Weird thing happened today.

In amongst all the ordinary induction I've had to fit in, moving the Dalek back to the fayre, and playing at Dr Who some more (not sure I could look another jelly baby in the eye), I went to a lunchtime thing on complexity in learning and teaching. Which was fine except the presenter (a visiting academic from another university) was doing a rather hands-on and interactive session with the 30 of us attending. (Cards to scribble on, sharing ideas, you know the kind of thing).

At clearly point it was clear that she wasn't happy with the plain list of audience generated ideas/thoughts/words that she was getting on the screen and really wanted a mind map. Unfortunately, I'd already blown my cover and she'd seen the mind map I was generating on my bit of card. So I optimistically thought it would be easy enough to run Inspiration (a mindmapping tool on the screen and do what she wanted). Only Inspiration wouldn't run for some networky reason. But PowerPoint worked and I knew you could do a similar thing there, if less simply.

Anyway, I ended up mindmapping her session live in front of everyone using PowerPoint and not being very sure about the topic of complexity in the first place. And without the ability that I have in other arenas to 'hide' what I'm doing until it's presentable. But it was a good challenge and I felt as though it went well and it seemed to go down well.

In fact so well the presenter was wondering out loud as I did a tour round the Library for her, whether she could headhunt me! That was nice as I don't think I'm ever likely to be actually headhunted. Not sure the world of uni librarians is like that.

But highlight of the day was helping move the Dalek back to the Library at the end of the day. Having had to move it four times now I finally made those running the show give up on their "no one's allowed to molest it or get inside it" (fair enough really as it's obviously precious and a very generous loan from the Faculty). So I got to be a Dalek for 10 minutes - and yes - all the rumors you may have heard from those involved with Dr Who are true - it's horribly uncomfortable. 'specially for someone my height. Hot, cramped, limited visibility, a killer on the leg muscles. But marvellous fun!

A not to be missed moment.