5 things I love about conferences

1. New ideas.

2. Being inspired by amazing thinkers.

3. Not having to think about what food to take for lunch.

4. Freebies. The kids were excited to score a new brain each (the squeezy toy advertising some working memory rehabilitation product).

5. Hearing how people are still reading the single article I've had published. It's just over nine years since it was published so I thought it was probably dead as a doornail by now. But it got a couple of mentions. One presenter told me when I introduced myself to her that she first found it only a couple of months ago and it gave her a bit of a lightbulb moment for her own thinking. That's kind of cool. I think I should write something else for publication. Think I can manage it before I go on leave....maybe....

Job application review

For the past few days I've been reviewing some job applications for some interviews I'm participating in later this week.

My employer has decided in recent times to ditch the traditional government job application method of addressing a large number of key selection criteria in favour of a two page summary of the applicant's work experience and how it is relevant to the job being applied for.

At first impression, this sounds pretty good, but when you have (or think you have) lots of experience, it can be challenging to condense it all into two pages of summary.

What to do about this problem, I hear you ask? Well, one of the applicants for this job has been very creative. They've used the ampersand sign (&) instead of the word "and" every single time the word comes up in their application. It seems like there are hundreds of them in the two pages.

And prior to or post every single ampersand, they've omitted to use the space bar.

And they've used single line spacing and the smallest possible font size they can get away with. If it was any smaller, I'd need a magnifying glass to read it.

They also have an annoying habit of writing incredibly long sentences. Think paragraph length (4-5 lines at least) for every sentence.

I hate long sentences. Short sentences work. They get the message across. See?

I have to do some written notes on each application as part of the shortlisting process. But I think I'll have to find something more constructive to say than "overuse of &" and "underuse of space bar."

Today...

I was contacted by a journalist from a major Brisbane newspaper to be a source for a story she is writing on the continuing saga of my employer's payroll stuff-up. Last year I wrote a letter to the editor of the newspaper about my pay issues that I didn't expect would be published. But they did publish it and she found my contact details from that.

I spoke to her on the condition that my name would not be used in anything they publish in the paper. So I hope she is an honest and ethical journalist.

She said the story is being published in tomorrow's edition of the newspaper. I'll have to do a quick check of the newspaper tomorrow when I get to work to make sure she hasn't outed me....

Not that I said anything too rude about my employer, in the end. I'm paying back the money I owe them, so that is good. My tax for the last financial year isn't yet sorted, so that is not so good. I tried to sound as neutral as I could. I hope it worked.

I won something!

I didn't win the Venn diagram competition, but the letter I wrote to the newspaper won the Courier Mail's "letter of the month" competition for October.

I still haven't actually seen it in print but my parents have cut it out of the paper, as I thought they would do, so they might send it to me. There was a little spiel saying I had won in the letters to the editor column of yesterday's paper. I missed that too, because I didn't bother buying the paper (even though I usually do get the Saturday one). I thought yesterday's headline looked a bit dull.

So I have won a "leather compendium" valued at $80. Not sure exactly what that is. I might go and google it.

Letter to the editor

Apparently I had a letter to the editor published in Wednesday's Courier-Mail.

Although we have bought a few weekday editions lately (not our usual practice) so we can make little wooden dinosaurs, we didn't buy Wednesday's paper so I haven't yet seen the letter in print to see how much they edited what I sent to them. I thought nothing happened when I hit submit on the bottom of the form I wrote it on so for me it was quite a surprise to discover that it had reached anyone at all. The first I knew of it was when my sister sent me a text yesterday to say she'd seen it.

Probably if I had followed my usual rule of waiting a while before hitting submit/send, I wouldn't have sent it. I'm still not sure it was the right thing to complain about, since it concerned my employer and the ongoing issues it is having paying its staff. I have in fact been overpaid and therefore there are others in a worse position than me. I was just annoyed that they (the journalists, anyway) seem to be implying that overpaid staff are trying to rort the system and get away without paying the money back. Some might, but not me, I've been trying to pay the money back for the last five months, but I'm not getting far.

My mother thought the letter was good though. I don't think many other people would have noticed it so I don't think I'll bother trying to track down the paper myself.