Happiness is…
Everything we do is intended to improve the fulfilment of ourselves or others, either directly or indirectly, either now or at some point in the future.
The key to happiness is striking a perfect balance between the three variables, and being in full control of them: ourselves vs. others; direct vs. indirect influence; and immediate vs. future fulfilment.
The first ever breakfast gov tweet-up?
A few weeks ago, I had the idea of arranging a government tweet-up breakfast: an opportunity for some tweeters who work with and in government to get together for breakfast to chew the fat, in both senses. (I chose breakfast to allow for a greater turnout, what with childcare and people’s hectic and conflicting evening social lives.) It was scheduled for this morning and was, in my eyes, a success.
Our turnout totalled seven, joined as I was by, in order of appearance: Sean Garvin, Stefan Czerniawski, Paul Clarke, Simon Everest, Jenny Brown and Emma Mulqueeny.
The conversation was marginally geeky, which I enjoyed thoroughly, but mostly I loved putting faces to names/avatars and enriching my appreciation of the personas of Paul and Emma. And it was also lovely to add a follower and followee in the form of Jenny.
Paul is legendary in these circles and I warmed to him immediately. We’ve spoken previously on the phone (about musical note separation) but it was good to meet in the flesh and I already see ideas in the offing that bring the opportunity for us to collaborate in the future.
Although the meeting of some was blind, Twitter provided a great prior insight into the characters in attendance—their interests, wit and quirks—and this made the conversation all the more relevant and rewarding. I’m already looking forward to the next meet-up and progressing the ideas that were seeded this morning.
Thanks to all who made the effort, particularly Mr. Everest given his lack of awareness of that part of the day and for trying to get #danosirrahasalottoanswerfor to trend.
Pic here for those interested, courtesy of Paul Clarke.
Why shoot for the Moon when Milton Keynes will do just as well
I once enjoyed a talk from Stuart Moore, the co-founder of Sapient. It was a talk about, among other things, aspirations. It was only to half a dozen people or so, and was fluid and interactive.
In it, he drew up a chart on a whiteboard, asking whether should aim high or aim realistically. I responded, taking something of a devil’s advocate stance, that in some instances you should aim realistically. (Remember, this is a man worth nine, possibly ten digit dollars, excluding decimals.)
I gave my reasoning. In some instances, if you believe too much in your own hype, then that rosy view view will cloud your perspective, and you may remortgage your house a few times to chase what amounts to a dud business idea. In that instance, it would be much better to chase reality, and if you failed, you wouldn’t have lost quite so much. He struggled to deal with the example, instead arguing that if you shot for the Moon, at least if you missed you’d end up in the stars.
The attitude I portrayed is in keeping with me as an individual. I’m risk-averse, although I can have optimism in abundance when the mood strikes. I tend not to shoot for the moon, which will always hold me back while at the same time keeping me steady. I guess that’s just the way my cloth’s cut. And a reason why my bank balance doesn’t have nine digits—with or without the decimals.
Proofreaders: know your game
Proofreading is unique. Unique in the sense that as well as your CV and cover letter/email containing all of the specifics of your career and experience, they also embody the quality of your work. Before you’ve even been invited in for an interview, I’ve had a small taster for how good you are at submitting error-free documents.
Yet it’s frightening how many people have emailed me recently asking for work in this very area—my business specialises in document editing—only for their covering emails to be littered with errors. Admittedly, if I’d received the emails from people outside the field, people not looking for related work, I would have let the mistakes pass me by. But their context has meant that I’ve either responded with some heartfelt, cotton wool-lined guidance, or responded with a pleasantry only to confine the email to the Never hire folder. (Actually, the latter step is a given.)
Paragraphs have lacked closing periods, proofreader has been written as two words (yet as a single word within the same email), the Oxford comma has been used whimsically, appearing in some places but not in others, hyphens have appeared instead of em dashes, and quotation marks have been used in instances where one might not even expect someone to sign them in a bar with their hands.
