 Hi everybody and welcome to another episode of UCAT LVSA conference television. I'm Colom Cronan from the Adventures in Advising podcast and I am delighted to be joined. It's a truly crossover edition with Melissa from UCAT and Eve from LVSA. Welcome to you both. Melissa, we might start with you if you want to tell viewers a little bit about yourself, where you're working and you're involved with UCAT. Yeah, thank you very much. So my name is Melissa Jacoby. I'm from the UK based in Sheffield at Sheffield Helm University, where I'm the head of academic advising. So I look after the development and implementation of academic advising across the 17 departments of the institution. And my involvement with UCAT is that I'm currently the membership and onboarding lead for UCAT. So I spend a lot of time talking to new members, prospective members about joining UCAT. So, yeah, really excited to be part of the conference again this year. Fantastic. And Eve, do you want to tell us a little bit about yourself? Yes, for sure. So I'm Eve Houben. I'm working at the University of Technology in the Netherlands. And I'm responsible for the academic advising of the mathematics and computer science department with a lovely team of eight colleagues. I'm involved with LVSA on all the unofficial parts. So if there's a problem or something that's happening that doesn't have a structure, I would like to jump in. So that's why we also organize this session together with UCAT, where there's not a formal setting, but we are going to make the most of it, of course. Fantastic. And I suppose in terms of this session, maybe we'll start with you on this one. Can you tell us about it? Because it is a joint discussion session, but maybe you could tell viewers a little bit more about it. Yes, for sure. So we're planning to have an inspirational crossover between members from the LVSA and from UCAT about all the lessons learned from lockdown. And that's a small title that Mines and I came up with, which is really clear and helpful, the lessons we learned from lockdown. Everything changed in the Netherlands and in the UK, but also everywhere around the world. So we did learn a lot from everything that went really well in that change. And we maybe even learned more about everything that went really wrong in that change. And everybody has their own lessons and we would like to compare them between the two countries, between all different people joining in and have a top lessons learned from lockdown at the end. Very good. And Melissa, I suppose for viewers watching this who think, yeah, that sounds really interesting, be great to learn from advisers in another country. When will this session be taking place? Is there anything people need to do beforehand in order to prepare? No, no, no. All the information is on the schedule. It's taking place on Wednesday, just after lunch. Just come along, Kevin, and a very quick think about what sorts of things have gone well for you during advising in the lockdown period, what perhaps hasn't gone so well. But what we're really after is that take home, what's gone well and what are you going to try and retain in perhaps your practice when we move back to perhaps more normal times. But there'll be lots of discussion, lots of practice sharing. And what we're trying to combine to it as you've said at the end is with a bit of an output that says, you know what, this actually has had some benefits. And we've got some really concrete things here that we're able to take away and learn from and perhaps transition into a more standard delivery, perhaps. Fantastic. It sounds very good. Wow, that's quite an echo. I feel like David Bowie in Labyrinth or Twin Peaks. But while I put up a slide that kind of covers where people can get more information, I'm going to come back to both of you and maybe ask you for one more event. During the conference next week that you will be looking forward to. So while I put this up, because you can see for viewers there, you can see where you can get information on UCAT on LVSA. There's also a LinkedIn group where members from both will be joining together. And there's also, of course, the advising hub on Gather Town. So there will be loads of opportunities to interact with advisors, you know, in your own location or from other locations. Eva, might go to you then, something else that you're looking forward to. It can be either at the LVSA conference or at the UCAT conference. Yes. So actually, my answer is going to be probably for both because in a conference, I generally really look forward to the informal sessions, the lunch, the coffee dates. The things that you plan for after the session with people that you meet and that you say, you have a really interesting view on that. Let's meet again in a couple of weeks and we will discuss it over a cup of coffee. So looking forward to all that informal connections with people that are more or less in a likewise mind of yourself. So looking forward to that a lot, either with the UCAT people or with the LVSA people. Very good. And Melissa? Yeah, there's definitely going to be lots of opportunity to have discussions with people that perhaps you don't often get the opportunity to. I'm particularly looking forward to ask some ladies presentation on Tuesday, I think, if I remember rightly, but also the special interest groups, the UCAT CIGs. There's all sorts of different special interest groups that I'm hoping to call in to see how they're developing and what we can learn from the practice development that's taking place in those. So the postgraduate CIG, the Student Engagement CIG, international student, there's lots of interesting stuff going on that I'm keen to get to. Absolutely. And having looked at the schedule for both conferences, it seems that there are lots of interesting things happening in both. So definitely encourage anyone watching to check out the full schedules and look to get involved as much as you possibly can. All that is left is for me to say thank you very much, Melissa Deeb, and great to chat to you both and enjoy the conference over the next few days. Thank you very much for having us. Thank you very much.