Monday 28th June - Guest Writer Ainsley

The mind, once expanded to the dimensions of larger ideas, never returns to its original size - Oliver Wendell Holmes

In the interests of expanding our minds, it's training week at Legal-Island this week. 5 days of training and development, packed with interesting topics ranging from Neuro-Linguistic Programming to Creative Problem Solving and Memory Techniques.

Everyone is looking forward to learning something new and interesting so it should be a very constructive week.

Saturday saw the final of our Beat The Director competition, with one finalist taking on our MD, Barry Phillips for the chance to win £1,000 cash. Charles Garavan was the plucky contender and with two attempts each, it was going to be an interesting challenge.

Both competitors went for it in their first attempt, with Barry's initial score of 4 minutes and 10 seconds a very good score given the obvious pressures. Charles came out fighting and just beat Barry's time with an impressive first score of 3 minutes and 8 seconds. Neither player could improve their score on the second attempt, so Charles walked away with the £1,000 prize money.

Fionnuala McKervey from NI Alzheimer's Society, was on hand as our independent adjudicator and we hope to do a lot more work with the Society in the future to raise greater awareness of

this fantastic charity.

Pictured at the Final of the Beat The Director Competition are (l-r); Barry Phillips, MD of Legal-Island, Fionnuala McKervey, NI ALzheimer's Society and Charles Garavan, Competition Finalist.

Finally, Barry did an interview for the Belfast Telegraph on Friday, which we hope will be published in Tuesday's paper, so we'll be keeping our eyes peeled for that.

Here's to a valuable and challenging training week.

Monday 21st June - Guest Writer Kerry

In Retrospect

A great week last week for Legal-Island who lifted the highly commended award in all three of the categories entered into at the Irish News Awards on Thursday evening. The pictures above show us proudly taking The Best Place to Work, the Managing Talent and the Innovative Employer awards at the gala dinner held at the Ramada. A monumental well done to the writing team who toiled over the submissions and a huge thank you to our distinguished guests who came along on the evening to support us.

We have also completed our 'Charity Memory Challenge' on a high last week raising a total of £228 for our two designated charities - Brainwaves NI and NI Alzheimer's Society. What started off reasonably slowly turned into a highly competitive and fun eight weeks of coming in early, staying late and giving up some lunch time in order to stay ahead of the opposition. I now see many members of the team in a very different competitive light! Again a wonderful effort by all for two great charities.

Looking ahead

Barry, our MD is in meetings all of Monday. On Tuesdays he's in Dublin and on Thursday of this week he's meeting Brian Grimshaw and Olga Pollock from Consilium Technologies. Saturday's his big day though. Thats when he takes on all comers in the Beat the Director competition. Hope he's remembered to train!

Ainsley is hosting the first meeting of the Antrim Marketing Forum which will take place at 9.30am on Wednesday in our Training Centre. If you or anyone you know in the local area would like to attend this event or any future meetings please contact Ainsley directly at ainsley@legal-island.com

On Thursday he will be attending an FSB event titled 'Growing your business through networking'

Scott will be coaching on Monday, meeting Bank of England Agent, Frances Hill, on Thursday; and this Friday will be attending a seminar on the importance for Northern Ireland of the GB Equality Act.

Events

Thats almost all of our season one events complete with the exception of our third and final Section 75 seminar here in Antrim on 1st July. Information on all our second season events will be on the company website from the end of this month.

Another beautiful day...here's to many more meetings this summer sitting out at our picnic area.

Networking from Legal-Island this Week

Scott is:
attending our s.75 workshop tomorrow and will be meeting Tom Evans from DEL. On Wednesday he will be chairing our 'All about Absence' event in Dublin. On Thursday and Friday Scott will be at our strategy meetings, which are being facilitated by Fiona keenan and Ricky O'Rawe.

Jayne is:
Tuesday - meeting Gillian Esquivel for lunch with Barry
Wednesday - in London with Barry for meetings
Thursday - strategy day
Thursday night - Irish News Awards (fingers crossed!)
Friday - strategy day

Heather is:
Wednesday - running the 'All about Absence' event at the Radisson hotel, Dublin Airport
Thursday - hopefully collecting awards at the Irish News Workplace Awards

Barry is:

Off to Bristol on Tuesday to see a company that does special effects for big events. On Wednesday he has a meeting with a law firm in London. On Thursday and Friday he’s leading two days’ of strategy work. Lucky him

Monday 7th June - Guest Writer Barry Phillips, MD, at Legal-Island

Boy we’re looking good at the moment. The front of our training centre is now decked in a quote from Mary Pickford and loads of plants too. I’m sure Mary would approve.

I’m at a breakfast seminar on Thursday of this week at the IOD about Mediation and on Friday I’m meeting Alana Jones from Jones Cassidy and Jones for lunch.