Some (all?) of these points might sound pedantic. And they are. But then proofreading is all about pedantry, and if you can’t get your covering email right, what hope do I have that you’ll fare any better with a client’s document?
Big isn’t always good
I’m fed up. Specifically, I’m fed up of large organisations, organisations that have lost the concept of accountability. Allow me to explain.
All too often, I will call a company to express my disappointment and displeasure at the service they’re offering, only to be reduced to a heap, rocking backwards and forwards in the corner of my living room, defeated by the interminable bureaucracy.
Below are some recent examples:
British Gas
I have an insurance contract with them (HomeCare) that covers my electrics, drainage, boiler and central heating. I pay a handsome sum for the privilege. I called on a Friday reporting blocked drains. They deemed it a non-emergency so refused a weekend callout, but promised me an 8–10am slot on Monday morning.
No one arrived. At 10.02am, I called asking their whereabouts. I was told that no such slot should have been promised, but that someone would be with me before 6pm, and they would call giving one hour’s notice. At 4.54pm, I called again asking their whereabouts, only to be told that they weren’t coming today.
I arranged for the problem to be sorted privately, and am awaiting their response on reimbursement of the invoice.
Lambeth Council
Last week, I arranged a bulk rubbish collection, of which I’m allowed four per year. The guy arrived today and took away a rug and a bedside table, but couldn’t be arsed with the large carpet. The operator couldn’t do anything about this because the ticket was still “live”.
A man with a van is coming tomorrow morning to take the carpet, costing me £50.
Virgin Media
In October, I signed up to an all-inclusive Virgin Media package for a monthly amount quoted to me over the phone. After the service (including new set-top boxes) was installed, they started billing me 20% more than that agreed monthly amount. On questioning, they apologised for quoting the wrong figure and told me that the correct figure was the higher amount.
I am still working out how this might be resolved.
Many of the people I speak to in these organisations are, in themselves, lovely. They are polite, courteous and seem to want to help. But the bureaucracy that surrounds them, through no fault of their own, prevents them from doing so.
You see, no single person is empowered. Each department exists in isolation, calls passing between them but with no one having a holistic view of the customer experience, nor the power to manage that. And often, as was the case today with Lambeth, the operators blame the process for their inability to resolve the issue.
Smaller companies carry more accountability, don’t blame their colleagues or sister departments and generally give a shit about the customer. The above companies, as organisations in themselves, do not. Even if some of the people therein do.
Agency madness
I’ve been working through, among others, two agencies of late. Recruitment agencies, if you will, although rarely do they seem to recruit me—often they’re merely a means of contracting. I’ve suffered two experienced which to me are unfathomable.
First, on enrolling with an agency, they informed me that they would need to perform a check with Companies House, a process that cost them £1 (one Great British pound). They informed me by letter and by email that the cost of the check would be taken off my first day’s charges. And sure enough, payment against my first month’s invoice was £1 short.
Second, I received a call the other day from someone who I’d never dealt with before in an agency through which I was already working. He asked me whether I was looking for work. I truthfully responded that I wasn’t. He asked when my current contract was due to expire and I suggested he asked his colleague, my contact within the agency.
Both of the above examples showed the value that the companies placed on the individual. My immediate experience of the former agency was one of penny-pinching madness. Yet it probably cost more to process the £1 reduction than they saved by making the reduction in the first place. As for the second, three and a half years of unwavering commission was reduced to my being a commodity, one who had not been de-duped properly from one database to another.
I know I’m a commodity, a dispensable one at that. But it’s nice not to have this pointed out to me, particularly when I’m helping pay your wages.
My violin fingering: is it still right?
I gave up the violin almost 20 years ago. Or over half my life ago. Yet to this day, I often mime the fingering that my left hand would do were it playing the melody of a song I’m listening to, my fingers generally tapping on the pad beneath my thumb.
Or at least I think I am. I have no idea whether the notes that would ring out if a violin were in my hand would bear any resemblance to the song. Maybe so many years of dormancy render the mime talentless and the resulting music similarly tuneless. And doubtless the bow in my right hand would be playing the wrong string anyway.
