Our main focus at the moment is the MADE Festival in Sheffield at which we are exhibiting. Held over a couple of days in late September, MADE is the UK's leading Entrepreneur and Business event and offers visitors a spectacular range of business events and activity in and around Sheffield.
Festival highlight MADE for Success takes place on 24 and 25 September at Sheffield City
Hall. This centrepiece features a blend of business experts and leading entrepreneurs -
who will share their experience and knowledge on achieving success.
MADE for Success covers a wide range of topics, including Establishing and Developing a
Brand, Managing Business Growth, Leadership and Management, and Driving New Sales and we'll be taking notes as well as networking the life out of the event!
Paul McKenna is speaking on 24 September to provide an interactive show demonstrating
techniques to increase business performance and results. A truly unique opportunity to
hear a powerful new message from a world leader in human behaviour.
Other guest speakers include Musician, chef, entrepreneur and TV personality, Levi Roots,
Visionary entrepreneur and founder of School for Startups, Doug Richard, Digital entrepreneur and founder of SMARTA, Shaa Wasmund, SB.TV founder and sensational young entrepreneur, Jamal Edwards along with Fashion & design icon, Wayne Hemingway.
If you are going then make sure you come along and say hello to us on Stand 51.
In other news this week, we're sad to be saying goodbye to our two interns who have both been with us over the Summer.
Harriet is returning to Leeds Metropolitan University to complete the final year of her degree in Event Management and Toby is starting a Management Degree at Goldsmith's University in London.
They have both been an invaluable part of the team and we hope that they will both be back in their respective holidays. So in tribute to them, we've blatantly pinched this article from the Huffington Post which we think they need to read.
Unless you intend on squatting in disused houses after you graduate,
student life at university is the first and last time you'll enjoy such a
carefree lifestyle. Your second and third year is usually spent sharing
a house or flat away from campus with your friends and it's probably
going to be the weirdest experience of your life so far. Some people
have the time of their lives, some don't, and so if we're going to be
honest about this, student living is a lot more than house parties and
hot-boxing your landlord's conservatory.
Here are some of the less-than-great aspects to sharing a place with your fellow students...
1. Be prepared to see strangers' poo - a lot of it.
There is a clearly a gap in education, be it at home or at school, in
which correct flushing and cleaning after the use of a toilet was missed
out. I hate to break it to you, but the chances are that if you
yourself are not a culprit of leaving a caramel cave leading to the
u-bend after using the toilet, someone else in your house definitely
will be. Good luck bringing it up with your housemates too, it's not an
easy conversation. "So, um, have you ever considered fibre in your
diet...?"
2. There's an asshole that will only communicate
with you through passive aggressive notes - and they think you're an
asshole too. Unfortunately, this is me. I'm that asshole.
Instead of trying to convey messages face-to-face to every person in my
house, I find it easier to leave notes in places that everyone will see.
Sometimes these notes are friendly, like last month when I thanked
someone for cleaning the kitchen so well, to the less friendly, more
passive aggressive one I left by my housemate's door last week telling
him he was the loudest human being I've ever met and I hated living with
him. Notes aren't a good route to a peaceful house dynamic, so try to
stay on talking terms and generate some house rules that everyone agrees
to...and that you can then use against them when they start being
morons.
3. Sometimes people think it's funny to invite strangers in your house.
A course-mate of mine got deliriously drunk one night at a house party
and was found in an alley by some guys who then carried him to their
house where they let him sleep on their couch and put a bucket by his
head, just in case. That's a good story because he wasn't sick and made
his way home in the morning. But sometimes it doesn't work out so
well...
4. There will be someone totally incapable of sharing or considering others.
Whether it's getting them to actually do their share of the housework
or making them understand that washing-up liquid and toiletries don't
magically appear, some people just do not want to think of anyone else
but themselves. They steal your stuff, they use your plates and cutlery,
and they'll probably deny everything if you accuse them. It's no
surprise then that some students take revenge on these asshats.
