* The Debatewise Blog
Weekly 5
5 Things I have done this week:1. Written press release on revisewise
2. Wrote debate on G20 protests as they were happening
3. Started preparing report for House of Lords People and Parliament enquiry
4. Researched using social networking for PR and marketing (and got 4 #followfriday mentions on twitter and counting
! )5. Managed to maintain calm and not run round in little circles when site went down (briefly) while Dave was incommunicado!
Betony
1; Helped edit the Press Release.
2; Done some moreeee calling!
3; Sent off some more Marketing Materials.
4; Edited and wrote some more debates.
5; Thought of 4 things I have done despite only working 2 days this week
hahaDavid Song
Alex: I have managed to do a sum total of one thing all week! So I will split it into bits. Storyboards for David’s presentation (I imagine that he will blog about it once its over so I will not expand) and for a video we may put on the site explaining how to create debates.
1, Worked out a plan for the steps needed to create a debate on debatewise, took some screenshots... turns out this is not really what David was wanting at this time.
2, Thought of ideas and planned out storyboard to illustrate the WODC
3, Did the drafts, drawing, colouring of the storyboard – many thanks for the masses of help to my brother Colin.
4, Scanned them in... and ultimately after what seemed like ages it saved onto the dropbox so I could email it to David.
5, Finally something different, I edited and added points for ‘The US creates Mexico’s drug trade problems’ and ‘Housewives make better mothers than career women’ so that they could be highlighted on the newsletter.
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Debating can make you rich! (Money for gassing away)
These last two weeks have been rather stressful outside of work – British Gas have tried to bankrupt my housemates and I, and we are having problems renting a room as one of us is moving out. Thankfully the gas saga is now sorted (a few calls to the press office from a freelance journalist, and a letter from my MP later, instead of us owing over £1,700 BG now owe us £270 – go figure!). But I have learned a lot, and not ony about laws regulating suppliers and Landlords obligations to tenants!The main thing is that i've learned the value of the skills debating has taught me - my skills at contesting things. If we hadn’t kicked up a fuss we would never have discovered that the ‘estimated readings’ our bills were based on were completely incorrect. Taken from the wrong meter in fact! It’s rare that I make any tangible financial gain from my debating skills, but this is a definite example of that. Through numerous letters and phone calls I argued my case calmly and politely and presented facts and figures in a clear, comprehensible fashion. British Gas saw sense in the end, changed their argument, and apologised.
It’s been a fantastic case study of why debating isn’t just middle aged politicians in an old fusty chamber, or swotty students in after-school clubs, but a real skill for dealing with day-to-day issues. If I hadn’t had the ability to articulate my argument I would have been considerably out of pocket. That’s not to say I’m recommending ‘contesting’ the price of milk at your local shop, but I think on some occasions you do need to stand up and voice your argument, and debating is a great way to get good at this.
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What running has taught me – part 6
It’s been a tough week. Apparently running 19 miles on a bad leg is not the cleverest thing in the world and I spent most of last week in pain. Well actually that’s not true, I was fine provided I didn’t move. Stairs were worst, the only way I could navigate them was by doing a little Palomino-style kick with my right leg. I looked great.Back to the clinic then. This time to be treated by the driver of the New Zealand Olympic bob sled team; no, not the driver of the minibus, the bloke at the front who steers the metal tube down the ice chute at 70mph. He beat me up a little in the name of making me better and told me to run the next day if I wanted to. I wanted to.
But I couldn’t. Had to walk back from the Heath after a short, slow, run in a lot of pain and a very bad mood. Had to face the prospect of the rest of March off. Wondered if I’d even be fit for the end of April. Realised I was probably being a bit of a drama queen and should get round. Don’t like missing training though.
My thinking goes like this: the only way to hit my target is to reach or exceed every milestone from here to marathon day. Which means I’ve now either got to let go of the idea of a sub four hour race, or adopt the belief that I can still do it, even if I have to miss a few speedwork sessions and a long run or two.
My dad once showed me our 70 year-old gardener slowly scything through long grass. “Watch him”, he said, “he might not go as fast as younger men but he can keep that up all day and will end up doing more than they”. This advice has stayed with me ever since. I’ve never actually lived by it of course, but I have always remembered it.
