The night was headlined by B*Witched (well, two of them...) and also featured boat rides on the lake, a ferris wheel, a three course meal or buffet dinner, comedy performances, living statues, burlesque dancers, professional magicians, living statues, gladiator jousting, angle grinding, a Ministry of Sound DJ, silent disco, popular motown and soul covers band "Souled Out", a jazz band, an incredible indoor marquee, a real outdoor marque, a giant bed, a theatre, fire artists, giant props, a chocolate fountain, cocktail bar and much much more!

The setup was ridiculous, over a week preparing decorations and fireproofing, three very long days rigging the event, not the mention all the rest of the paperwork, organisation and preparation that went into the night. With the support of Becky Grigg (who did an amazing job as Head of Summer Ball), the rest of Summer Ball Committee and various other helpers we pulled it off though... the night was an amazing success. We sold an unprecedented number of tickets, made a safe profit margin, got (almost) everything we wanted past the Health and Safety men, found enough electricity to plug everything in, and didn't have any major disasters (despite a slight technical hitch during B*witched, not our fault honestly!).

When we set out to organise the ball is was taken for granted we wouldn't be able to even get close to matching last year's event - it was suggested we didn't event try - but most of the feedback we've had from this year is that we pushed past even last year's spectacle, setting the bar even higher and without any shadow of a doubt giving K-Lee and the 2008 team a pretty good run for their money!

Now who will be crazy enough to take it on next year? Hmmmm....

I've decided to try setting myself up a blog on this website in order to try and help keep everyone up to date on what I've been doing (or not doing), and to inform them about things going on both in and out of College which they might or might not be interested in.

As well as posting my weekly bulletins to this blog, I'll also post other things which won't be e-mailed around, maybe about ideas in the pipeline or just random burblings on what Exec have been upto. Ultimately we are all responsible to you, the JCR, so I think you have every right to know what I've been doing with my time.

Since becoming elected I've been working closely with James, and have slowly been taking over his roles as JCR Secretary. The role itself, like many JCR positions is quite undefined, which makes it quite interesting when the current isn't entirely sure what the Secretary should, and should not be doing, let alone know what to handover to me! I should point out this is by no means anyone's fault, its just the role has changed quite a lot over the recent terms, especially when it comes to the behind-the-scences work the Secretary does with room bookings and event management, and lots more changes are on the cards for the future.

I've also started thinking about how best to implement the ideas from my manifesto and speech, obviously many of you will have noticed that I set up a Facebook group which has already been used to promote several College events, I've written a guide for committee heads detailing how to use this group to best promote their events. We've also started talking about how we can further reduce the amount of e-mails being sent out by Exec members, and whether we can use other technologies more (such as this blog!) to report to you what we do and whats going on.

Anyway, thanks for reading through this far, I would love to hear your comments on any of the issues discussed on this blog, paul.nicholls@durham.ac.uk

Read the rest of this post, and keep up with the rest of my JCR Secretary Blog on the Van Mildert College JCR website, www.mildert.co.uk (Its under Latest News -> Secretary's Blog, alternatively use this as a direct link )