For an election where the environment is such a big issue, we do seem to be getting an awful lot of leaflets through the door. I do enjoy local politics though with all the ’smile pointing to something good’, ‘frown next to litter’ pictures. So I will be a little bit sadder tomorrow when this free form of entertainment stops coming through the door.

No doubt if you’ve looked at this blog before, or indeed you just look at the numbers at the side, you will have noticed that the number of posts has dropped dramatically over the last few months, a good thing for the world no doubt, but I thought I would yet again try and explain why.

The short answer is, i got a new job and it’s management.

It’s not that i’ve become some pompous full of myself to important to type random stuff on the Internet type of person, it’s just that the things going round in my head have become far to personal to other people for me to be spouting them to every person who searches the Internet for soducku. To be honest would to put some of the things in my head down on paper, It might help get them out of my head at 5:30 on a Saturday morning, but here is I don’t think the place.

My job has turned much more towards people and away from day to day code churning, which is something i am really really enjoying, it just means that my head is now full of people not code, and it turns out when my head was full of code it had a bit more space for random junk.

I was just thinking how what is in my head now, is probably a lot more interesting that most of what i post here and indeed I imagine that i would find it fascinating to look back at the last few months in a year of so’s time when I’ve become much more settled and actually know what i am doing half the time, maybe i need to start writing stuff down, off the Internet! such a radical idea i know, but as Ruth says. I’m always thinking outside the Envelope.

So in summary for those people who actually come here to read what i think, sorry - i will try and remember to blog the things i can - It’s just that, that’s not as much as it use to be.

oh and i still am not happy with the site design - and i think it puts me off.

So I’ve gotten a new job. I’m the Web Development Manager for the council, yeah me!

Officially I haven’t actually started the job yet, but that doesn’t mean I haven’t started doing it. After all there is no manager and it’s silly for me to refuse to make decisions now that will be my problem in a few weeks time anyway. So this week I’ve changed my email signature, and I’m getting CC’ed in to email left right and centre.

Fortunately I had a two week break over Christmas to get use to the idea of being a manager, which has helped me not to look like a rabbit in the headlights. I spent at least the first weekend going… 10 staff! there’s ten of them! (there’s 12 if you count contractors), I’m over (most) of that now, I only occasionally look around the room, and then try and hide under my desk. So how is my first ‘unofficial’ week going?

Tuesday was quite an odd day:

I mentioned something I had been thinking about to the head of service (my boss):

“Yes that’s a good idea”

“I don’t think I’m best suited to do it… N is better at this”

“OK then”

and with minutes someone was doing it!
It’s never worked like that before, usually people go “Yes Kevin….” and move on, something actually happened. It gradually dawned on me over the rest of the day, that yes I actually can make things happen now. I need to make sure I know what I am talking about

Today was my first management explosion day.

I’ve still got quite a large project on at work which means technically I should be getting as much done as possible so I can hand some of it over before I become totally pointy haired. Which is fine in practice, but in reality, my list of things today changed from 2 to about 8 in the space of 10 minutes this morning. All ‘urgent’ things that need dealing with. I even reverted to having two coloured pens, a blue one for things I had to do, and a red one for things I HAD to do. It was a very red day for most of the day. and I know that I have a piece of paper on my desk waiting for tomorrow and it’s mostly red.

A lot of today was spent talking to people and working out how we are going to solve problems. Which is what I like and really enjoy. The people bit of the job is the bit other developers keep saying they would hate and is the bit i’m really looking forward to. It’s not measurable in you old fashioned developer way, It’s much more ’soft’ management type stuff. You know the type of stuff that make you think your manager isn’t really working.

I’m really enjoying it

I haven’t been totally assimilated yet and I do feel a slight fraud, but if I stop and think about it, I’m fairly sure it was all benificial, and I’ve yet to find sympathy for the PHB in Dilbert cartoons, although that Wally need taking in hand.

it’s been a while and comment has been raised so i can’t just go back to filling your screen with rubbish without some explanation.

It turns out it’s been 39 days since I last blogged which is the longest time since i started all this. I don’t have a real definitive reason why, i think it was a combination of a number of things.

1. In early December I had coursework for my leadership course to do, this took quite a bit of time, because like last time, and indeed this time (more due end of January) I left it to the last minute.
2. I went for (and then got) the development managers job in work: during the run up to the interview I found my self in the position of having things I couldn’t say on the internet; this meant the blog became I bit divorced from my reality and my motivation to blog sort of wined.
3. It was Christmas and that was hectic
4. I have website issues:
   • right near the end of the year you may have noticed i took the site down for a few days. this is because it was hacked. I suspect not directly, but via something else on the hosting provider which is very pap indeed!, the site is also incredibly flaky, and if we had any money we would be moving, maybe next month.
   • I don’t actually like the current design for the pages, i know i changed them from the perfectly nice design we had for years and to be honest if i get some time we will be going back to that. but for now I will just have to live with it.
5. I got the management job (oh I’ve said that), and to be honest I got all self conscious about the site. I thought “I’m all responsible and management like now, and well the blog’s doesn’t (well my bits any way) reflect this”. in summary I got all up myself for a little while there. I think I’m getting over that now.
6. the website is flaky (oh I’ve said that too), at least once in that 39 days i got this far and the site crashed, again if we had any money we would be moving….

Anyway that’s the block out of the way, maybe i can start telling you about my new job now…..

As you know I’m currently a student again, and this week i even had to hand in an assignment.

So being the super student i am I pulled an ‘all-nighter’ on Sunday and was up until just past 10:30!! Not quite a proper student then. It’s been so long since I’ve done anything even remotely studenty, but this time it didn’t seem so bad (it does remain to be seen if I pass). Although this time I had my super double-English-degree proof reader. Thanks to Ruth, I didn’t in the end archive my goals, or put measures in place to relive the pressure.

There was a definite upbeat mood to the office this afternoon, It wasn’t from the extra strong coffee from the flava machine from our last meeting.

You see in the public sector, and local government more so, there is an obsession with numbers, KPI’s, SLA’s call them what you will, we measure everything, from river quality, to how long it takes to answer the phone. One thing that is measured is web sites, more specifically how fast, accessible and free from errors they are, and this month liverpool.gov.uk came 1st in a list of 462 councils. So yeah us.

Not that I have had anything to do with the liverpool.gov.uk site yet. The council internet site is just the publicly facing tip of the iceberg of work that the web team do. I’m currently working on call centre pages, and electronic payment stuff for the One stop shops, things that will never see the public light of day. So I can’t take direct credit for being number 1, I mean i did make a cup of tea the other day, and not so long ago i bought everybody doughnut… that’s it it was the doughnuts!

The reality is it was a network change; Most of the web team thought we should have been number one last month, the accessibility, and pages scored highly the servers we just slow, and for no real reason, they where shiny and new, just slow. well this month they where faster (someone tweeked the flunge sprocket or something) and now everything is nice, and happy.

It’s not going to change us though, as one person said “the only way is down”