Day: 13 August 2023

Weeknotes #29: regatta hats

Week commencing Monday, 7 August 2023

Quantified Self

  • This week: Stand 5/7; Exercise 3/7 and Move 4/7. (57%, way down). Morning walks: 0/5 (days in the office don’t count). Office days 0/5. Total steps: 59,454

Life

  • According to The Internet, “In the decades after the war, it was the done thing to wear a silly hat to the regatta“. So, Sandown has a hat parade.
  • I wrote a lot of documentation this week, both customer-facing and internal ticket-based stuff. I spent an afternoon wrangling Jira tickets into a useful order so that whoever has to deal with them next stands a chance of understanding my proposed sequencing.
  • I didn’t wrangle the other system that’s arrived to mange the product work. I thought it hypocritical of us to insist one side of the company used Jira (“because it’s the source of truth”) for us not to do that ourselves. Why does it matter to me? Because I think we should work in the open and multiple, disconnected systems that rely on layers of manual updating do not facilitate that approach.
  • And then, this, which is so accurate: “Communicating agile development to people outside of the organisation is difficult and leads to frustration on their part. There’s an expectation of things being clear from the outset and delivered as a whole, rather than an incremental evolution of a product, subject to change iteration. They also struggle to ‘see’ a project overall …” Neil Lawrence.
  • Monday, towels bulk washed in the laundrette where they can dry much better. Gave me time to sit and read. It’s relaxing but £1 doesn’t buy much drying time. I’m only reading this book because of the title. And the time spend reading paid off as I kept picking up the book all week and ended up finishing it on Friday.
  • Related, I started that book as I’d stalled reading Sara Cox’s first when it became too farm-y, but the brief interlude with a French mystery, and I was back enjoying the adventures of Sara in Korea.
  • Monday, 10pm, “Mrs Overall, that macaroon you just choked on, I’m going to send the recipe to the Weekly News”. Victoria Wood’s comedy still makes me laugh.
  • Wednesday, was that a sarcastic comment from one of our developers about “people sticking around to see it through”? I wasn’t sure about it but, maybe, I should have commented. Also, still not sure if they’re winding me up about CC or not.
  • Another “their life, my life moment”. It’s clear in 2023 but back then we all thought differently: “It took me a little while to accept that having my email and web presence completely beholden to my employer was perhaps not the greatest plan. That is obvious to you now, but it was the 90s, we were like little children”. jwz.
  • Good news, I think, for public transport in the Capital. Ian Visits notes that London’s off-peak travel has recovered to pre-pandemic levels and exceeded them at times. Commuter traffic is still down.

Media

Archive

To save the links getting lost in the future I checked the Internet Archive to see what they had saved for the posts linked here. If the original source above no longer works, these should.

Elsewhere: Writing the perfect RFP

One of my former colleagues, Louis, has written a piece on LinkedIn about the process some companies go through when putting together a Request For Proposal (RFP) for a major technology purchase. His essential point, that the process – especially in the larger corporates – doesn’t really lend itself to the best outcome for the ultimate system users, is well made. 

I’ve been meaning to write something about this process for some time because, so often, it prevents a technology seller from working closely with the buyer to tailor the response (and, therefore, solution) to meet the ultimate business goal. This is done in the name of fairness and transparency, which is, of course, a laudable process, but if it doesn’t get the best outcome, is it the right one? Although he’s writing in the context of marketing analytics, the words could just as easily be written for the ad tech industry and – probably – for any major modern technology purchasing decision. Most of today’s tech solutions are complex and can be used in whole (or in part) in many ways as well as being integrated closely with existing systems. What this means, of course, is that there really isn’t a single solution to a customer’s problem from any vendor but a number of approaches that are best discussed and evaluated beyond a series of ‘compliant/not compliant’ statements in a document. Louis suggests some initial stages which are much more discussion than Q&A. I’ve seen – and been involved in – pitches where this works very well. So, if you’re putting together any kind of technology RFP, then it’s worth reading to make sure you’re giving yourself – and your tech partners – the best chance of success. Here was my small addition to the conversation:

Great advice. The RFP process in many areas is broken. I was once part of a team that was begged to complete an RFP for which we were not a good fit by a prospective client: a process that benefitted nobody but a procurement checklist. I really like your alternative suggestions. But do you really think that your alternative approach requires a lot more time upfront? I don’t think it does, but it needs a different kind of relationship with vendors. In many organisations there’s already a large team putting an RFP together, and it’ll go through many iterations before finally being issued, so your alternative is just changing the way people evaluate the market: it needn’t take that much more effort. Having said all that, sometimes it’s best to accept that the RFP is the beginning of a process, not the end. You may lose an individual RFP, but that can mean the start of a business relationship.