Guess now’s the time to try it; necessity being the mother of doing what you absolutely don’t want to and all that. Truth is I don’t have much choice. I was supposed to run for four miles on Saturday, I managed two. Yesterday was another 19-miler, I managed five. And that’s on top of missing two runs mid-week.
But as the wise bob sled driver man said “the point of training is to get you better than you were before, not worse", so there’s no point me pushing through now and being laid up even longer. Tried that, didn’t work.
As I write I realise just how obvious the solution is and, because I’ve only just realised it, how much I resist it. Well I guess there’s nothing else to do but rest till I’m ready the build up slowly and see what happens in four weeks. The countdown has begun.
Talking of which, a few people have said they might come down to watch me run and I thought now would be as good a time as any to say, YES PLEASE. Can’t tell you how much a lift it would give me to see a friendly face at different points round the course. It’s supposed to be a great day out too, one of those rare times when London gets together. That should be celebrated in itself.
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5 alive
Does anyone remember that? I think it was a drink? (Don't mind me, i'm approaching my 5th dry week and the lack of Friday afternoon alchohol is clearly affecting me!) Anyway...My five things i'm proud of for the week (plus a bonus one!)
- Hosting the Russian delegation (see last entry)
- Writing an academic debate
- Attending useful Stepping it Up conference hosted by Social Enterprise London (note to self must write that up!)
- Set up an account at Donklephant.com expect blog posts soon!
- Finished revision Do's and Don'ts for the professors leaflets
- Took photos of Dave in his running gear for the Sailor's society 9the charity he's running the marathon for)* maybe i'll post those up...:p
And big drum roll please, Judith's first five:
- Composing a lesson plan to teach school students how to debate (ongoing)
- Researching the benefits of debating (ongoing)
- Going to the Social Entreprise Exhibition in Angel, where I got to learn new things and 'network'.
- Compiling packages of marketing materials about Revisewise to send to universities/colleges.
- Phoning marketing departments at colleges and universities to tell them about Revisewise
Keep them going, 'cos Pete's joined us too and here's his first five:
- Started my new job with Debatewise, definitely the biggest achievement of the week.
- Started writing a pitch on WODC to be sent off to debating societies.
- Working with Alex on creating a storyboard for how to use the website.
- Posted 88 letters to various universities containing the revisewise information. Met a right character of a wee boy while we where there which was funny. He did make fun of my current acne problem which was less good L. Kids can be cruel!
- Went to a meeting about the BASH buildings recycling policies, different plastics have different gradings don’t you know?
DC's
- Got the Charity Commission form off to the Charity Commission. Three months in the doing, 70-odd pages of material. Done. At blooming last.
- Got the Twitter app styled, it’s still a bit broken but I’ve done all I need to
- Got a report on idebate.org out to Idebate on time
- Got a new idea for a British Online Debating Championship, should probably get the World one going first though
- Got Revisewise up.
Alex's Somewhat late... sorry
- finally got off the marketing materials... hopefully just in time, most unis and colleges break up for easter in the next week or so
- did more research and gave more ideas to betony for the article, dont think they were ultimatly needed though :(
- been writing debates for revisewise, we need it too have examples or no one will use it, I fear some of mine are rather long and make better examples for essay preperation than revision! (no surprise I got the debates out of essays as I no longer have my revision notes!)
- starting storyboards for WODC, trying to make them as interchangeable as possible so starting with a generic 'how to' for debatewise and will then fill in bits that are different later
- started a debate on the war on drugs in mexico (keeping up to date basing it on comments made that day by Clinton) and went rather overboard on the no arguments about democracy (sorry Judith!)
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Nobody expects the Russian delegation!
