It was a another wonderful day of touring, this time at Kings College London. There are four Thames-side campus locations within a square mile and I was given the opportunity to visit 3 of the sites. The Strand Campus has the most amazing location next to Somerset House and the Waterloo Bridge. A walk across the Waterloo Bridge gives you a fantastic view of the London Eye and the action of the Thames.
My extensive tour was taken with Ian Hughes, Deputy Conference Services Manager and Farnaz Ayrom-Walsh, Senior Event Coordinator. The full name of their department is Conferences & Timetabling Services or CATS. How fantastic is that name! I was also happy to find a native Californian in Farnaz who grew up in the Los Angeles area and moved here three years ago. I knew we had the same accent!
I found the CATS department to be setup very similar to my own at Loyola. Their Timetables department is equivalent to our Events Scheduling Office who reserve all non-academic meeting spaces. I could not imagine having this office separate from my department but I am not quite sure how common that is among universities in either the U.K. or the U.S.. Kings has something like 200 meeting spaces - so wonderful! They do not have much storage space so groups typically use the in-house equipment for their meeting. They also have 3-4 Event Coordinators responsible for coordinating internal and external events which is also similar to my department. Something I was interested to learn was that ALL groups (including internal) are charged for meeting space. I am sure many of us would like to follow this model, right?
Please visit their website to learn more about the CATS department and services: www.kcl.ac.uk/kcvb
Principle's Dining Room
Guy's Campus
Trish, What an experience - thanks for sharing! What has occurred to me as I read your posts is how similar many conference operations are (even across the pond) yet we all talk about how "different and unique" ACCED-I members are. Maybe there's a lesson here -- open our eyes a little wider to see the connections of how we are alike instead of different and what we can learn from each other? (Isn't that one of the key outcomes of this experience -- what we can learn from each other, i.e. networking -- the benefit ACCED-I members say is the most important value they get from their membership?) I loved the ESL, the photos. One of the most interesting outcomes of your experience though is that there are so many universities/colleges in London that you can visit while on your exchange, How many cities in the USA have multiple higher ed institutions in the same city that Vanessa can visit next year by taking the tube? Geograpy does make a difference in some instances. Enjoy the rest of your visit and again, give Vanessa and VenueMasters our regards and thanks. Many thanks to LMU for supporting your visit and the pilot program. Deb
ReplyDeleteI absolutely agree Deb. I was thinking the same thing with regards to the number of universities Vanessa or any other Venuemastes guest could make while visiting Los Angeles or any other city. Definitely something to consider when we put together our final document.
ReplyDeleteIf I have an opportunity to travel around the world. The first place that I wanna go is King's College,Cambridge.
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