Day 35 – 20 February 2014
It’s good to leave home when it is light. I was able to leave a little later this morning as my first meeting was with NCFE just down the road.
My first day without paper wasn’t without its moments but I managed. I had to sign a couple of forms and have asked Pam to think about how I could get away with not signing documents. She had a couple of ideas which we need to work through. I still had some paper with me at the end of the day but I’m hoping to get rid of some more today.
Anyway back to NCFE. They are a national Awarding Organisation, passionate about designing, developing and certificating diverse, nationally recognised qualifications and awards (their words not mine but I have no reason to doubt them). I got involved with them when someone who I had worked with in a past life asked me to sponsor a project she was working on. We meet every so often to chew the cud and compare the problems and opportunities we have.
They are heavily in the learning market and the changes that are happening there will make a substantial change to their business and so it’s not just us then. I really enjoy these meetings. They are inspiring and cathartic. We all need someone to talk to who understands but is not directly involved in your work.
Back at County Hall I had a meeting with O2 following up on my less than successful Local Government Development Fund bid. What followed was an hour and a half taking about Big data and how these ideas could get some traction across the region. We looked at the data sets we have and the narrative they could tell us. We wondered if we could use them to tell a story about someone we know (The story of Alan and Sally). We thought about whacky anonomised data and perhaps what data was missing while we tossed around ideas like shuttlecocks including geek clubs and innovation parks. It was so exciting and we agreed to meet up again shortly once our heads had settled. This wasn’t about ICT, it was about the economic future of the North East!
Cheryl was my next Tier 4 manager. She works as Projects Manager in Neighbourhood Services and our paths cross quite often as she is leading on the Customer First programme. This includes the Customer Relationship Management project which is just about to take off big time. Her motivation is in delivering big transformational change, seeing things through to the end and enjoys being involved across the whole organisation and not just service specific.
What was strange though was that our paths had crossed many times before. Cheryl used to work at Dataform, a company that was a customer of mine when I worked at Spicers (Europe’s largest office products distributor). One of her colleagues also came to work with me when I was at North Tyneside Council. It’s a small world.
Learning points for today: Lawrence, my wingman, made his first YouTube video on the Future of Records Management; There are scissors of doom and a cone of uncertainty; You don’t have to win to be successful; Things can unravel but ravel again and; The best antonym for unravel is entangle.
Today’s enjoyment rating (another) 9/10 – honestly I am enjoying myself.
Thoughts from a Guerrilla Worker 