An ok seminar
I went to a Business Link seminar this morning. Yep, they actually held an event in my area! It was on ‘online trading’ which sounded like a reasonably general subject and something that I could pick up some tips on. Actually it turned out to be for a very specific audience – shops who want to set up an ecommerce shop. The three people I sat nearest to didn’t fall into that category either.
It was quite an interesting seminar. Completely uninteractive which meant concentrating turned out to be quite difficult by the end, though the two presenters did do very well at talking for three hours. Some useful facts and figures which might come in handy at some point.
What I wasn’t so keen on was the paperwork at the end. After three hours of being talked at my brain had turned to mush so the task of creating an ‘action plan’ was a bit beyond me at that point:
What three issues have you identified from the seminar? Erm, I don’t run a shop, I’m not that great at concentrating and I’m really quite peckish?
What three actions are you going to take and when by? I don’t know, the seminar wasn’t directly applicable to what I do…
What three things can Business Link do to help and when do you want us to contact you? Leave me alone, I want to go home, mull over the seminar and, even more importantly, have some lunch!
All a bit full-on in the paperwork department if you ask me. Will make me think very hard about anything Business Linky again.
Bureaucracy gone bonkers
I went to a seminar last night. It was on intellectual property and ecommerce law. Very useful stuff, if a bit dry and powerpointy. The most memorable thing about the evening though (apart from the crunchy chocolatey thing in the buffet) was the form filling.
It was a 2 hour seminar but preceded by 30 minutes of form filling. What’s that all about? Not the fault of the organisation that was running the seminar. It’s because they had got funding for the training so had all sorts of things to comply with. There were four forms and had to be explained step by step because you needed to know the right code to put in each box! It was painful to say the least.
Now who on earth dreamt that up? Is it somebody’s job to devise this kind of thing? I guess it must be. Do you think they’re amusing themselves by seeing how many different forms they can force innocent people to fill in?
