Day Two of COT conference....

 Awoke after 3and a half hours sleep to a bright sunny morning again - and the news that the northwest was worried about drought (3 days sun in a row after months of wet weather and even floods not that long ago in Cumbria!).

It was an early morning start as Sarah and I were presenting our seminar at 8.30am (online identity, reputation and professional practice). What we anticipated being a poorly attended session, competing with sun, the beach and the Unison Party of the night before turned out to be a well attended session that created discussion with plenty of question and what appeared to be a positive shift in some towards creating their own online identities. Many left with the promise (or threat?!) of googling both Sarah and myself to consider our online presence and reputation (let's hope we practice what we preach!!).

After we finished we wandered down to the beach for a well deserved ice cream and met with Hassan and Zoe from COT and spent a really pleasant half hour or so sitting in the sun and chatting about a variety of issues around professional and educational issues. Then back inside for a look at the poster exhibitions etc.
Now. it is a known rule that you can't go to the seaside and not eat fish and chips, so at lunch we abandoned the queues for sandwiches and went to a little fish and chip shop at the sea front and indulged ourselves before heading back to the Plenary session where merit awards, Fellowship awards and Honorary Fellowship awards were given to deserving recipients - including a merit award for Jane Clewes from the North Staffordshire Combined Healthcare Trust who has had involvement with our team at the university for a number of years as a placement educator and visiting practitioner/lecturer on many occasions - Congratulations Jane!
The Elizabeth Casson Memorial Lecture was delivered this year by Dr Avril Drummond from the University of Nottingham whose message can be summarised as " todays treatment is yesterday's research" urging all occuaptional therapists to become more research active to enhance and increase the evidence -base of the profession.

Sarah and Jackie then went to deliver their poster discussion session so I took the opportunity to visit the Brighton Pavilion and have a short walk through the Lanes and the North Laine. Brighton is certainly a very cosmopolitan and relaxed place with a great diversity of people - I could people watch there for days and not get bored! Unfortunately an hour or so was all I could spare. Eventually we managed to get everyone from the team together for a jug of Pimms on the beach once the conference had finished for the day. In discussing our experiences so far of the conference it is worth noting that:
a) if the future of the profession is in the hands of the students that delivered the College-led session of student papers (including our 2nd year student Jason Vickers) then the future looks very rosy indeed. Their breadth of thinking and use of theory was outstanding
b) that the world of OT is a very small one indeed!
c) networking opportunities are the backbone of the conference experience - but beware - your past can catch up with you (see (b) above)!

I decided that I was too tired to go out for a meal with the rest of the team so stayed behind and sat watching the sea for an hour or so - then bumped into a colleague who had also stayed behind so we decided to find somewhere to eat together. On the way to a chosen destination, esteemed colleague and friend was "pooped" on from a great height by a seagull. Funniest thing ever!!!! Was laughing so hard that was unable to help with the explosion that had hit practically every surface on said colleague. Colleague not impressed!! So, after returning to the hotel and changing we started again - ever watchful of the skies above but managed to return with no further incident.

After a lovely meal, and a very pleasant evening I finally made it back to the hotel and packed in readiness for check out tomorrow and the final day of conference.