On Wednesday our marketeers are attending the Invest NI Best Practice Club : “Developing a marketing strategy and the benefits to your business”.

Heather from our Events team is attending a Parity Alumni Meeting tomorrow night, a Stillorgan Corporate Event Thursday evening and a Women In Business lunch with Anne Widdecombe on Friday.

Scott Alexander is meeting Emer Hinphey of Thinkpeople on Tuesday morning. He will then be chairing our ‘All About Absence’ event at the Hilton Hotel, Belfast. That promises to be a really good gig.

Busy week ahead… But that’s how we like it here on the Island.

Tuesday 2nd June 2010: Guest writer Phyllis

After an extended weekend we are all back to work full of energy and ready to face the week ahead.

Our Training rooms are busy again this week.

On Wednesday Our Breakfast Seminar is Facilitated by Gillian Esquivel and is entitled Measuring Return on Investment in Training.

Scott shall be chairing the Antrim/Ballymena HR Networking meeting on 2nd June. It will be held at Schrader Electronics Ltd and the guest speaker will be Eric Jenkinson. On Thursday Scott will be meeting Adam Brett from McGigors and Roger Watts from C&J Black.

Jayne and Barry are attending The Key to Effective Team Coaching with John Leary-Jones on Wednesday morning. Harry Harper from The Loop is coming in to see Barry on Wednesday.
James Carey from Hutchinson Homes also has a meeting with him on Thursday.

Heather is off to Dublin to host Conducting Workplace Investigations. This meeting is completely sold out so she will be very busy on the day.

Kerry is at the Dunsilly Hotel on Wednesday where we are hosting the Data Protection and Compliance Update Conference.

So another short but busy week for all.

Monday 24th May 2010: Guest writer Arnold

Another busy week for Legal-Island. This week we have three events in our training centre. Tuesday 25^th May – Managing Underperformance in the Public Sector, Wednesday 26^th May - Breakfast Seminar: Positive Problems Solving and Thursday 27^th May - Delivering Professional Workplace Investigations.

Networking

On Tuesday Peter, Ainsley, Carmel and I will have a consultation with Jane McClenaghan who is a Nutritionist from Vital Nutrition

Scott will be helping to facilitate the ‘Underperformance in the Public Sector’ workshop in our training centre on Tuesday; he will be meeting Elaine Magee and others from Antrim Borough Council on Wednesday about how Legal-Island might help promote their future wellbeing events; and will no doubt be enjoying a healthy lunch when he later meets Emer Hinphey of HR consultants Thinkpeople

Jayne is attending The Loop event at The Galgorm Manor, Ballymena on Tuesday. Elizabeth Turner will be speaking as part of their Leadership Programme. On Wednesday she is attending our breakfast seminar Positive Problem Solving.

Barry is meeting Richard O'Rare for lunch on Wednesday and Sandra from the Loop consultancy on Thursday. On Friday evening he's at Massereene Golf Club in Antrim to hear Karl Morris talk about how to stay calm under pressure.

Busy week ahead!

Monday 17th May 2010: Guest writer Jacqui

This week has kicked off with Barry re-enacting scenes from Planes, Trains and Automobiles as he set off for London yesterday to eusure his timely arrival for a meeting there on Tuesday. Jayne however is hoping that the volcanic activity will allow her a window of opportunity to fly over tomorrow morning and meet up with Barry.

Here on the Island, the Breakfast seminars are proving quiet successful and Kerry will be hosting Discover A Life Less Ordinary tomorrow at 8am.

Scott is very busy as he is meeting Adam Brett from McGrigors solicitors; Lorraine McNicoll and others from the Committee for the Administration of Justice; Carmel McCormick and David Johnston of the PSNI tomorrow. He will be attending a luncheon at the Ballymena Chamber of Commerce, where the guest of honour is Frances Hill, Agent for the Bank of England on Wednesday. He will then be in Dublin for our Employment Law in the Public Sector event on Thursday along with Heather and finally he will attend a training event by the Equality Authority on Friday.

OTHER NEWS

Peter will be attending the Belfast City Council Business Advice Show at Hilton Hotel (11 – 2.30pm)
Barry and Jayne will hopefully be back to attend  an IOD North/ South Dinner on Thursday evening at Belfast City Hall.

The Training Rooms are being occupied by Driving Tech this week and part of next week,this will be their third visit to our facility which is great.

To see how we are doing in our efforts to raise funds for the Alzheimer's Society and Brainwaves NI click on to Charity Brain Challenge. We only have 4 weeks left to raise funds and its getting very competitive between the 2 teams.

And Finally...

Good luck to James who will be doing his final accounting exams next week (he hopes!!) and also Julie who is off this week doing Accounting Technician exams.

From all on the Island, we hope you all enjoy the warm weather while it lasts!!

Onwards...