One day soon, I’ll pick up a violin and see just how true my renditions are to their originals. Until then, you’re safe.
The power of a retweet
I wrote a blog post recently that I delighted in writing, and that people, it seems, delighted in reading. It drew from experiences from 15 years ago, and highlighted the need to treat deadlines with the respect they deserve.
The post drew no comments. But it drew a lot of hits. (The term a lot here is relative to the number of hits drawn by most of my posts.) The bit.ly link that drew people to the post itself via a Twitterfeed URL that adorned my Twitter feed drew 94 clicks. By way of comparison, most of my posts draw fewer than 20 hits via the same route.
The reason: the retweet.
Paul Clarke retweeted my original tweet within four minutes, together with a humbling pleasantry.
RT @danosirra: Blogged: knowing when to stop http://bit.ly/87wyGE < Dan. You are great. Please can we meet soon.
Now Paul is a well-respected figure, with 1,855 followers without, it seems, actively looking to build his following. He just writes interesting stuff and has wide respect and appeal.
Seven minutes later, the lovely Emma Mulqueeny (who I also only know electronically) acknowledged the post.
The snail like snakings of SWTrains means I can read all those blog postings @danosirra loved yrs, brilliant
And five minutes later, Chris Thorpe, who I don’t know, retweeted Paul’s retweet.
RT @paul_clarke: RT @danosirra: Blogged: knowing when to stop http://bit.ly/87wyGE < awesome. may have to frame this
The attention brought a smile to my face. But it also highlighted the power of the retweet. I’d noted that I should write a post about the subject two weeks earlier, but only noted its relevance midway through writing it. It was lovely to receive such compliments, and delightful to see so many clicks as a direct result of some lovely twitterers.
Colonel Mustard in the library with the lead piping: knowing when to stop
While doing my Masters, we were given a project that was to be done in pairs. The aim was to use artificial intelligence (of sorts) to code a computer to act as a player in the game of Cluedo. The language of choice: Prolog. (I say choice in the loosest sense. It was foisted upon us.)
Myself and my good friend Jorge paired up and took the task very seriously. I learnt a huge amount about the strategy of Cluedo—it turned out that as a youngster, I had not used a jot of inference in playing the game, merely capturing in isolation each piece of information that had been given to me. (As a youngster, I was shit at Cluedo.) But once unleashed with this new-found knowledge, we came up with some kick-ass rules, one of which I was particularly proud of but which I couldn’t for the life in me remember some 15 years later.
We coded rule after rule, with multiple layers of logic deciphering any information provided to enhance the knowledge that had been gleaned to date; and yet more intricate logic determining which questions to ask, and who to ask them of.
But our program was shit. We came last as far as I remember. And here’s why.
The information aggregator worked like a dream. But each time it was our turn to ask a fellow player (which was itself a competitor team’s computer) a question, we always selected the same player to ask, and we always asked the same questions.
The reason: it was my fault. I’d come up with the beautiful, competitor-killing logic a couple of hours before the hard deadline, as I remember. We had a brief discussion over whether we had time to code it up. And we decided we would. The discussion probably went something like this:
Jorge: shall we implement it?
Dan: hell, yeah!
So we coded like the wind. And we got the code unit tested. And it kicked proverbial ass. And then, with moments to spare, we did some integration testing. And it borked the whole “asking” logic.
Now if we had any sense at all, we would have grabbed the floppy disk (oh yeah, baby!) containing the version of the program that we’d saved immediately before the killer module had been incorporated, handed it to the professor, and done pretty well in the competition. But in our haste (or speed, as the proverb oddly goes), we didn’t keep any such version. Instead, we had no option but to submit our borked version of the program and watch the result.
