Day 14 – 21 January 2014
What is it about having a beard the makes people think they can poke fun at you? I’ve suffered the slings and arrows of outrageous beard insults already including: your photo must have been taken when you were much younger; any longer and it would look weird and; you look like my geography teacher (not sure if that’s an insult). Most people say ‘you’ve grown a beard’ – like I hadn’t noticed.
Another day and another tier 4 manager. I’m cracking through them now and so must speak to Pam about arranging the next batch. Today it was the turn of Dave, the Strategic Traffic Manager. It turned out that everyone in that service grouping and at that level is called strategic but it was still a fascinating discussion. His work involves everything traffic related from pedestrian to train including congestion management, signals, parking, road casualties and the park and ride.
He has a very wide remit and this opens up the possibility of drawing upon his skills in my ideas for big data and digital town centre regeneration. I also learned some new jargon: SCOOT (Split Cycle Offset Optimisation Technique) which is a tool for managing and controlling traffic signals in urban areas and; Black top which I took to mean roads.
Next up was the Information Governance Group, another one of those meetings that regularly pepper the calendar. This time we entered the convoluted worlds of the Payment Card industry data security Standards; Closed Circuit Television and; protective marking schemes. Quite righty, to an extent, we are in an increasingly demanding compliance regime to ensure the security and integrity of our data and information. Not as heavy as it may have sounded.
Occasionally a window will open that might allow an opportunity to be grasped and so it did today with a secondary school in the east of the county. To me business is about building relationships but they are funny things in local government though. People can have long memories and it takes time to understand some of the history which has brought us to where we are. It was a great meeting and we came away with a strong basis to work together in the future.
Learning points for today: Urban traffic management control systems struggle in the fog; This summer is going to be bad for my commute due to upcoming roadworks and; You can have a sat nav and still get lost.
Today’s enjoyment rating 10/10 – Apart from a glitch with my laptop – what more can I say.
Thoughts from a Guerrilla Worker 