by Chris Newson on June 9, 2008
in TSR News
I’m now more or less mended following my stunt man antics the other week. Thanks for the get well soon thread much appreciated. I still haven’t ventured onto a bike I need to get a new helmet first but i’ll be back on the road in the next few weeks.
Some good meetings in the past week, the first with one of the largest academic university text book publishers, the second was with the Education Editor of Britain’s biggest selling broadsheet paper. Both of these very long standing, respected publishers are looking to make the content they have traditionally put in print as engaging as possible for today’s web savvy students. They are both doing all sorts of cool things for the online student audience but we could help them get more students in front of their resources through The Student Room and Coursework.info. We could help them package their material up in such a way that is sits alongside and promotes the writing of focussed user generated comment which is what TSR is all about. Lots of ideas were discussed some may stick and I’ll keep you posted if chats start getting more focussed.
Guitar hero is the latest out of office hours craze here at TSR HQ. We’ve completed easy level and CN whooped Satan, medium level is proving to be more challenging. Maybe we should have a TSR guitar hero championship, any competitors standing forward?
In the TSR pet thread in About ages ago it was suggested we get a pet here in the office. For the moment we have Quatchi who was kindly given to us by our web developers in Canada. He’s a mascot for the 2010 winter games in Vancouver. Now Quatchi has gone on tour. Super Moderator Fleur de lis has him first off then he will be passed from mod to mod over the next few months on a journey of discovery and excitement…. He might travel overseas, he might see and smell some ghastly things on his travels. Hopefully we’ll be able to show you photographic highlights of ‘Quatchi’s journey in Mod land’ soon.
- J
by Chris Newson on June 6, 2008
in TSR News
Those of you who may have read some of the entries from the last week or two might have seen we recently had our moderators meeting weekend in London – partly to say thank you to the mods for the great job they do on the site and partly to discuss the site and where it’s going to go over the next year.
Last year I was lucky to enough to be at the meet as a moderator. I found it a great experience – both from trying out some activities I’d never done before and in getting a better insight in to Acumen and TSR. It would be interesting to see how things played out this year.
The fun started on the Saturday as we all met near the London Eye for a birds-eye-view of London. It was good to meet up with many of the mods who I’d met before and good that there were some new faces there too. It was the first time since getting the job that I would meet most of these people, so I was a little apprehensive as to how it might feel. But the mods are a super bunch and if I’m honest it didn’t feel any different meeting them again.
The views from the top of the London Eye were amazing. Sadly CN decided to chicken out of going up having not liked it too much on a previous visit. He missed out on everyone catching up and several of us ‘landmark’ spotting. But we found him again when we reached the ground and headed off to Canary Wharf for paintballing!
We had Admins and Minis against Globals and Supers. CN was on the Globals and Supers team with a bright yellow vest on, so we could all see him more easily and shoot him. With many bruises and some sore legs I think everyone taking part had a great time. Some might say the Supers and Globals won, but there is no doubt in my eyes that it was the Admins and Minis who came away with the victory.
The evening was spent enjoying Eurovision (can you enjoy it?) at our hotel and as you might have expected and indeed some of you seen, our mods couldn’t keep off TSR for the evening and had a little fun on the site.
It was a great day which I think I can say everyone thoroughly enjoyed – I know I did. And although for some people it was quite a late night, I think we were ready for the hard work the next day. This for me would be where the real differences were. This time I knew all about what would be covered and would even have to lead parts of the discussion – I was very nervous about that!
So Sunday was all spent in the meeting. Thankfully we had the most amazing breakfast – anything you might ever want for breakfast seemed to be available. So it kept my energy levels up throughout the long day. We went through a huge amount of things on the day. It was very productive and brilliant to discuss everything with the mod team face to face. I was able to get a lot out of the day and get some decisions on plans we’ve been working on for a number of weeks. And in the end I didn’t feel all that nervous – hope things came across that way to those present 
So the day came to an end and people started to head off for their long journeys home hopefully taking with them a feeling we’d accomplished a lot over the weekend. I’m sure you’ll be seeing many of the things we discussed being introduced on the site soon. It really will be exciting to see how the site will develop and continue to move forward in the coming year.
- RK