I only found out yesterday that we had a Russian delegation arriving at Debatewise HQ this morning. One day, of course, we hope that Debatewise will be a global organisation with offices in all major countries, but it's not really that way yet, so their visit was an exciting cultural highlight of the daily grind.It's not every day you get a text on your way into work asking you to pick up milk because the Russians are coming!The delegation was a group of students from Tomsk University and their tutor Oleg who had come to England to learn about British Parliamentary debating. If you've looked at the site (which you should have!) you will realise we don't work by anything as formal as British Parliamentary format. We're pretty much what would happen 'if Wikipedia met British Parliamentary Debate in an internet chat room'. But I sensed this may confuse them. So I called upon vague memories of BP format from my Cambridge Union days and explained as best as I could. Unfortunately niether Dave or I felt well placed to demonstrate it to them. But we did have tea and croissants and chatted about the differences in Debating styles and techniques in our two nations (apparently we are too emotional, and anyone waving their arms around and shouting 'here here!' would get ridiculed in Russia. I sort of hope they meet Boris
) I was even shown the Russian version of Facebook and a video of Russian debating.We were presented with gifts of ornamental plates and tasty chocolate (and as Alex discovered to his slight panic they also gave his laptop a propensity to type in Russian, but we soon rectified that!) Overall a very pleasant experience all round and I hope the delegates took something away from their time with us. Perhaps Debatewise 'ru' isn't too far off! 
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What running has taught me - part 5
Last week I said I wanted to be more like my dog. This week my wish came true. Only it wasn’t that the ladies found me more strokable (I’ll probably never have ears as soft), or even that I managed to take the running in my stride. The opposite in fact, we both developed a limp.His seems to have been cured by a couple of days not running, mine may need a bit more work. I tried his medicine, skipped two runs and had what amounted to three days off. This helped, I soon missed running and used the morning walks on the sunshine-bathed Heath to get my head around work problems.
Even so, my knee still hurt and I decided to see a physio. Luckily for me the person I was allocated turns out to be an athlete who has represented Jamaica in the long and triple jump in the last three Olympics. Well I say luckily, I think her pain threshold is perhaps a notch or two above mine and I spent most of the half hour trying not to wince too visibly as she pummelled and pounded away.
There were other good and bad points too. Can’t tell you how good it was to hear her say she’d admired me for running a marathon. That’s an Olympian, admiring me. However, she wasn’t so complimentary about my cool down routine and told me, very strictly, that I needed to have a cold bath after the long Sunday run.
Of course before I could experience that joy I had to actually run. Not something I was looking forward to given my last big outings and the whole pain thing. To get round I decided I’d use the heart rate bit of my heart rate monitor and stop being so obsessed with my minute per mile pace.
One of the things that has taken the joy from running, and caused the injury too I bet, has been the constant focus on time. I’ve gone from just wanting to finish to wanting to finish in under 4:30, then under 4 hours and lately it’s even crept to around 3:45. Give me another month and I’d be angling for a place with the elites.
Or not. I decided it would be better all round to download a different schedule, set my maximum heart rate and then run to 76% of it. Whole different story. I don’t have to run up hills as fast as down and can be more sympathetic to fluctuations in my natural rhythm. Which I do have, despite any evidence to the contrary.
I started this yesterday and whilst my knee hurt from the very first step and stayed that way for just about every step thereafter, I did feel a lot less tired and managed to complete the 19 miles, yes 19 miles, in a decent enough time. 3:20 if you’re interested.
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End of the week again
its the end of the week again, so its time to put our new 5 of the week up!Alex
- Decided on categories for revisewise topics
- Loads more research for article
- Written and rewritten article... betony sent off the 1st few to student newspapers yesterday, hope they use them!
- Written another possible short article, may well add into our 1st article for any long articles
- The marketing materials arrived \o/, so today we have all been stuffing envelopes all day
DC's
- Got the Twitter app up – needs styling tho: http://debatewise.info/debate/
- Sent our submission in to the Youth Citizenship Foundation about how we could help improve democracy, create more youth engagement and increase the amount of sunshine Britain receives in an average year. May have over-promised.
- Put a job ad on a Rails site in our ongoing quest to find developers for the site
- Almost, almost, almost got the application in for charitable status
- Helped the guys write an article for student newspapers, Revisewise is coming baby
Betony
- Collaborated with James Graham from Votematch and recruited new RRT members through his newsletter
- Reached new record of pageviews (according to google analytics)
- Got student newspapers to agree to take article, and even provided 'rush' article in time for next day deadline!
- Co-ordinated and help stuff 100 envelopes!
