A busy week after the holiday

Back at work for both of us and an amazingly busy time as ever.
John had lots of visitors and ended up doing a presentation on their biofuels project to the Crown Prince's brother which seemed to go down well. He also met the US Undersecretary and a number of commercial VIPs. The Copenhagen summit has meant that he's been in demand from the media to talk about Masdar's work in relation to sustainability, carbon neutrality and all the wonderful, world saving research which they are engaged with. Hopefully it will mean some good press and broadcast coverage for the Institute and some great profile raising.
We both went to the inauguration dinner for NYU's Abu Dhabi campus which was a glittering event held in the courtyard of the Emirates Palace and attended by key local dignitaries (I was gatecrashing but J counts very much as a dignitary!)and academics from around the world.
We were also at the Emirates Palace on Saturday night, as John's partners at ATIC, who he is working with on a semi conductors research project, very kindly offered us some tickets to one of the Abu Dhabi classics concerts. This was a fabulous event with the whole Dresden Philharmonic Orchestra doing Mozart and Bruchner. I have to say that the acoustics at the EP auditorium are nothing like as good as the Bridgewater Hall but I think we are pretty spoiled on that account. The entire Bridgewater Hall (according to my aunty Brenda who has been on the backstage tour) is on springs, so you feel the music resonating through your whole body, you don't just hear it with your ears. However, we are so lucky to get such great cultural events out here and were thrilled to be invited. Even though we were a bit overdressed as the original programme stated black tie which has clearly been changed as a dress code since it was printed! Still J always looks good in his wedding suit and the waiters at the EP wear lounge suits or silk embroidered jackets so there was no danger of anyone asking him for a cup of tea!
I have been very busy with lots of exciting things going on at college. Our press advertising campaign breaks on Sunday so I've been running around sorting the ads out with our agency partner wordsearch, who've come up with some great concepts to promote teaching as a career in the UAE. I've always had helpful and clever support people to get the media booked and the ads sorted in the past so I very much missed the likes of Becky, Gemma, Tracey, Jenny and Lie Yan when it came to the final stages of the getting the campaign put to bed. Next week I need to sort out creating the versions for the Arabic press which should be a challenge - no chance of proofing any of those myself! We also had to make sure that we had everything prepared for what I hope will be a huge influx of enquiries. However, the Admissions department were well ahead of me on that one and have everyone briefed and (hopefully as we're talking technology here) the web site updated and the on line application form all set to go.
I also had the Memorandum of Understanding signing ceremony, for our partnership with the Abu Dhabi book fair in March, happending on Wednesday. You might not think that this sounds like a very exciting press event - however, such things seem to be of great interest and we were able to invite His Excellency Mr Mohammed Salem Al Dhaheri, who is the Director of Abu Dhabi Education Zone to come along which also seemed to create a great deal of press interest. So in the end it was like an oscar ceremony with about 8 photographers all crowded round and snapping away. I hope we get some good coverage in the papers as a result but it was a very successful event. I really enjoyed working with Kitab on it and with their Marketing Manager Irum, who was so friendly and professional and helped me to find my way round what needed doing. It was an education and a great learning experience. I'm so relieved that it went well, despite there being no coffee (lots of food and juice but no hot drinks) and having to change the background slide at the last minute because the Director of Corporate Services felt that the logo wasn't big enough!
I had to break the news to the college this week that I won't be staying on after Christmas as I have finally decided to accept the role with Emirates Advanced Investments. It was a hard decision as I enjoy working at the college and the people are fabulous. However, the other job is a permanent one with the chance to set up the department (marketing and comms), recruit my own team, control my own budget and reports directly into the CEO. I may hate it but I think it needs to be given a go. I am hoping that I may be able to continue to do some consulting for the college to make sure everything is on track and stays that way. However, I am really hopeful that with what I've managed to do so far, they will see an huge increase in student numbers for next year and that's what it's all about.