Friday afternoon he will be attending a Customer Relationship Management Event at the Holiday Inn, Belfast.

Finally congratulations to Rory McIlroy – the best example of “bouncebackability” I can remember. Back in April after his Masters meltdown, nearly all the pundits were saying it would take him months if not years to recover his game and go on and win a major tournament – here we are two months on and he has won the US Open by eight shots and smashed the course record at 16 under par. Sadly we didn’t win the Champion of Champions award at last weeks Irish News awards – the honour went to Allstate – however, our plans for the upcoming year will demonstrate that here at Legal Island we also turn disappointment into opportunity!