The Children's Media Conference

Last week I trundled over to Sheffield for the 8th annual Children's Media Conference. I'd heard about the conference just after it had finished last year and I still don't know how I hadn't heard about it before seeing as it's almost on my doorstep. Judging by the website it looked like quite an impressive event full of networking opportunities with big shots in the Children's Media industry but the tickets were beyond my budget and I would have to sell an arm, a leg, possibly a few of my teeth and all of my hair to afford a full price ticket with all the trimmings included. Instead I decided to offer my services as a volunteer for the duration of the conference.  I think it was probably the best decision I've made all year. Not only did I get to attend this amazing event for free and have my accommodation, travel and most of my meals paid for me but I also made a lot of fantastic new friends. I also discovered that I have some pretty nifty leadership skills  that had been lying dormant waiting for such an opportunity to arise.

I received an email a few months ago saying I had been designated the role of  Technical Director which sounded quite impressive but I didn't really understand what that would actually involve until I got there for my training the day before the conference started. I soon discovered that I would be put into one of four showrooms to oversee and explain the running order of the individual sessions that took place in my allocated showroom. This meant that I was to blame if everything went horribly wrong or even if something went a little bit wrong....no pressure at all then!

I had two technicians, two runners and up to six speakers in any one session  and half an hour between each session to get everyone out and get a new wave of people in. This meant that I had to ensure all the speakers were miked up asap, that they knew about how tight we had to keep it and that they stopped talking when they should (aided by our wonderful traffic light piece of tech that was placed on their table) and that they read out the house keeping notes at the start and end of their session. I also had to make sure we had the right number of chairs and water bottles on stage, the techies had connected everything they needed to connect and knew the running order of the slides and videos, decide when we were good to start the session, let everybody know that we were starting the session, make sure the opening music was playing and then get the runners to open the doors to let the hoards of people dash in. For the busy sessions (there were a few) I had to make sure that people didn't leave empty chairs in between one another which meant that either myself or one of the braver runners would go down to the stage and ask everybody to shuffle up to the end of the rows. This happened beautifully some of the time and less beautifully at other times. Then there was the Q&A sections where I had to make sure my runners got the mics to the people who wanted to ask questions and then when it all finished I had to make sure everybody got the hell out as soon as possible, do a quick whip round to make sure there was no rubbish left in the isles and then get the next lot in to do it all over again. It was a bit mad but after the second session my smile was less forced and I actually relaxed into the role and by the time we had wrapped at the end of the two days I had been told that I had done a very good job by more than one person.

When I wasn't screaming on the inside and I had clocked off for the day there were the networking parties to attend in the evenings. This mainly involved taking full advantage of the free alcohol that was being forced into my hand at regular intervals, fighting my way into the path of the staff who were making the rounds with the canapé trays, chatting drunkenly to people who had interviewed me the week before for a job that I didn't get and dancing around like a loon to Thriller. It was all good fun...well it was before one of the straps on my dress broke and I had to keep tucking my dress around my bra strap every five seconds so as not to expose myself to the world. Apart from that it was all amazing.

To wrap it up here are a few personal highlights from the event:

• Meeting Ben Faulks aka Mr Bloom but not realising who he was until half way through my conversation (he does a much better job at disguising himself than Clark Kent ever did)
• Picking up a business card at the end of one of my sessions that had been dropped on the floor only to find out that it was Ian Prince's business card (he used to be the editor of Newsround back when I was still in the target age range to watch the show without people telling me I should possibly grow up and he is somewhat of a hero of mine. I always thought it was cool that he had a very similar surname to Matthew Price who was one of the presenters at the time). I'm thinking of framing this wondrous piece of cardboard and putting it on the mantelpiece!
• Having the Head of Cbeebies as one of the speakers in one of my sessions and chatting to her at the end. She is a lovely person and she told me to get in contact with her when she comes back from her holiday in a fortnight.
• Getting some good hints and tips from people about breaking into regular work as a freelancer at the BBC.
• Sitting in front of Anna Home at the key note speech thinking that it was such a surreal moment in my life.
• Realising that a girl who I previously worked with for a big event with CBBC and Cbeebies at the start of the year actually used to live with my ex house mate for three years before she moved in with me...it's a very small world!
• Meeting some amazing fellow volunteers and making lots of new friends. 

