FOIMan reflects on going from student to master in a very short period.

As regular readers will know, this year has seen a big change in my career. Up until last Christmas I was an FOI Officer who did the odd bit of training in his spare time. In January I left that all behind to become a full-time freelance trainer and consultant.

One of the things that I was most nervous of as I looked down my list of bookings from Act Now Training at the start of the year (who still provide me with the vast majority of my work, and are a pleasure to work with) was delivering Act Now’s course for the British Computing Society’s formal qualification in Data Protection earlier in the summer. It was only a couple of years ago that I undertook the course as a student and it was a challenge then. I’ve written a piece for Act Now Training’s blog on making the transition from student to tutor.

As it happened I ended up delivering both the Data Protection and Freedom of Information courses, and in the end I thoroughly enjoyed tutoring it. I’m still learning – about training, as well as about my supposed areas of expertise – but that’s part of the fun, and working with students to get to grips with some of the more complicated and controversial aspects of information rights has certainly helped me. I’ll find out if it helped them when the exam results come out next month! But the feedback at the end of each course was thankfully really positive and most people seemed to enjoy it, even if they were nervous about the exam.

Next month I get back from my holidays, stepping out of the resort swimming pool and plunging straight back into a new set of BCS courses – this time in Belfast. So Northern Ireland readers contemplating a qualification in FOI or DP, please do consider joining me! If you’re not in Northern Ireland or can’t afford it this time, do take a look at Act Now Training’s course schedule and it would be great to see you on a future course. I’m also running a BCS course in-house for one of their clients, so if there are enough of you interested in your organisation, you may want to explore that.

I hope you’ll excuse the odd post like this one updating you on progress with my new business and – of course – plugging some of my courses. After all, they help keep me fed and watered so that I can provide other useful stuff here on the blog. And if you know anyone who is looking for training or help with data protection, freedom of information or records management, please do point them in my direction!