Hubber Hubber
29th March 2006, 9:34 am
Yesterday’s Hubs Launch Event in Birmingham was interesting as much for the private conversations as the public messages. A wide variety of frustration and anger came my way from a range of people I spoke to, from concerns from sector suppliers that their business model was being undermined by public funds, to what I guess was annoyance that the brochure invite to “Find out how you can run your organisation more effectively” bore little relation to an event that was more an update and request for views on what the hubs are planning to do. And plenty of comment on wasted money both nationally and in the ’sub-regional consortia’, although some appeared based on inaccurate information.
The event got off to a bad start for me by the ICT Hub stand offering a free mouse mat, while the others were all providing information. Hardly an encouraging indicator of direction, but perhaps that was because today sees the separate ICT Hub launch event in London.
Enough of the negative. I was impressed by the comprehensive thought and prepation evident in the Governance hub workshop, even if my neighbour reckoned his organisation had already done everything they suggested.
And it was encouraging to learn that the Finance Hub, which had previously seemed to be purely focused on funding issues, was aiming to put resources into supporting existing funding advice networks and develop a community accountancy network. As another participant said, successful funding is also about strategic planning, financial management, monitoring and reporting. A slight shame that this has meant income generation issues are on the back-burner but getting the basics sorted before the ’sexy’ has got to be right.
Speaking of which, I heard that the word ‘hubber’, which could be a description of someone involved in hubs, means condom in Australia. Anyone want to confirm or deny?
For those not in the know, the 6 national hubs of expertise are: finance, ICT, performance, governance, volunteering and workforce development. See Professional Bodies page on VolResource.
A few key quotes to come in another blog post.
[tags]hubs of expertise, infrastructure, finance, governance, ICT[/tags]
March 31st, 2006 at 8:40 am
Forgive my lack of nettiquette but this is the first blog Ive ever read let alone replied to…
Lordie Lordie Im dismayed by the cynacism and negativity about change up and the hubs and the ‘the only way to do this is my way which is clearly better than the way you are doing it’ attitude. What is wrong with us? There are some great organisaitons out there but there are also some terrible ones…… whilst we might think we are getting everything right and have already done everything the hubs ( and others ) are advising us to do, We might just be wrong !! there may be new ways of thinking or learning to be had from networking with other organisaitons across the country, this can only be done by linking up with a national intitiative and having an open mind and being prepared to contribute to the larger good. If you think you have got it right then tell everyone and contribute to the debate, dont just be smug, ‘theres nothing you can tell me about it’ ….just doesnt cut the mustard!
The ratio of negative to positive in every single thing Ive seen in realtion to coverage of Change Up is about 80% - 20% Thats not good enough, its our programme and if we dont start making it work for us together we might as well give up and go home now. Remember its all about the clients, not about us and how we would like to see future structures. Right ….rant over onwards and upwards
April 3rd, 2006 at 5:50 pm
Welcome to the delights of the blog world! Blogs are generally places for personal viewpoints, and this is no exception - thoughts expressed here aren’t an ‘official’ line from VolResource.
I was surprised by the level of cynicism myself - I had thought that was my specialist area. Maybe some of it is down to a feeling that a ’sector elite’ is being formed, with the ear of government and plenty of cash, while others struggle. Not an entirely accurate picture, but not completely wrong either.