NCWE Awards: Extreme Blue wins 'Over 250 Employees - Short term placement Award'

..."and by some distance".

What an eventful day yesterday turned out to be.

Helen Bowyer, myself and David Frost, Director General, British Chamber of Commerce.

After some troubles with a tree on the line at Ashurst, myself and Helen Bowyer finally made it up to the NCWE Awards at Cafe Royal in Piccadilly. To start with there were a couple of major plus points for this ceremony, that being it was free to enter and free to attend for nominees (which makes a nice change). Also the list of categories was very encouraging too, singling out charities and smaller companies for awards and not putting them in with the giant corporations such as ourselves.



Top marks for the champagne reception, however I must confess that drinking champagne at 11:50am was a bit decadent even for my liking. The lunch was also excellent, not that I could eat that much as nerves (and perhaps the champagne) seemed to be getting the better of me! So much so in fact that I didn't have a sip of the wine, which for those of you who know me was quite a revelation.






After lunch, the serious bit kicked off starting with David Frost - Director General, British Chambers of Commerce, giving a short talk about the value of work experience. This was particularly good, especially considering the candid nature of David's insights of the newly graduating workforce, and also for the fact that he managed to fit this in on the same day the budget was announced.



So, on the to awards! What can I say, other than I was delighted that Extreme Blue was nominated, but the fact that we won the award was something else entirely. Before each of the winners were named, a small amount was read about what the company did to deserve the award and this one mentioned "A University Relations Island in Second Life", and "Students being able to patent their IP". Even in at my most cautious, I thought it was highly unlikely that anyone else had done those things too so thankfully it gave Helen and I a few moments to compose ourselves before collecting the award.


All in all, I was totally stunned (as the photo suggests) and delighted in equal measure. The success really has been down to the efforts that the students, mentors and project stakeholders have put in to make the scheme such a success and it was great to pick up the trophy on their behalf. Now I have the pleasure of telling the students :-)