Davd S
- Helped stuff lots and lots of envelopes
- Got more colleges and Unis to accept Revisewise marketing materials
- Got Unis like LSE and Durham on board
- Edited more debates
- Gained even more phone confidence
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What running has taught me - part 4
They call this the Monster Month. The task is to get more miles on legs and to hit target times. Which means longish runs on Wednesdays, very long runs on Sundays and fast runs on Tuesday and Thursday. I like Mondays mornings a lot these days.The running, not so much. The big improvements are behind me and the marathon a long way ahead. I’ve gone from being delighted I could keep going to being resentful I still have to. Given I’ve got more than 200 miles of running to do between now and the 26th April what I need is a new attitude.
I’ve tried pessimism before, thought I could protect myself from disappointment by keeping myself so permanently. Doesn’t work of ourse, a pessimist is no less disappointed when things don’t work out, but an optimist finds the silver lining in all clouds.
However, this approach doesn’t work when it comes to expectations. Expect something to be easy and you’re profoundly disappointed when it’s not. Moreover, the disappointment frequently gives way to a voice which moans about things being unfair, or unduly hard or, worse, tells you that you’ve failed somehow.
On the other hand, expect something to be hard and it turns out to be hard, well that’s just right, the natural order of things, the way they’re supposed to be. In fact, if they’re not hard either you feel great about your prowess or push a bit more until they become so. Win/win either way.
Before I started this someone told me that running was mostly psychological. This helped me go further the first time and the second time and just about every time since. My expectation was it would hurt, so I wasn’t surprised when it did, in fact I even started to like that it did. I flipped from seeing pain as proof things aren’t working to proof they are.
The opposite is also true. I always expect the smaller Saturday runs to be a piece of cake and then deeply resent being just as tired as on ones twice the length. Then there’s the paradox of being able to run a half-marathon faster than for the bus. Compare that with the
expectation-free Marley who seems to take all runs in his very graceful stride.
So what gets me through this? Clearly it will help to expect this period to be tough, to realise I’m at a plateau, to dig in and knuckle down and to try and be more like my dog.
Dave
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The new five of this week!
David Song's five things of this week...- Beating Betony in the who can get the most University and College addresses to send out marketing materials to, woop! Plus gaining a tenner from that!
- Got some more phone confidence, and discovered I actually don't mind doing it, in fact kind of enjoyed it!
- Sitting in on an interview, which was a really good experience and I learned a lot as well.
- Put my first debate up on the site (about time really haha)
- Managed four days of work here, as well as working my bar job. I'm absolutely knackered! Was worth it though...
David Crane's
- Committed to doing two, count them, presentations for the IDEA Youth Camp in April in Istanbul
- Met with three different people who we could help and who could help us: Vote Match, The Electoral Reform Society and the Ministry of Justice
- Got the revisewise.debatewise.com subdomain working. Not a big thing for someone who knows their stuff, but for me…
- Ordered (and paid for!) all the marketing materials for Revisewise
- Got the grant money in for the World Online Debating Championship. Thank you IDEA, again.
Alex
- Been phoning and emailing student newspapers about what they would like to see in an article on revision, with little success - however sounds like they would be willing to put articles in the paper, I was expecting loads to say ‘no sorry go to advertising’ who would effectively say ‘pay us Xhundred pounds please!’
- Wrote my first non academic debates for the site on topical issues of Northern Ireland and Tibet \o/
- Written up some ideas on the article and passed them on to Betony – more research to do though
- Written a possible guide to putting academic debates on the site – may be a bit long, I should probably condense them into bullet points to keep the attention of the students
- Contributed to discussion on what is needed for the site
Betony
- Arranged (and attended!) two very productive meetings with Electoral Reform Society and Votematch (unlock democracy)
- Honed my minute writing skills to a fine art!
- Got 18 people universities/colleges to agree to accept marketing materials (not as many as David S but i'm still pleased)
- Interviewed interns to fill Terence's place (some very promising candidates and more on Monday)
- Reached 100 twitter followers and was RT'd by resident twitter guru @monchips (high praise indeed :p)
- Learned some html!
