External Engagement Zone (28th January 2016)

Hannah Talbot (Chair), Anjit Aulakh, Kieran Reals, Flora Noble, Arun Aggarwal, and Emma Pruce in attendance.

Apologies from Ben Franklin, Jamie Furlong, Charlotte Hodgson, Nancy Bui, and Karen Lawrence.

Minutes approved from last meeting.

N/a

Did not receive student leader report from Enterprise Officer or Charities and Communities Officer. 

Report from Kieran (RAG President): Updates on The BIG Give and marketing; encouraging all to share and invite people to all events. 

Update on Student Activities Room, B40: room now available, key located, but donated games still broken or partly missing.

KR: Students find it difficult to organise and arrange events through SUSU as not an easy process; get directed to different members of staff and difficult on top of University schedule. Could there be a better version of a How-To guide as only accessed by committee members on The Hub.

AA: Can there be a RAG training session in all committee/student groups conferences in June? 

KR: RAG training given to CI zone. Can send around the powerpoint used and target each zone.

LinkedIn account for enterprise students as don't often use Facebook actively. 

Arun: Law faculty offered LinkedIn profile support at Careers Fair

Do we need to have workshops for students wanting to improve their LinkedIn profile? Already exist (LinkedIn Labs) - ask Tori (Sustainability Coordinator) for information/contact details. Can it be available for all committees?

HT: overview of current situation with Enterprise Labs - awaiting budget review and will have more info at end of Jan. Currently one funding pot planned with two sections available to apply from. Reviewed previous model for start ups and innovations. 

EP: Pop-Up update - encourage all to share the survey as closes on 15th Feb.

HT: Enterprise Officer plans to network with local universities and bring together a panel for enterprise and share best practice.

Overview of micro-volunteering; plans to have them take place on Concourse run by student groups after Student Volunteer Week until end of academic year. Need to plan process for this with Core Project team (HT, CH, EP and Nic Eldred (Student Activities Manager))

Student Volunteer Week coming (22nd Feb-28th Feb). Need V&F Halls Officers to share and help out at events/activities. Will be promoting with schedule closer to the time but wanting this year's to be a community based week of events so that participants see the impact they have made.

HT: Reach on social media not as good as expected. Need to invite more friends to like External Engagement page. Thoughts from floor on LinkedIn for External Engagement?

Arun: LinkedIn more substantial as receive email alerts, unlike Facebook notifications that you can ignore.

FN: Facebook is accessible and should still be used. Thinks there should be a database of opportunities as well, but understands this could be large workload.

All in agreement that LinkedIn is a good idea, but need to look into it further.

Handing out the Community Guide during Housing Week (1st-5th Feb), and around HoR in May.

Arun: Storage space - what is coming of this?

HT: Union has had meetings with architects but they cannot guarantee anything yet due to Union Master Plan.

Encourage collaboration between zones; can student groups/student leaders be more involved in this? YES! 

Encourage all students to nominate through #TheyCan or #ICan for Spring elections.

Next meeting between 29/02 - 04/03