The whole four days I was in Sheffield was such an amazing experience and the city itself is truly beautiful and nothing like how it's portrayed in The Full Monty. I had very little sleep whilst I was there and despite having a rather sticky bathroom floor in my Travelodge room and missing nearly all the tennis matches that Andy Murray won I cannot wait to do it all again next year! 

Carry on Temping

I'm at a tricky stage in my freelancing career where I'm starting to get my name known by production companies in the North West and people are asking for my assistance on set and in the production office. Unfortunately the jobs aren't for long enough periods for me to pack in my temping-on-the-side just yet. The trouble is I get bored easily when I'm not working and also slightly panicky so if a temping agency phones me during a quiet period asking me to work I will instantly say yes.

At the moment I'm in a period where I'm temping for a couple of weeks to tide me over until I journey down near Luton for 10 days to run around Whipsnade Zoo with a bunch of overly excitable kids as part of an event put on by the guys from Aardman (read more about that here). Originally this temping contract was only going to be for a couple of days which is exactly what I wanted but then it got extended and extended some more and now I'm here for a whole 3 and a half weeks (and dashing around the country on Saturdays to work on Dickinson's Real Deal). I do this until the 30th May then I travel down south on the 31st, pick up a hire car and work for 10 days solidly missing all the Jubilee bank holidays as I go. It works out that I have just 5 days off in the period between 3rd May - 10th June whereas most people with normal jobs will have had a total of 15.

I need to get me some of these mittens made by Jennifer Westwood

I'm not complaining and I wouldn't have it any other way. It's really nice to be busy but what started as temping for a few days to stop my brain from shutting down completely between freelancing jobs has snowballed out of control and I'm left feeling that perhaps I should start saying no to these pesky temping agencies that phone me up to work all the time. The major down side is that I've had three production companies phone me in the meantime asking if I can do ad hoc days of work with little to no notice (one phoned me up at 09:40 one morning asking if I could be in Liverpool by 11am!) and I've have had to turn them all down due to me not keeping myself available for such eventualities. If the work had been longer than a day I would obviously pack in my temping job in a flash but this particular agency has been very good to me in the past and the people I'm working with at the moment are all very lovely. I'm always the first person they ask for when they need a spare pair of hands so I don't want to piss them off by leaving them stranded because they will just go out and find another favourite temp and when I'm going through another dry work patch they won't be there to help me out with my rent and my bills and more importantly fuel my alcohol and cigarette addictions.

When I finish my manic working stint in a month's time I'm having a week off and bumming around London for a bit. Hopefully by the end of this spell I will have sorted myself out and shall rise to greet the dawning of a new era...in which my tv and temping work come together in a great and glorious future!*

* Obviously I would rather be in a position where I can ditch the temping altogether, I just really wanted to throw a Lion King reference in there.

My First Ever Invoice

On Friday I created my first ever invoice for actual paid work within the industry. I almost feel like an adult who trades her services for a monetary value or something ridiculous like that and it feels absolutely bloody a-maze-ing! After four years of earning very little in this industry I was beginning to think that being able to make a living from working in the biz was a complete and utter myth. Now I have a bit of paper (which is hopefully the first of many) to tell me that it can actually be done. I think I might even frame it and put it up on the wall.

As super temp of the century (these are other people's words, not mine) I have seen and churned out a fair few invoices in my time. It is a boring and monotonous job and not very fun at all, especially when you get to see how much companies charge for their services in comparison to how much they give you in return for being their slave girl. However, when you're creating invoices for yourself, it is a rather daunting but exhilarating task, especially if it's on the back of your first properly paid freelancing gig within the industry you actually want to work in. Anything could go wrong, you're calculations could be out so you double and triple check just to be on the safe side whilst all the time thinking "I can't believe I'm actually being paid a decent wage for this". Then there's the issue of how to plan your referencing system. Even in my long and wonderful years of admin based roles, most of the time I just have to make do with whatever referencing system is already in place but when you have to start one from scratch it's a whole different story. Then there's the layout to think about and the potential typos to avoid and the formal business lingo you have to adhere to and a million and one other things that you've never really worried too much about before when churning out invoices but when it becomes personal then it can take hours to do just the one.

So now my first ever invoice has been typed up and sent off and I feel a little throb of victory coursing through my veins at the whole process. All I need to do now is wait to be paid and then have a nice long chat to Her Majesty's Revenue and Customs about how to deal with tax and National Insurance issues which I am not looking forward to. Things like that confuse the hell out of me and I'm just very glad that it just so happens that my first paid solo freelancing gig happened after April and not before.