Enterprise discussion

Shout-out for Enterprise Thursdays

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Huge thanks to the whole of the Thursday Launchgrad group for all their ideas and for working with me to find out what Enterprise at HCA looks like.

I wanted to distill some of the ideas we’ve had around important things to think about around how we create our online professional identities.

So far, Vivian and David have showed us their very different artists websites, Lin showed us a website that she didn’t feel reflected her current practice and Kirstie shared her non-website more fluid based digital spaces, which link together her instagram presence, her blog and an online selling space.

What is great here is that the digital presences shown reflected different personalities and bodies of work. That’s perhaps our first distilled piece of wisdom:

  • Create an individual presence that reflects your practice and your personality.
  • Try to keep your digital space updated if possible, and if it isn’t possible, drop a note in the space which explains why or shares your awareness of this.
  • Occasionally search your name on a search engine, to see what this brings up.
  • Choose a platform that best suits your needs, balancing your technological competencies with time available and what you want to achieve.

We’re taking a break this week (because I’m off to London for an Learning and Skills Research Network meeting and dissertations call)

Thanks again to everyone sharing their thoughts. We meet next on the 21st March where we’re going to bring 5 objects that we’d like to see featured in a portfolio of practice and justify/discuss with the group.

All graduate associate members and current students at HCA welcome! Contact me for further details. Sarah

Save the date! Forthcoming Enterprise events

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I’m delighted to give recent graduates and current L6 students notice of two forthcoming Enterprise events. These are:

Social media for Creative Marketing – May 10th

Creating the jobs of the future – May 31st

to If you’re a recent graduate of Hereford College of Arts these are free to attend. Please email me to reserve a place.

There will be one further Enterprise event in May, plus our regular Thursday lunchtime drop-ins. And, as always, if you’d like any particular support please let me know and I’ll do my best to arrange a workshop here in college.

From video to vodcasts

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Huge thanks to Nick Brown for sharing his expertise with the Enterprise group yesterday – and also to our amazing SU President, Aimee Leggett, for her shark drop-in!

Nick visited us to talk about the use of video. He shared how different platforms all need different types of video – for instagram, a quick video snapshot is great, but if you want to keep your video, then uploading to Youtube is a better solution.

However, if you’re wanting to blog/journal using video, you’ll need to think more about the kind of content you produce. A video blog might still be filmed on your phone but time and thought will be put into editing and forward-facing your content.

Nick’s top tips for filming useful and usable content are:

  1. Buy a proper audio mike for your phone – poor audio content will let you down
  2. Once you’ve recorded your video, download it to your PC or Mac and use a software package to edit
  3. Buy a tripod. A smartphone tripod costs little and will make a huge difference
  4. Think about lighting – try to put lights above and behind you if you can
  5. If you really want to look professional use more than one camera

I can also proudly report that we now have a shared hashtag on twitter and facebook – #LaunchgradHCA

Huge thanks to the group for coming up with such a great name.

As always, if you’re a recent graduate of HCA and want to get involved or contribute to these discussions please email Sarah.

Because it’s reading week, there will be no Enterprise discussion group next week, but we will meet on the 14th between 12.30-1.30 in QBSR to discuss ‘small objects: creative alternatives to the business card’