Further Reading: This piece was written in response to ‘Writing the Perfect RFP‘ by Louis Fernandes and forms the second in my BEWA series. The first was BEWA: Sound the alarm! All the letters have been taken.

Presentation Porn

A post called Presentation Porn has left me wondering if the use of the word porn in the title will mean it gets more views than any of the other posts. But it isn’t pornographic so you don’t have to ban the page or anything like that.

Ever read 43 Folders? Right up there on the front page, it says “43 Folders is Merlin Mann’s site about personal productivity,” and it carries lots of tips to make you better at stuff. Not better at the high jump or getting to the next level on Donkey Kong, but better at stuff like remembering to cancel the papers when you are going on holiday and dealing with the 75,000 emails generated at work over a weekend while you’re sleeping. 43 folders can help you get over procrastination and clear your clutter (like Dawna Walter but without the Crusher). If I were pretending to be down with the kids, then I’d say it’s cool, which would only go to prove that I never was ‘down with the kids’. But it is a great site.

I digress.

I was sitting at work last week, feeling tired one lunch break after ploughing through however many hundred emails were in my inbox that morning, thinking that, like Nat West, there must be another way (see reference to free stuff here) when I weave my wandering web way to 43 Folder’s inbox zero pages. I think the uber cool refer to it as izero (or is it i-zero?), but we’ve established I am not uber anything.

Now, I know what you’re thinking, and it proves you are a smart cookie who can jump ahead in a story like this one. You’re thinking that I read Inbox Zero and got my inbox to zero right then and there while eating a Coronation Chicken bap and a caramel square. Admit it, that’s what you were thinking was next. And I don’t want to spoil your opinion of yourself, so, yeah, I did that (and I was eating that). It’s neat (see, down with the kids), but anybody can do it if you hit delete and pretend the server must have crashed on that important email from your boss.

It’s not the point. The point is also not that I sat and hit the delete key several hundred times while watching Merlin’s Inbox Zero presentation(yeah, right, like I don’t know about shift-delete) and felt good about myself. If you want to achieve the Zen-like state of inbox zero (sorry, izero), then watch the video. Merlin is presenting to what I imagine to be some brainy people at Googleplex, and I am not sure if they are taking it in or not. I imagined the really brainy folks would have asked more questions than they did. Not sure what that says about them. Probably says they were eating a Coronation Chicken bap and a caramel square (which, I gather, are free at the ‘plex).

And now to the key point, some 460 or so words into this little piece (don’t count the words; I edited a bit, and so that number, while once real, now resembles something I made up). Merlin’s presentation is great. Really good. But it’s not just good because it helps you get to an i0 state (i0, I just thought of that). No, I mean it’s a really good presentation.

I should write about my presentations. I think I will. But not now because I am talking about Merlin’s presentation (if I use only his first name, it’s like we hang together, right? I’m way cool). It’s done properly (his presentation, not the hanging). The slides are illustrations, and there are more pictures than words (pictures are good for recall, apparently). He doesn’t use the slides as a safety net in case something is forgotten. No, they illuminate and reinforce his points. They are there as visual support. I mean that his slides are not his presentation. What he says is the presentation. The slides are, if you will, the side slideshow. Useful, entertaining, but not the star attraction.

This really shouldn’t be such a revelation, but it’s an almighty, lightning-strike revelation. I’ve sat through hundreds of presentations. Hell, I’ve given hundreds of presentations and few, so very few, are like this. By which I mean most are rubbish (including some, although not all, of mine). It jumped off the screen at me.

I got so wrapped up in it that I had people standing around wondering what I was watching and how I could be so attentive and engaged by a video on the web. So, go watch it. It’s presentation porn, if you will (although you’ll learn more and there’s much less grunting).

Memories Of The Walkman

I was a avid singles collector at the time and the little Walkman unit wasn’t ever going to play vinyl 45s. So, at this point in my life I became a compilation tape wizard.

When I was younger, my Sony Walkman was one of my favourite things. Today, you would probably think of it as a first-generation device, but I think this was 1982 and it was a WM-4 (or the like). There’s a picture of it here. My brother and I were at an age where we wanted to listen to our own music all the time, so I suspect my parents thought it would be a good idea to get us one each so we could listen to our music in the car while they had Radio 2 on. And it stopped the arguments.

I was an avid singles collector at the time, and the little Walkman unit wasn’t ever going to play vinyl 45s. So, at this point in my life, I became a compilation tape wizard. I would spend hours putting tapes of my records together to listen to in the car. There would be the odd album track from one of my parent’s records, but most of the tracks were from those singles of mine.

I would spend hours listening, rewinding, forwarding and listening again to my soundtrack to the 80s. If it had been number one in the charts during that period, then it would have been on those tapes.

