Category
Work
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11.15.06On speaking at Social By DesignSo, I've just come back from speaking at NMK's Social By Design event, where I was on a panel and speaking briefly about the different and emergent kinds of social media. Some brief thoughts about the event, in no particular order: It was good to bump into various people I haven't seen for years (dare I say it, since the last bubble burst the heady networking days of 2001 or so) Very good to finally meet Neil McIntosh who did an excellent job of chairing the event and keeping the crowd's conversation with the panel flowing. We've been orbiting each other in blog ...
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10.17.06Markup for meaningSo the other day, drafting an update presentation about a particular project, I used a made-up html tag in the title. I'd called the document "[name of project] - what's going on?" so I naturally added a </marvingaye> tag to the end. Well, wouldn't you? But then I sent it out, without removing the tag from the title slide. Cue odd looks from colleagues, some of whom possibly didn't get the markup reference, others who didn't get the musical reference, and probably others who thought that brand of silliness didn't belong on a work document. *Shrug* But there are some HTML tags that ...
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10.09.06Great quoteChad Dickerson on organising the recent Yahoo! Open Hack Day (my favourite bit is in bold): ...if anyone out there is wondering how we pulled this off, I offer one clue: total pros rolling up their sleeves to do whatever needed to be done. I’ve always been surprised at how intelligent people ascribe self-limiting qualities to organizations that they don’t really have to accept. Large companies are “slow.†Small companies are “agile.†“They†would never let us do this. What happens when you work in a large company and you are able to leverage the size of the organization to form a ...
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09.20.06Shalom! (Hello!) / Shalom! (Goodbye!)(or: 36 hours in the middle east) When the cab picked me up from home at 5am, he (naturally) was a customer of my company, and wanted to ask technical questions about his setup. I, with little sleep and no caffiene in my system, did my best. Thank goodness for colleagues who can play scrabble (and have a travel set) Got upgraded on the flight out. A rarity with BA, but much appreciated. Due to having two copies of the Guardian, we had a crossword competition, but both ended up stuck on the same 2 clues. A friendly flight attendant asked what we ...
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09.17.06Off againAh, the life of the professional nomad. That's someone with a job, who has to travel a lot, not someone whose job IS travelling, you understand. After a week of relative domesticity, I'm off again, this time in the ofther direction - to Israel, in fact, for a few intensive days of meetings. I'll take photos (not of meetings, probably), but despite the hotel I'm staying at being some beachfront spa-type place, I won't be taking my cozzie, I think. There are several things you do on holiday, which you DON'T do on a business trip, no matter how warm it ...
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08.20.06A few ideas…In the process of tidying my study this afternoon, I found a proposal paper I wrote in January 1999, concerning how the company I was working for should develop community activity and engagement. I won't bore you with the whole thing, but some bits made for interesting reading.... People who use [name of service] are gradually beginning to see it as a way to foster feelings of community, through the use of real-time chat, comments left on messageboards and a more general feeling of incidental interconnectedness. People like to discover that there are others like them "out there" - people who ...
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08.09.06Business-Speak DaftnessThere are two phrases I hear a lot in the course of my work, which tickle me in some small way. I don't think they're perculiar to my workplace or industry, but they certainly seem to be increasing in frequency and breadth over the last few months. I'm as guilty as anyone else of using them, and I wonder if anyone reading this has any experience of them out in the wilds of your workplaces. Do tell... The first is used when trying to get a little face-time with someone (no, that's not the phrase, though it's bad enough in its ...
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08.29.05Assorted high(and low)lights from last week’s trip to the DC areaGetting upgraded to Club World on the flight out. Flying over the Hebrides at 38,000 feet, with a stunning view of my mum's village. Monster-in-Law. Simply monstrous. Incredible views of Greenland from above - glaciers, mountains and icebergs galore. Heat, humidity and general hotness in Virginia. My water bottle exploding in my hand luggage and drenching the digital camera I carry everywhere. RIP, little IXUS. Being biometrically captured at US immigration. Air conditioning, and lots of it. Kicking and Screaming - a fairly accurate description of my behaviour if forced to watch this diabolical movie again. Meeting various people I've known for a while variously by email, by ...
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11.09.04Corporate funCorporate fun posters for you to print and display. SPREAD ANGUISH! CREATE UNEASE! GET YOUR ARSE OUT OF THAT CHAIR! Download the posters, print them and hang them in your office. Put them in normal places, where no one will suspect they're fake. Fellow employees willl be angry and frustrated feeling the unbearable weight of tiranic management on their backs. Managers won't dare remove them because there's always the possibility of it coming from someone higher than them. It's the ultimate office fun! So, help the revolution and put your poster up today. With any luck we'll get enough people angry so something ...
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09.19.04Smart & Gets Things DoneInteresting article about interview technique in one software company. Our goal is to hire people with aptitude, not a particular skill set. Any skill set that people can bring to the job will be technologically obsolete in a couple of years, anyway, so it's better to hire people that are going to be able to learn any new technology rather than people who happen to know SQL programming right this minute. Some points which are equally valid in other industries.
recent posts
- Another city, another event, another night alone in another hotel.
- Is this the emergence of the Twittering classes?
- Noises off
- Music for Rail Journeys
- Being a list of songs relating to the switching on of the LHC
- A moment’s pause
- In search of a simple sandwich
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Looking for the Anti-Valentines?