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What running has taught me - part 3
A lot of personal change is difficult to measure. The problem is one of comparison; it’s hard to say if our approach today is very different to the one six months ago because all we really do is compare it to last week. And because most of us don’t change much in a week the tendency is to think we’re not changing at all.This is not true with the running. In October I had trouble staying on a treadmill for more than a minute. I kid you not, one minute. My first run wasn't that much better. The manual said to take walking breaks as necessary, I took two, the first a whole seven minutes and half a mile into the run. Last Sunday I ran for three hours.
Progress has been achieved by following the manual. I’ve relished the boundaries it gave and felt reassured by the knowledge if I just stayed within them I’d finish the marathon fine. They’ve pushed to just the right degree, not so hard I want to quit, or so little I get no reward. And crucially they’ve given me a clear record of how far I’ve come.
However, unless accompanied by a regimental personal trainer the problem with all such manuals is they’re subject to interpretation. Which is a problem for someone who’s a bit too competitive with themselves, who always feels they should do a little more and who fails to account for changes in circumstance, as I found to my cost on Sunday.
Recent deadlines have seen me not eating or sleeping enough, which wasn’t ideal preparation for going on a 17 mile run with someone significantly faster than me. I still would have been fine had I told him I was tired and wanted to go slow. Instead I tried to keep up and allowed pride to get in the way when it started to hurt. If that weren’t enough, I cleverly clipped my toenails a little too close the night before too.
Boy did I suffer. The last seven miles were hard, the last two agonising. His schedule had him running 18 miles, I said I'd do the extra mile to keep him company. But for the first time in five months I couldn't keep my promise and stopped as soon as I hit the 17 mile mark. Which actually was the first thing I did right all day.
So what have I learned this week. That the point of boundaries is not to break them. That when it comes to change you can’t know where you are unless you know where you were. That some days it’s okay to go slow because improvement doesn't travel along a smooth trajectory. Oh and to be careful with those clippers.
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Terence Mak (Pause for effect)……the Intern.
Final entry, a look back on my time here in the Debatewise HQ. or as I like to call it....the place where great minds differ except on the issue of alcohol.The
The first week went by like a dream, as I morphed from a humble student into the human email machine, spreading the word, debatewise, to all and everyone I can think of. It was hard work especially with the whole getting up early in the morning, but I have never had so much fun.
A lot has happened over the short period of time I've been here, the economy continue to fail, snow day, inauguration, a new board member, debatewise getting closer to becoming a charity and Jade Goode. I have enjoyed every moment of it and feel very fortunate to be included in the company's most exciting period of transition.
Thank you for having me and best of luck with the future.
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5 things done at work this week
our usual list of the things we have been doingAlex:
- some more phone calls, I have not done nearly so many this week as I did last week, somewhere just above 40.
- research into revision techniques: revision techniques themselves are pretty simple to find out about, as to finding out what’s best at getting you to remember information and studies into the link between discussion, explanation, understanding and memory, thats rather more difficult to find out.
- looking at types of questions that are asked in A level exams and how many of them can be turned into yes/no debates
- writing academic debates to illustrate the above – one done, another 2 started.
- started writing a guide on how to write academic debates for revision.
Terence:
- Lots of phone calls made. Song and my collaborated list has now completed phase one of initial contact.
- Started phase two of contact with call list, very positive. In general, people love our idea. "Love it" to quote one of the replies I received.
- Created and contributed to more debates. Karma up to 34 and rising. I had no idea it was this addictive to get Karma points, it is my new crusade.
- Yet another very productive lunch meeting. Thought of new slogans and met the new Board member, Ravi. I hope he didn't mind my cello scrotum story. Thanks for the free lunch though Dave.
- Did papers with Alex, completely un-supervised. RISE OF THE INTERNS!
This will be my last entry, thanks for the good times. x
Betony:
- Michael crick meeting - shirt but sweet, potential new patron!
- Meeting with Lord's outreach Lucy at Portcullis house. Good progress made.
- Phone call progress, and some very positive responses
- Posters flyers, doorhangers and bookmarks - we're getting some great looking marketing materials
- Networking produced some good avenues - Electoral Reform Society and Votematch meetings next week
Dave C
- Got our first newsletter out the door and welcomed a prodigal son back into the fold as a result. It’s good to have you back on board Alex.
- Sent the grant application in for Revisewise to OSI. Come on Noel, you know it makes sense
- Managed to reign in my perfectionism to get leaflets, flyers, doorhangers and bookmarks ready for print
- Made more connections with people who could help thanks to the very wonderful James.