And so to – what I thought was going to be – the point of this little wander down memory lane. During that time in the early 80s, I used to carry a small stock of batteries around. If the Walkman stopped working, I just replaced the battery (although I did learn over the years not to use the rewind functions a great deal, as they drastically reduced battery life). My cheesy 80s pop was always with me.

Fast forward to 2005. This afternoon I was heading to the gym and thought I’d take my new Century Walkman-equivalent with me, only to find the battery was drained. Except this time I can’t just swap out the batteries – I have to charge it. So I wasn’t able to walk with my music.

And they call it progress.

On a side note, my parents’ loft probably still houses the Walkman – the cassette part gave up years ago, but the radio still works, and the stereo sound from it is still one of the best I’ve ever heard. Those 80s hits singles are all stored in boxes in the same loft space, but the compilation tapes have long since gone. It would be amusing to try and recreate one of them through the wonders of digital music, but I shan’t be setting myself that kind of goal.

Spooky side note. When I wrote the words above, I had no idea that the entries on this day in 2004 and 2003 were both – in some way – music-related. I wonder what it is about today?

Digital Download Chart

Is the new digital download chart a good thing?

A year ago, I wrote about ringtones and the large amounts of money to be made from them (as well as one of the current boyband stars of the time) and asked when we would see the first ringtone-only hit? Well, maybe not ringtones, but the music download industry in the UK is taking a step towards producing download-only hits when Radio 1 introduces the download chart from the start of next month. I think this is fantastic news and I will be interested to see how the record companies react.

Also about a year ago, I wrote about my first experiences with downloading music from the MSN Music Club. Well, I can tell you that a year on, I have bought, perhaps, ten tracks – mainly the odd chart hit jumps out at me. I’ve tried several services and find them all a little frustrating in one way or another.

Many download services don’t let you have the latest singles from an artist until they are falling down the regular charts. I assume this is to ensure that those fans who want the track will actually buy it and contribute to a chart position before the downloads (which don’t contribute to a proper chart position). So, although I do think this chart is a superb step forward, digital music will only be legitimised when it’s included with the full chart.

Maybe in twelve months I’ll be writing about that.

Silly Pop Stars

Blue’s Lee Ryan has been charged with drink-driving. I should file this under silly popstars, shouldn’t I?

Blue Lee Ryan and Pride in the Park 2003
Lee Ryan

Who’s a silly boy then? With all that fame and money, you think Blue’s Lee Ryan would be more careful and pay for a driver, wouldn’t you? If you didn’t know, he’s been charged with drink driving. Let’s hope the adulation isn’t going to his head and that he doesn’t think he’s better than everyone and above the law. Still, another shameless excuse to post a picture (I took this one at Pride In The Park last month).

I should file this under silly popstars, shouldn’t I?

Beep Beep To Profit

There’s a market of over 70 million pounds for ringtones – a figure I find astonishing.

Sometimes, I live in a world of hope, and today is no exception. BBC News reports that sales of mobile phone ringtones are set to overtake sales of CD singles. Ringtones are worth an astonishing £70 million, if the article is to be believed, and are highly profitable for the record industry. I wonder if they will now start to realise that there is money in the digital delivery of music, and it’s about time that they embraced it fully? I do hope so. Sadly, I can’t contribute to their new revenue source as I find those high-pitched beeps trying to sound like a song all too irritating. I accept that’s an age thing. I wonder when – for I’m sure it will happen – we’ll see the first ringtone only hit?

Elsewhere: When Love Comes To Town

My latest book review!!

When Love Comes To Town, Tom Lennon

Book cover for When Love Comes To Town

There are many fictional coming-out tales to choose from, so why this read Lennons?

Firstly, there aren’t that many set in contemporary Dublin. Secondly, there aren’t many told with the humour and compassion ofWhen Love Comes To Town. Finally, there are not that many that are such a good read.

Let me also be honest. There are few new takes on the coming-out dilemma, so don’t expect total originality.

Neil Byrne is a top-class student who has realised he isn’t like all his coupled-up (straight) friends. The story takes us through Neil’s tentative steps into Dublin’s gay nightlife and his introduction to the characters of The Scene. Neil’s first love and family’s reaction are all covered, and his confusion, pain, hopes & desires are well described.

The family’s response is not a model reaction, so don’t read this book if you are looking for a reassuring, positive take on the acceptance of loved ones to the news that one of their own is gay.

The book’s climax is certainly one of the more surprising aspects of the tale. In a dark moment, Neil realises what he needs to do to survive the next few years of his life in an intolerant community. This ending results in a fine piece of writing that conveys the emotion of the final scene remarkably well and, I suspect, brings a lump to the throat of many readers.

Given a less positive ending than many similar books, I found this to be a refreshingly honest story. It is certainly a welcome addition to the genre.

Click here to but it at Amazon | Click here to see this review at Amazon