It was like watching the words of a particularly annoying parrot flash up on the screen, a parrot that had just been briefed on the basics of Waddingtons’ flagship product. Hell it was funny. (Jorge always helped make light of moments like that.) But at the same time it was so annoying: being so close to wiping the floor with our classmates (for that is what we would have done, natch), yet at the same time, being so far from that goal.
The big lesson I learnt from that experience was that deadlines are there for the client’s purposes, not your own. Define an end time or date for development, either in your head or on a plan, and stick to it. (Development here might mean coding, document production, analytics, basically any client deliverable.) And make sure that this milestone is sufficiently ahead of the formal deadline to allow for all of the necessary post-development activities—be they testing, document review or simply document formatting.
Your boss will often try to push the milestone to the right. In that event, push back strongly. And if this is futile, warn them strongly of the potential ramifications. For in this event 15 years ago, our (my) willingness to take on new requirements at such a time that didn’t allow for them to be fully tested compromised the entire project deliverable. Don’t let that happen to you.
(Sorry, Jorge.)
If you like it and are able, pay for it
I wrote a post recently about the likely demise of certain media. It focused on the proposition that while much media has traditionally been cross-subsidised by other, more lucrative revenue streams, the increasing transparency of non-profitable lines of business means that some of these media will close down.
Media owners are struggling. Bobby Johnson has just announced that he has taken the Guardian up on its offer of voluntary redundancy, and will be leaving at the end of March. The New York Times announced Wednesday that from next year, it will start charging for full access to its website. And whenever I pop along to Wikipedia, I’m faced with a plea from Jimmy Wales for contributions towards the Wikipedia Foundation. (As an aside, that’s no name for an internet entrepreneur. David Filo, Jerry Yang, Sergey Brin: yes. Jimmy Wales: noooo.)
It’s time we started to show our appreciation for what we like about the internet, from apps to content (in its broadest sense), and pay for or make donations towards these things. I like Wikipedia, so I’ll contribute. I like Freshbooks, so I’ve upgraded to the first tier of paid service, partly out of necessity, partly out of respect. Flickr: ditto. (And I happily pay my “TV” licence every year which helps fuel my love of the BBC News website.)
The one I’m struggling with is Google. I pay for Google advertising through AdWords. But I don’t pay for its core apps. offering, which I use heavily. The issue lies in the fact that the charging model is per domain rather than per email account. So the three or four temporary, administrative or lesser-profile accounts that I’ve set up all attract a charge. I’d love to be able to upgrade my own account (and I’d happily pay for this privilege) without having to do so for the wider set of accounts.
So in summary. If you like it, pay for it. Otherwise, you may lose it.
Haiti: the need for a trusted charity donations app.
I need not echo the words that so many have already voiced with regard to the sympathy and the need to help Haiti. Perhaps no one has voiced them more clearly than Jay Smooth here.
Soon after the devastating earthquake, there were requests for help, particularly for donations. 90999 was widely publicised on Twitter as a number to text, costing $10 plus the cost of the text. And more recently, 70077 has been publicised similarly, allegedly aligned to the Disasters Emergency Committee, texts costing £5. (I have not previously heard of this committee.)
I would like to donate. But I have no way of understanding the authenticity of the organisations behind these text numbers. And so I’m nervous about donating through them, both because they may screw me for way more money than I thought, and because I have no way of knowing whether the money will indeed go towards the disaster to which I think I’m donating.
Yet my phone is such a well-suited device from which to contribute. It is convenient and it already has a direct debit (to O2, or to Apple) to support any contributions made.
There is a desperate need for an iPhone application released by a trusted body (possibly a charity, possibly the government, possibly Apple, even) within which users can donate to charities that subscribe, charities that are vetted by the trusted body with an independently-written description.
The application would be simple. Click, choose or search for your charity of choice and enter a donation amount. When prompted, enter your iTunes password (if this is indeed the authentication method of choice) after which you’re presented with a confirmation screen. Close the application and then go about your business.
I would happily pay an extra £1 on top of every donation I make to fund the trusted body in its management of the charities on the application. And I’m sure charities would happily pay a subscription to feature in the app.
