Career Canterbury Tales - How to turn your career from flat to phat

Date: Thursday 30th August 2007
Time: 6:30pm to 9:30pm
Speakers: Owen King, Mark Bloodworth and Marc Holmes
Venue: Davidson Building, 5 Southampton Street, London WC2E 7HA - Directions and Google Map Location
Tickets: £15.00 (BCS Members), £20.00 (Non-BCS Members) - Book your tickets now!

Synopsis

Are you tired of groundhog Monday-everyday days at work? Have you ever wondered what life would be like if you could just reach the precipice and take a peek at what's on the other side? What about all those burning career questions you've been dying to ask but stay silent because talking about them with colleagues will trigger the booby trap of work gossip?

The IT industry is one of the most opportunity-rich industries and yet the breadth of choices can make finding out what you want to do next incredibly tricky and confounding. This ProNetworking event invites three speakers, each with an exceptional record of technical and professional excellence, to share with you their journey of how they got to where they are and how they plan to get to where they want to go next. The speakers have been partly chosen because of the corporate entities to which they belong, ranging from Microsoft, to BBC Worldwide to Citigroup, to provide insights and home truths about the varying cultures of place and employer. This is your chance to try on a job for look, feel and fit by learning from the experiences of those who have travelled along the labyrinthine path before you. This is your chance to do some serious pronetworking in a unique and open forum among friendly and like-minded professionals.

Agenda

• 18.15 – Registration
• 18.45 – Individual speaker introductions
• 19.15 – Questions and answers
• 20.00 – Buffet and networking
• 21.30 – Event ends

Speaker Profiles

Owen King

Owen King has worked at Citi Markets and Banking for three years, dealing with everyone from hyperactive traders to back-office clerks and senior managers.

Since joining the bank's technology graduate programme, Owen has undertaken a number of roles including software development, business analysis and most recently strategy and planning. He's also been involved with efforts to increase the effectiveness of communication within the firm and sits on a council tasked with improving Citi's graduate recruitment.

Owen graduated from the University of Southampton in 2004 with a MEng in Electronics.

Mark Bloodworth

Mark Bloodworth is the Chief Solutions Architect at BBC Worldwide, where he leads a team responsible for architecture and systems analysis. His time in this role is split between technical strategy, architecture and team management. Mark's background is in software development and design, specialising in web applications and integration. Most of his career has been focussed on using Microsoft technologies, especially .NET, with a little Java thrown in for good measure.

Outside work, Mark is the author of nspectre, an open source validation framework for .NET, keeps a blog at remark.wordpress.com and dabbles in intriguing technologies.

Marc Holmes

Marc Holmes is an Architect Evangelist for the Microsoft Technology Centre at Thames Valley Park in the U.K. where he specializes in architecture, design, and proof of concept work with a variety of customers, partners and ISVs. Prior to Microsoft, Marc most recently led a significant development team as Head of Applications and Web at BBC Worldwide.

Marc is the author of "Expert .Net Delivery with NAnt and CruiseControl.Net" (APress) and maintains a blog at http://www.marcmywords.org.

Booking Details

Tickets are priced at £15 for members and £20 for non-members. Prices include VAT.

Places are limited, so book early to avoid disappointment: http://www.ypg.bcs.org/events/tickets/index.php?eventId=8

For more information, contact Portia Tung.

Fancy ProNetworking Outdoors?

Many event participants have found that attending several consecutive YPG events is the best way to start growing their network. It gives them a genuine chance to turn strangers into familiar faces. Once you’ve signed up for Three Career Canterbury Tales, why not also join us on a boat cruise on the Thames? To celebrate summer in the city with the YPG, go to: http://www.ypg.bcs.org/events/other/boattrip.php.