Monday was the tail end of our holiday so the working week began on Tuesday to a mere 128 emails. The emails were largely CC messages and so were dispatched in 10 minutes. I have been making it clear to everybody that email is great but I don’t need to know everything – if you need a reply from me then send it but I don’t need ‘reference/covering’ emails. The rest of the day could be spent clearing a path for activities in October.
Tuesday and Wednesday were both used to catch up with various staff about their projects and for me to better understand some of the detail a few of our roles deal with. The devil really is in the detail and I feel the more I can understand the better for future working together.
Thursday was a social media oriented day. First I met with the Bristol Records Office to see how they run social media and where my team could be of assistance. Then I checked in on the Red Lodge as they are doing an outstanding job and have plenty of ideas for continuing over the winter. In the evening I attended “This Happened Bristol” at the Empire Theatre which had three enjoyable speakers (John Durrant, Dan Efergan, and Lizzie Ostrom) talk about past interaction projects, one of which was about smell.
On Friday I got to tinker with a small website project and had an important meeting regarding a project i’ll keep quiet about for now.
Bonus day. On Saturday I attended a raspberry pi bootcamp run by uob at the @bristol site. The event was spilt between 90min sessions on a broad range of introductory topics and some drop-in areas to ask questions and see some very interesting uses of the kit. The event had a lot of help at hand and was well attended by school children and a few oldies like me. I attended a non-pi session on using twine, a easy to use tool for making interactive if/else type stories that spits out html. I think this could be pretty handy for lightweight public facing games and stories.It was great to see kids coming to events at the weekend like I used to.
Attending local events in the evening and weekends not only helps keep me in the loop but i think is crucial for raising our service profile. I know that these things are hard for many to attend but I really hope I can convince a few others to start doing likewise.