A friend of mine told me,
"I have a housemate who absolutely refuses to contribute to the buying of commonly used household goods, whether it's hand-soap, toilet paper, or anything else that can and should be shared. He has a year's supply of soap, toilet paper, shampoo, fairy liquid, and every other utility stuff stockpiled in his room. [...] And yet he has a habit of using the things the rest of us share, without contributing to the cost. One day we realised we were losing an excessive amount of milk, so we decided to all chip in together and purchase strong laxative, poisoning our own milk supply.5. Hygiene - not everyone values it. You may be blessed with housemates who wash regularly, who clean their clothes and who enjoy a life less infested with microscopic bugs. But the sad fact is, at least one of your friends is secretly disgusting and you'll only find out when you live with them. A hotbed of grime and shame is the shower, as one student told me:
Initially we thought it was going to be rather amusing giving someone an excruciating amount of the squirts, but then it just ended up like some shitty Bay of Pigs. There were no ideological victors that day, only someone who kept really needing to poo."
"I was horrified to find that as I stepped into the shower one morning, the previous user had not removed his... 'seed' from the shower wall. Luckily, we had two showers."So buy some bleach, buy anti-bacterial everything, it could get pretty terrible.
6. Some people don't get privacy. Although I don't know anyone who leaves the door open
when they masturbate, everything after that seems to be permitted in a
student house. For example, there's going to be a night when, as you
start to fall asleep, you'll begin to hear groans and grunts and the
creaking of a bed...and you're going to have to find a way to sleep
without horrifying images in your head. But, as a student, the
likelihood is that you'll be groaning and grunting at some point too
(apparently) and, depending on the sort of people you live with, it
could go in a weird direction, as one student recounted to me:
"So, post-sex with my boyfriend, the condom falls on its way to the bin and the entire contents manage to empty themselves on my bed (ew, I know). I'm about to clean it up when my housemate knocks on the door and, before I can even reply, comes straight in. She'd just had an argument with her boyfriend and needed to talk. So she walks straight into my room, plonks her bum on the corner of my bed and lands right on the wet patch. Completely oblivious, she tells us her woes and I'm trying my best to keep a straight face and look concerned. It seemed to be working as she doesn't notice a thing. Until she got up. Her hands slowly moved to the back of her trousers and she looked confused and disgusted. I braced myself for confrontation but she said, "...Anyway, I'm off to my room. Thanks, guys. I needed that talk."
My housemate and I have never spoken about this incident since. Still, I'm pretty sure she knew what she sat in. Moral of the story, knock and wait."
7. Some people don't care how much noise they make, so try not to end up living with them.
The slamming of doors, the thudding footsteps of the childish housemate
who jumps down the stairs, the enthusiastic conversation at 2 o'clock
in the morning - these are the new instruments in the soundtrack of your
life. I have a housemate who seems unaware that arriving home at
midnight singing out of tune and monotone about blueberries is simply
not OK, he slams doors so hard the house shakes and he makes the kitchen
into the worst percussion band you've ever heard. If you like constant
noise, then go for it, live with those people and have a bunch of noisy
fun, but when exams are looming, when that deadline is staring you in
the face, let's hope everyone keeps it down when you need them to.
Maybe none of this will happen to you, maybe just some of it will. I know people who live with people precisely because
they're all noisy, or they're all messy, it's what draws them together
and they enjoy their loud, mangy lives. And I know others who've escaped
a crappy house and now live in a paradise. It's not all doom and gloom
but sometimes you need a dose of the reality that a lot of people want
to ignore. So my advice? Set down the ground rules, organise monthly
house meetings where everyone can moan and complain about problems in
the house, and, whatever you do, make sure you keep talking to each
other. Why? Because if you don't you'll never understand why someone in
your house decided to burn two fresh eggs in the box and leave them
charred on the patio. Seriously, what were they summoning?
So there you have it, a Student Guide for sure! Have a great week and we'll see you soon.
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