Pick me!

Last week I spotted what I think could be the perfect job for me, titled Content Partnerships Executive, Communities it requires the post holder to manage & build relationships with the users of the BBC Worldwide Ltd’s channels on MySpace & YouTube and with the teams at those companies. So how could I turn down the opportunity of a) working for part of the BBC again and b) having the opportunity to legitimately be on MySpace & YouTube during work hours? I couldn’t, so instead I sat down and completed the application form, and an even bigger step, submitted it!

So now the waiting period commences, for anyone who has ever applied for a job at the BBC or one of it’s limited companies you’ll know that the waiting can be anything from a week to 8 weeks before the short listing is completed and applicants are called for interview. So rather than sitting back twiddling my thumbs and constantly checking my email inbox for a rejection email I thought I’d do something productive in the hope that I will be called to interview. Step one is this blog post, if nothing else I hope it demonstrates my ability to write for the web (one of the requirements for the post), the second thing I’m going to do is conduct a survey. Once I’ve decided on the questions I’ll post a link and hope that you’ll all help me out by completing it.

What I’m hoping is that if I get the opportunity to interview for this job that I can go into the interview backed by some personal research that will help demonstrate my awareness of the communities & channels that I’d be involved with, and maybe help with the inevitable interview question “What do you think BBC Worldwide Ltd needs to do to engage better with the channel end users?”

So here’s to crossed fingers & opportunities!

Update:
OK so I've made a quick survey with www.surveymonkey.com and it would be great if you could take a few minutes to complete it and help me get the role should I be lucky enough to get an interview.

Click Here to take survey

Many thanks!

Two in a row!

Yes MK SNO!zone has been pretty much spot on two, yes TWO sessions in a row! Although there're still too many gas pipes for my liking, they had another excellent kicker which I managed to session for a good 2 hours before my legs couldn't take it anymore.
Even more impressive was the fact the the run-in and landing were still in excellent condition after those 2 hours! I'm not sure who MK have building their park at the moment but it looks as though they're able to build the park well in advance of the session so that the kickers are nicely iced in.

I was quite surprised that a Thursday night was as busy as it was but I do wonder if that's because they had girly coaching on the nursery slope so that there were a lot of boyfriends who'd been dragged along, or if there were just loads of blokes around hoping to hook up with a girly rider. Unfortunately due to work issues for the other half we didn't make it up as planned on Friday night so I can't compare it to a normal Friday. Thursday was definitely busier than the Pink Session we went to last week.

I don't want to get my hopes up too much that MK is going to become a regular haunt but I do think that if the set-up includes a kicker and they keep building them to a similar spec of the last 2 weeks that I'll try and head up a bit more regularly than once every 18 months!

Getting ready to wax

Getting ready to wax
Originally uploaded by plasticsnow

As I'm planning on snowboarding at Milton Keynes tonight I want to make sure my board is ready to go. It's a bit dry after last week (indoor, man-made snow strips wax quicker than mountain snow), so I've given it a good coating of Zardoz topped off with One Ball Jay hot wax.

I'll scrape it all off before I head off but for now the wax is soaking into the pores in the base ready to give a super speedy session tonight!

MK SNO!zone, you surprised me!

Well having just done a quick search I can't find a post for when I last properly visited MK SNO!zone (or Xscape as it used to be known), but apart from the SnowTour Boardercross comp there in September last year I remember driving up there on 12th May 2007 and leaving after 1 run (due to a rubbish ungroomed park slope & poor staff manners)! So it's been a while!

We decided to give it another go because this year's SnowTour comp series kicks off in 2 weeks at Halifax and Jools wanted to give me the chance to get some practice in before hand so that I don't repeat my amazing superman off the kicker there!


I have to say that I was actually impressed! I commented to a couple of friends while I was there that it almost felt that I wasn't at MK but at another slope instead. My first shock of the night occurred because they were actually pre-grooming the park slope before the session started. I'm not sure if this is because last night was supposed to be the Pink Sessions event or if it's now a regular thing that they are doing there but it did mean that when the session started at 7pm the park slope was perfectly groomed (and the non-park slope was in really good nick too).

The lay out was a good mix of toys including ride on box type rails, 2 of the latest craze (corrugated gas pipes!) & a nice kicker with 2 take offs, with the bigger being about a 15 foot table.

My main reason for going was to work on my jumps and keep the momentum of beating my kicker fear prior to Halifax's Big Air comp on 5th July. I managed to get a really good session on it working some straight airs & grabs and even managed to stick some frontside 180s (not very pretty to look at because I need to suck my knees up more) but they're a start.

The one downside to it all would be that the run-ins to the toys didn't hold up that well. One thing that I really like about Tamworth is that they close half way through the freestyle session to re-groom. Now I know that people might not like that at MK but I really think that it would be good if they had a staff member working all through the night to ensure that run-ins & outs are kept perfect through the full 4 hour session and not just the first hour or so. I personally wouldn't mind at all if the kicker got closed for 15 minutes or so to un-rut it, as that way I'd get to ride it all night rather than leaving at 10pm because it's starting to get too dicey to ride safely.

Anyone that's spun off a snow kicker will know that trying to spin when there's a giant groove in the snow is asking for an edge catch, you don't mean to do it, it just happens and for someone like myself who's just building jumping confidence it's not worth persevering with because one good slam is all it takes to knock you back a few weeks in your progression at the very least and at worst injures you and puts you out for a while.

Back to the positives though, I really enjoyed myself, I feel like a achieved a lot and am actually planning on heading back there next week for more practice.

So well done MK, you've convinced me that you can put on a good park night and that I should spend some more money by coming back again....please don't let me down on Thursday!

While I was there I also tried to stream live from the slope, unfortunately the signal wasn't that great so I only shot the one vid....maybe I'll try again next week to at least get a shot of the set-up and a run down!

Back-story

If you're interested in the back-story to the post below then check out this interview that Documentally does with Kosso of Phreadz

Interesting discussion...

....so there's a bit of a "conversation" going on at the moment, Seesmic has an embeddable video player which if I've embedded it right will thread the entire conversation not just my post.
The question is do I have the right to embed it here. or in other conversational locations or should it only stay in Seesmic in which case.....what's the point of having it?



and here's the thread that started it all!

Proof reading

Why is it that I feel the urge to correct people's spelling & grammar when they ask me to check out their website or a document? I always try and be polite about it when I add comments/corrections to the Word document or drop them an email with the details, but I suppose I'm wondering if this is an OK thing to do.

In my work environment I'm much more comfortable about doing this, I think that's because it's a professional document that I'll be reviewing and so it's important that everything is as correct as possible (especially when it might be sent/reviewed by a client).

So I suppose what I'm really questioning is whether it's OK to contact individuals about their personal sites and point out an error that I've spotted, or should I learn to sit on my hands and let it wash over me?

This post can also be found on my Vox blog which I'll be using for shorter, slightly more random brain dumps than this blog