Does it have legs?
Wessex County Council
I was asked at workto put together a scenario recently of someone in government wanting to do something. (There were more details, but I won’t share them here.)
Within 24 hours, I put the scenario together. I tried to give it a bit of reality so dreamt up a fictional character (Dave Clarke) and gave him a job title, the CIO of Wessex County Council. (For those not in the know, Wessex was disbanded in 1066, its land divided among the followers of William the Conqueror.)
I sent the email to the two people who requested the scenario—from my own account, but all in Dave’s name. Five paragraphs with a moderate amount of flowery detail. I even added a wessex.gov.uk email address to his signature, along with a fictional phone number, using the 846 local code saved by BT for use in films and on TV, much like America’s 555 prefix.
Despite the email coming from my own account, both recipients thought the email was a genuine request for help. Both responded offering services to Dave. (Dave’s chuffed to bits.)
Given my success in duping two people—a 100% success rate thus far, albeit entirely unintended—the next phase of the plan will be to roll out Wessex County Council. Letterhead is currently being printed and we have put out fictional tenders for IT services and office space. I’m expecting healthy levels of response to both.
We will, obviously, need to begin a major recruitment drive as we’re setting up from scratch to provide a wide range of services to a large, if non-existent population.
To do all of this, there will, of course, need to be significant funding provided by HM Treasury. Again, I’m confident that this will be forthcoming. It’s a crazy world, after all.
Skype: a review
I took a while to adopt Skype. But now that I have the business need to use it, I love it, partly because of the business need, but mostly because the product has evolved.
I wasn’t happy when Skype tied me to my PC. That’s not how people make/take or want to make/take calls. They want to make calls with the freedom with which mobile technology has provided them. And even if I’m sitting on my sofa talking to someone, I don’t want the hassle of an accompanying laptop or the inability to move around if I so choose.
I dabbled with Skype when we lived in the US, but audio only, and the above constraints meant that it was a less-than-pleasing experience.
But now: I love Skype. I use it for both personal and work purposes, and I would be annoyed if it was taken from me. I started using it again when I downloaded the Skype iPhone app. It only works over wireless, and I started using it to call the US of an evening—during the US working day—while within the range of my home wireless network. It allows me to call people directly from my iPhone contact list, and although not integrated into the phone functionality of the iPhone, it works just as well from the app.
I was recently sent an email confirming my Skype to Go number. This is an outer-London number (based on the STD code) that I can dial from my mobile phone (now in my contacts), after which it invites me to enter the number I want to dial, complete with country code (“followed by the pound, or hash key”). This new-found freedom means I can dial whoever I want from wherever I want (normal mobile reception allowing) for Skype rates.
To use this carefree, I use their auto-top-up feature which, similar to Oyster, tops my account up with a fixed amount whenever it falls below £5 of credit, emailing me a receipt in the process. Beautiful. Earlier today, I called a hotel in Luxembourg without even thinking about how much the call was costing me. (I just looked it up: 1.2p per minute plus the cost of my London call (which was included in my “free” mobile minutes anyway.))
The only pain with the Skype to Go approach is that I have to write down or remember the number I want to call before calling Skype to Go. But even this obstacle can be overcome through the ability to add speed-dial numbers to my Skype to Go number.
And finally, here’s the icing on the cake. I tried calling my Skype to Go number from a landline today, to see whether it instead routed the call to my mobile. It doesn’t. But it did ask me to authenticate myself, after which I was able to make whatever calls I wanted. From the landline. Using my Skype credit.
All in all, I’m a convert. I love it.
I’d like it if their next step was to enable cheap calls from your mobile to international numbers when abroad. And there should be a way, in my opinion, of using my Wii’s internet connection to use Skype. Now that would be fun. Just sit on the sofa and you can talk to whomever you choose, and their voice comes out of the TV. FTW.
Core blimey
Not much of note of late. But I did come second in the Defra apple-peeling competition recently, with a mighty 1m 54cm. Not quite FTW, but certainly noteworthy. I beat our Minister into fifth place.
