Day 145 – 28 August 2014
It seems like an age since I’ve set foot in County Hall, Northumberland. I think it was in the middle of July. Both Neil and I have been away on holiday and we felt it best to leave it until we were both back.
It is an odd feeling. I’ve never lived so close to a place of work, not that we’re there yet. I could walk it. I have cycled it and it’s only a couple of minutes in the car. There is no time to get your head straight, plan your day or think about the things you want to do. There’s no time to ring Tony and on the way back there is no time to unwind and make sense of what has happened. As soon as you leave you have arrived.
I started the day with an empty inbox, which was nice.
The Dynamo board was good again. There were five of us there – holidays prevailed. Bob chaired and we covered a lot of ground using a summary tool called SOFTE (strengths, opportunities, failures, threats, escalations) which is an updated SWOT analysis but allows us to see the whole picture on a single slide. University Technical Colleges, apprentices (we’re making progress on both of these fronts) and membership were the main subjects as well as the upcoming Dynamites awards event in October. If you know of anyone in ICT who deserves an award it’s worth a pitch. Anthony and I also brought along a first stab at what our aims and objectives should be.
As for today, Neil and I started by meeting the Head of Neighbourhood Services. Paul has a massive portfolio covering the majority of the services that people think of when considering the council including refuse collection, fleet maintenance, grounds maintenance, street scene and the parks department. His issues were in many ways the same as those that Oliver in Durham faces; how to improve effectiveness through technology, how to provide greater consistency across the services and how to get the most out of the technology that he already has. There are several projects underway and we talked about how they were progressing and how we could manage them better going forward.
After that Neil and I spent most of the morning catching up on what has happened over the last month and a half. We had a lot of diary to resolve. The rest of the day was spent trying to finish off the first proper cut of the business case. It’s nearly there and we have two weeks or so to get it sorted.
I’ve started ‘First, break all the rules’ by Marcus Buckingham and Curt Coffman.
Learning points for today: Lee’s laugh is famous across the region; you can go from the ridiculous to the sublime; Guernsey has a Marks & Spencer (so looks like a civilised holiday destination); granite rash is an automotive condition and; the beauty of standards is that there are plenty to choose from.
Today’s enjoyment rating 8/10 – good to catch up.
Thoughts from a Guerrilla Worker 