LTSU On Tour - Birmingham Day 3
Unfortunately, today was our final day in Birmingham ? We woke up and packed our bags and said goodbye to our lovely Airbnb (it fully deserved 5stars and we recommend it to anyone visiting Birmingham)!
We travelled back to the NEC to go to the NUS Trade Show! At the NUS Trade Show we got to meet different suppliers that had travelled from all over the U.K., to gather inspiration and insight into what we could use throughout LTSU spaces over the next year. We also got to speak to companies about upcoming events such as Freshers, and how we could work with these companies across the next year. We were going to look at the exciting opportunities available for us as sabbatical officers while the CEO and Bar Supervisor did all the hard work of delegating orders and engaging with stakeholders to discuss business.
The first thing we spotted as we walked in was the Red Bull Racing RB14 ?????. To Caitlin, who know’s nothing about Forumla One racing, this was just a cool looking car but apparently it’s a world famous racing car that everyone should know. As the upcoming VP, I can say that F1 racing knowledge is not something I thought I would need to know when starting a new job…but it is still a cool looking car. We should’ve definitely gone for a test run!
The NUS Trade Show was PACKED with so many different companies who all brought HUGEEEE stands, cars and displays to show their products and what they could bring to LTSU. We firstly spoke to Monster Energy who were showing attendees how you can use monster to make different drinks – some of them tasted better than others but that’s because we all have our favourite flavours (Caitlin swears that the ultra-collection is the best but agree to disagree!) After working with Monster Energy before, the Bar Supervisor enjoyed having a catch up with some of the people managing this stand while the sabbs looked at the new flavours of Monster. I (Kelsey) tried Monster Energy’s minigame which involved a lot of frantic kicking and punching but I managed to score 21 on my first try!
We stopped by the NUS stalls who were serving TeaJoy’s Bubble Tea! We got the passionfruit tea with strawberry boba and it was sooooooo good (we won’t be taking criticism on our order)! It couldn’t beat Leeds’ Bubbleology shop in Trinity Leeds though! Strangely enough, there was a robotic cat automatically moving around to collect our cups, we both tried to get it to talk to us but unfortunately had no luck ?? even though it literally said on the screen to tell it a joke!!! Come to think of it, maybe we just aren’t funny enough for it to respond ??.
After stopping at drinks stalls such as Starbucks, VK, Karma Drinks, Hooch (Kelsey couldn’t become the Hooch-pong winner for a second year as their pong stand wasn’t there sadly – but this means she is still the remaining global champion??), we decided to stop for lunch (yum).
We found Pasta King - Kelsey reminisced her earlier educational days where she would eat pasta almost every day for lunch and decided to tell ALL the Pasta King staff all about her time at secondary school and college. Everyone was truly amazed at how much of a wholesome impact Pasta King had on Kelsey’s life!
We then bumped into the new officer team at Staffordshire SU all matching in their green SU merchandise, unfortunately we didn’t co-ordinate as well as they did but we’re working on it ??! We all introduced ourselves and briefly chatted about our plans for the new year ahead and what did a quick show-and-tell of what we’d been collecting as we went around the NUS Trade Show talking with the companies (let’s just say there was A LOT). It was great to meet up with you all and we wish you the best for the year ahead!
Somehow, we ended up getting side tracked and losing Caitlin somewhere in the trade show only to find her trying to convince stalls to give her freebies while they had to listen to her rambling on (Hey, it worked!). I had visited some stalls up the top end of the trade show in an attempt to finish the sticker raffle we’d started earlier in the day. Random stalls around the exhibition room had been given stickers for attendees to collect – but we had never heard of some of these brands so finding them was extra tricky! Therefore, Caitlin and Lisa went around looking for the remaining three stickers only to find out that they were brands that we’d interacted with earlier on in the day (Global Brands & LWC, you did not make it easy!). But thankfully we did it before the exhibition closed at 4pm – we recently found out that both of us (Kelsey and Caitlin) won a prize in this raffle – we are waiting for the delivery of them! ??
Before heading back we got to catch up with Lars from Neutral who we’d met on day two and we all got sustainably made hoodies (pink was definitely the right colour to choose) – thank you Lars! Here at LTSU we understand the importance of sustainability and have made numerous charity-wide steps towards being more sustainable within Leeds Trinity Students’ Union! Look out for these sustainability campaigns and changes throughout the new academic year ??!
The trek back to the car was a challenge, we couldn’t remember where our CEO had parked, and we came out of a completely different exit from what we entered but thankfully there was a very friendly coach driver to take us to the CEOs car! Everyone on the coach back with us was amazed at our new collection of freebies and merchandise for the next year ??.
However, while going around all of the companies talking to them and collecting freebies, none of us thought to consider how we were going to fit five people plus their belongings plus all their freebies into the CEOs car to travel back to Leeds… This ended up being the most tiring part of our last day here in Birmingham and for your new sabbatical team of two, it ended up being a real-life game of Tetris ?? as we tried to fit everything into the car.
After what felt like hours… we finally got everything into the car so that we can travel home… we both had to sit either side of TWO 10L tubs of MAYONNAISE that we were given by Heinz… I have no idea what Kelsey and the Bar Supervisor plan to do with these 10L buckets... but who doesn’t love free mayo?
That concludes our trip to Birmingham! Thank you for joining us on the adventure and reading along! We can't wait for the next LTSU on Tour adventure!