- Got a meeting arranged with the Ministry of Justice, it’s government all the way here
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What running has taught me - part 2
Seems to me there are two kinds of obstacles in life: the ones you're supposed to be steered by and the ones you're supposed to push on through. Running hasn't taught me the Zen-like trick of knowing which is which, but I have learned there are a lot more overcomeable obstacles than I thought.Now it's not often I quote Will Smith, but in this speech he says the key to life is running and reading. Reading, well that's obvious right? Running perhaps not so. Yogi Smith says that learning to run means learning to defeat the person in your head who tells you to quit. Ignore him and success awaits.
I reckon he's got a point. There have been moments on just about every run I've done where I've thought "Cor, I wouldn't mind stopping right now". The satisfaction I get from running, the sense of achievement, and yes, even the joy, comes from carrying on.
I love running downhill, but only after I've run uphill first. It's the getting over the hill that's pleasurable, keeping going when my legs are heavy and breath is short, doing long distances with aching knees and sore feet, these are the places I now find pleasure because I've discovered I can do a lot more than I thought.
And this is the transferable skill. For those of us trying to do great things, whether that's getting through exams right, getting through an economic crisis or building the best damn debating site in the universe, it's inevitable we'll face times when we think we can't make it and when we doubt ourselves and our abilities. Running gives me a set of experiences with which to counter those doubts.
Oh and if anyone wants to sponsor me my page is here www.justgiving.co.uk/davidcrane
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The Weekly Five
Terence - First entry for the five, which I think that should to be one of my 5....if I really struggle, we shall see.- Made the fifty phone calls to various colleges and university unions.
- (I am going to comment about this, just because I can) Excellent, I went from hating bell for inventing the 'troublesome' device, to attacking each call with some sort of new found confidence. Thick skin, chin up, that's the way to do it. - Contributed to a debate on the site for the first time, it did end up being a bit of a rant. God bless the internet.
- Introduced some of my friends to debatewise, and Mr Debate Wise on facebook. I can't get over how some people will add anybody on facebook. It does strike me as odd how some of us give out privileged information willingly but then complains when other people have it! I am grateful they added Mr Debate wise though.
- Started my first debate, though in retrospect feels like a advert for spotify despite my best effort to come up with cons. Still, Karma is now up to 2. Result!
- Really struggling now.......OOO We had a very productive lunch meeting about promotions for Revisewise. Not a personal achievement but I am very proud to have been in that meeting.
That's it for the week, hope to improve next week.
Betony - I can understand Terence struggling, it has been hard to get 5 things when the main focus has been calling but anyway here goes...
- Twitter progress: Amnesty want to do a debate for International Women's Day and I chatted to Krishnan Guru Murthy about the site!
- Telephone 100 colleges and universities. More calls that that if you include calling back ones that were out...
- Came up with moreplans for marketing 'Revisewise' - revise both sides
- )Got debate up about twitter and rubbernecking in under half an hour from when the topic was first mentioned on internet.
- )Went to first tuttle and met some really great people
Alex - I agree that its difficult to find 5 things, but as I was told off when I only put 4 up I had better think of 5
- Made over 100 phone calls (given I hate phones this is more like something I will be relieved about it being over when it’s over rather than ever being something I would be proud of)
- Got round to publishing my two revisewise debates - I know I did a fair bit of the writing on them last week, forgot about the important bit though (incidentally as with terrance they are also my first full debates, I have however made some points before)
- Contributed to ideas sessions (you can tell I am struggling as I left ideas sessions off the previous two weeks when I probably contributed more!!)
- Made a list of possible contacts for world online debating championship (the 150 odd will do for now if we are only looking for a small number of teams to start, there are bound to be thousands out there¸ finding them is more difficult though...)
- Done some background research into revision techniques – hopefully will help betony writing an article for student newspapers
Dave C - my five things are:
- Called 100 people about ReviseWise and really got into it as the week went on.
- Went to BootStrapCamp and managed to get a debate up about the virtual currency that should be used in a skills bartering exchange within two hours of leaving the meeting.
