18 September 2015
Today I am not in London. But there is a meeting of the Professional Standards Working Group and I have to dial in to it because professional standards is something I am interested in. It is a useful meeting because it is chaired by a professional professional standards writer (as opposed to an amateur professional standards writer or a professional amateur standards writer). She knows all about these things and she is going to write CIPA a set of professional standards that other standardised professionals would die for. After an hour or so of really productive discussions, the people in London decide it is time to have lunch. They suggest that the people on the phone should take a break and we should all reconvene later. But I continue to listen to them eating lunch, because it is fun trying to guess what people are chewing based solely on their auditory output. It sounds to me like some of our existing standards could do with improvement. 21 September 2015, 12 noon We have invited some senior attorneys from private practice firms to talk to us about what’s happening in their world – apart from making shedfuls of money – and what CIPA can do to make it better. They tell us CIPA should be doing stuff to promote the UK profession abroad. They say The German Kammer has a roadshow that it takes round countries like China so no one is in any doubt about who is best in Europe. They say CIPA should do a roadshow. I think: in your dreams. They also tell us we must do something about Brexit. I say We are not allowed to talk about Brexit because Mr Davies thinks it is an ugly word. Plus we don’t believe CIPA really has much influence in such spheres. But they think we should try, nonetheless. And they also think we should do something about commoditisation. It is flattering to be considered so powerful, but really, we’re still working on our Strategic Plan; I’m not sure we can overturn market forces as well. On the plus side, they tell us they like the Journal. On the minus side, one of them thinks it looks like Playboy®. Or perhaps this was also intended as a plus. I have to say I had never previously been struck by the similarities between the CIPA Journal and Playboy and, no, I am still not seeing them. Hey-ho. Something else to consider in the context of professional standards. Then they tell us that our committee structure is rubbish, and anyway the committees waste a lot of time talking about non-issues. Most of them don’t go to committee meetings, so I’m not sure how they know this: word must have got out somehow. They also say that Congress is not particularly good. But most of them don’t go to Congress either. I am beginning to wish we’d never invited them. 21 September 2015, 2.30 pm A few of us get together to talk about the AIPLA Annual Meeting in Washington. The EyePeePee and I are going to this meeting to represent CIPA. This is quite exciting. Washington is a long way away; you cannot get there by track’ur and that in itself makes it the highlight of my year so far. There will be other CIPA members there too, and we are going to try to meet with lots of important people so as to spread the word about who is best in Europe. It is, in fact, almost a roadshow. There appear to be several social events attached to the AIPLA Annual Meeting and it is becoming clear that I may need to purchase new frocks for the occasion. Not having to travel by track’ur means I can feasibly widen my repertoire to include Things That Look Quite Pretty, without having to worry about pockets for the straw and stain-proof outer layers. So there's a chance I can raise our professional standards after all.
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