- Had The Debatewise Foundation’s first board meeting, formally invited Ravi to join the board, worked through all the agenda items and found a workable solution to the tricky conflict of issues issue of me being paid from the charity whilst being a trustee.
- Made progress with the site development by getting informal agreement to hire a top-end Rails developer to oversee the project
- Applied to Reach Online for two new members of staff, a fundraising intern and fundraising mentor to help me prioritise tasks and set goals.
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Call me
I once spent a couple of weeks on a tele-campaign. It's difficult. I was raising money for my college from alumni, and they had agreed to be contacted and yet some were still very hostile.This week we've been calling university Student Unions to check that they got our emails. The problem is the people that get our emails, mostly SU secretaries, have forwarded them on to others, and it's difficult tracing who has got them. This is made even more difficult when they don't seem amenable, at ALL. For example,
Me: Hi there, my name's Betony and I'm calling from a nonprofit site called Debatewise, I was just wondering if you got our email last week about our new project?
SU: Don't remember it, no.
Me: Oh ok. Well it was about our new project Revisewise. We think it will be really useful for students trying to revise and I was just looking for some feedback on it.
SU: I haven't heard of it, who would you normally email this to?
Me: Well it's to help the students revise you see. Do you have an academic affairs officer? Or maybe someone in charge of curriculum?
SU: Let me just put you through to student services *deafening beep*
Student Services: If you have a housing query, please press 1, if you wish to speak to a medical advisor please press 2...
Me: aaarrgh!
Me: Hi there, my name's Betony and I'm calling from a nonprofit site called Debatewise, I was just wondering if you got our email last week about our new project?
SU: Sorry what was that...you're nonprofit 'irate guys?'
Yes, much more of this and we may well be!
But it hasn't all been bad. Some people have been very friendly and we have had positive feedback. We've got some great ideas for promotional material that I’m really excited about - door hangers, beer mats! who could resist!) So now it's just a case of getting people to agree to distribute them
41 down 59 to go!
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What running has taught me – part 1
Patience is not one of my more prominent qualities. In fact, the very act of pacing myself has always been something of an intangible concept. I understand the idea okay, it’s implementing it I have the problem with.Running is different though. If you launch off too fast you’ll exhaust yourself; that’s why people hit the wall. So when I ran my first ever race yesterday, a half-marathon in Brighton, I knew pacing was key. The problem is, this meant starting slowly and being overtaken by just about every single bloody other person in the race, including, gallingly, four men in full ostrich costume.
Fortunately, I restrained my competitive instincts and stuck to the plan. The shame of being overtaken was soon replaced by the joy of overtaking others. I ran fast up the final two hills and finished with a burst of speed that had me signing the Chariots of Fire tune in
my head, at least I hope it was in my head. Anyway, I had a target time of under two hours and in the end I ran the 13.1 miles in 1:53:55.
So here’s my point. Modern culture is so youth obsessed there’s a tendency to feel that if we haven’t had great success by 30 we’ll never make it. Or that even if we’ve experienced success early on, by the time we hit our 40s our best days are behind us.
Running has taught me that’s bollocks. That we sometimes feel as though we’re falling behind when in reality we’re just saving ourselves for later. That we need to find our own pace and ignore other people going faster or more slowly. And primarily, that it’s not important how you start, it’s important how you finish.
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The 5 things I am proud of this week 20/02/2009
Well here are the 5 things each of us are proud of this week;David S
1) New ideas in meetings, extending to our online presence on Facebook.
2) Inviting my friends and people I know into the Facebook group 'Debatewise'.
3) Helping create 'Debate Wise' which is a he, the new face of Debatewise!
4) Finishing compiling the Uni Society contacts list, including some good feedback.
5) Compiling the 2400+ strong Uni professors list (with a lot of help from Outlook haha)
Betony
1) Ideas for the new 'Revise
2) Bea-uu-tiful leaflets for said campaign
3) Wrote two academic debates as exemplars for it.
4) Blog entry (see below). I spent ages writing it and then the session timed out. grr. But I did it again...
5) Increased Facebook presence (88 freinds of Debate Wise and 23 more members of the group)
David C
Didn't actually finish much this week, but lots of things moved forward. The five I feel most good about are:
1) The funding pitches
2) A new Twitter app
3) Our charitable status
4) The World Online Debating Championships
5) Site development
Alex Helling
1) Wrote two sample debates for revisewise –self determination (International Law), Concert of Europe (International relations)
2) Researched citations – how we can include them and what academic material is available online (free and subscribe able)
3) Wrote up the ideas for an internal universities debatewise
4) Wrote up the ideas for a bibliography debatewise
5) Searching for the contact details of debating organisations/societies worldwide (not finished)
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New government warning - don’t breathe, it’s bad for your health
Which of the following statements is true:1) Facebook gives you cancer (Daily Mail)
2) Eggs give you salmonella (Edwina Currie)
3) The Royal Mail gives you cancer (amusing blogger)
4) Everything is bad for us nowadays...*
I've only ever had 'eggy soldiers' once because my mother stopped feeding me them after Edwina and I never wanted them again. The same will not be happening with facebook. We now have a Debatewise fan page, group, and even a profile for a Mr. Debate Wise!
There are two problems which people generally have with fb - 1 that it's a waste of time, and 2 that we give them too much personal information. The second one has been the topic of controversy recently as fb people changed the Terms of Service, seemingly to imply that they had legal rights over any content we posted, *forever*. Personally, unless it got to the stage where the priest asked if there's any reason why I couldn't marry Prince William, and Mark Zuckerburg stood up brandishing fb photos, I don't really mind. But a good few thousand did and they have since withdrawn the TOS until further notice.
It's probably just a big publicity stunt. In fact, the Daily Mail article could have been a warped PR exercise. Judging from the fact that at least four fb groups have sprung up about how it will give us cancer I don't think anyone is taking a blind bit of notice!
* Answers in the form of a facebook group please...
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The Recession Depression Scheme
I am afraid that I have no interesting insights on anything uplifting to offer. It seems the only thing that people can talk about these days consists in complaining. If you look at the recent debates, it is all about our economic downturn, knife crime, technology encroaching our law and our intelligence and to top it off the overwhelming threat of terrorism. What benefit does this moaning have? People are becoming depressed! We are suffering from a "recession depression" now that is a depressing state of affairs.We cannot even seek light relief via reading or watching or listening to various forms of media like music or film without finding some overarching legal issue or social deprivation at stake. Romeo and Juliet ancouraging knife crime? What a load of baloney!
Maybe this is just a way that the nanny state is operating deliberately to get us to submit all power to them. They first of all make us depressed, by giving grave sounding names to the time we live in, they then tell us that we cannot read certain material, they then raise university fees so that people cannot afford to be educated - surely the next step in this evil plan is to put us all on opium and have a docile workforce just to increase those in power's stature.
So how can we beat this cycle? How can we beat the "recession depression"? My advise, get educated and cop on! The economy; what is this but a mere number system? Read what you like, listen to what you like, watch what you like. Most importantly, spend what you like and borrow what you like, because those numbers are not worth your emotional happiness.
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Economic crisis and graduates
With Debatewise now more focused towards students and young people I hope we can not only encourage debate but also play some role in persuading younger people that politics is worth paying attention to. Debates involved in politics do not just affect some faraway place called the ‘Westminster village’ but has a major influence on everyone’s lives. This is unfortunately all the more true with the economy in nose dive as it is graduates who are feeling the pinch as unemployment is growing fastest among 18-24 year olds http://www.guardian.co.uk/education/2009/jan/10/graduate-employment-crisis-rescue-package many seem to think that it is time to head back to education with large increases in applications for postgraduate degrees this year. All this seems particularly relevent to me as I will at some stage no longer be a debatewise intern and will need to find some paid employment, I do not think my telephone interview this morning for the NGDP (a pooled local government authorities in England and Wales graduate program) went particularly well, not really a surprise given my dislike of telephones.On the positive side this should mean what we are doing, particularly with the census, should go down well. It is all very well to be disinterested and not have a voice in the good times but in the bad its best to have as many ways of showing what your views are to the government as possible.
As part of this shift in focus Betony has Debatewise tweeting on twitter and from today ‘Debate Wise’ is looking for friends on facebook! This is probably the most ‘bottom up’ approach to gaining participation in the site possible, much more so even than contacting students unions and societies. I hope it meets with success.
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