And for the record, it was a Granny Smith. And I still had a third of the apple left when the peel tore. Argh.
Good and bad design: passports, cables and .dots
I’ve been thinking lately about the amount of effort that goes into product and service design, specifically when compared to the amount of usage that product or service is expected to attract.
I present four examples:
- CAT5 connectors: bad design, but forgiveable
- The UK Passport Service appointment system: great design
- Recruitment Agency CV templates: bad design, unforgiveable
- USB connectors: bad design, unforgiveable
The CAT5 Ethernet cable connector is rubbish. (Geeks can launch their tirade at this juncture if I’ve mis-used the term CAT5 (or indeed the words Ethernet and cable). In pristine condition, it snaps into place beautifully, but you’re equally likely to pick up a cable with that little plastic bit having come off as you are encountering one that’s still intact. (In fact, that little plastic thing deserves a name, such is the annoyance when it’s missing. Always better to be able to curse something by name.)
But as a colleague informed me, they were designed for servers and switches, devices that hardly ever move. So their ability to survive swathes of careless laptop users shoving the cable into their devices and yanking them out again without a care in the world was never designed into the product.
Now to the Passport Service. I recently bought my daughter her first passport, and the end-to-end experience was utter pleasure. I completed the form with the relevant countersignature, had my daughter pose for a photo and called the Passport Service one Thursday to book an appointment. They offered me Monday, which I couldn’t make, so I opted for Tuesday lunchtime.
I arrived ten minutes early for my 1.20pm appointment and was seen at 1.27pm. I was out of the building by 1.35pm having visited one counter to submit the appropriate documentation and another to pay. The passport arrived in the mail three days later. This is a service that was clearly designed in beautiful detail, every step designed to save hassle and maximise efficiency. The appointment system was a joy to behold, particularly for someone who had the misfortune of suffering its predecessor, Petty France.
The average recruitment agency CV template is shocking. It’s used and abused, fonts proliferating, styles leaking into one another and the general formatting leaving a lot to be desired. (The quality of the text therein is probably the subject of a tirade of its own.) On the rare occasion when formatting is consistent, its look and feel is usually so dreadfully bad as to put you off the content therein.
But when designed, the agency must have known that the CV would get some serious usage. They must have been aware that this was the shop front for the agency, the most important template they would ever create. So I’m afraid there are no excuses for this one.
And finally, the USB cable, like the Ethernet cable, is rubbish. Its fundamental flaw is that at a glance it looks to be 180° rotationally symmetrical. But it’s not. And so 50% of the time, you (or I, at least) fail miserably when trying to shove the cable into my laptop. But unlike the Ethernet cable before it, there are no excuses here. The inventors of this one knew that the cable would be used heavily, and that it would be in and out like a proverbial you-know-what.
So of the four examples that have presented themselves to me recently, the government wins hands down. Are there any other examples out there—good or bad—worthy of a mention?
We customers are not peas
Just when did companies become so big as to act as though they were several different companies?
For many companies, customer service has long been an afterthought. Yet the recent trend has been for companies to actively pursue customer disservice.
Aviva was one recent example. I was passed from pillar to post, all the while paying the extortionate rates O2 were no doubt chargine me to call an 0845 (”local rate”) number from my mobile. But instead of handing my call off, I was asked to call another number, because the operator I was speaking to couldn’t assist with my enquiry. When I did eventually get the £1,000+ owed to me, there was no sign of an apology.
Lloyds TSB is my most recent example. I’m still awaiting a call back from someone in business banking to confirm why a cheque from my business account to my personal account (both with Lloyds TSB) bounced, despite ridiculous headroom for the cheque to clear. Personal telephone banking couldn’t deal with the query, but asked me to call a different number (at a different time, as they work different hours) to chase the business side of the company.
And heaven forbid you ask someone to call you back. Many call centres don’t allow out-bound calls. Some time ago, I missed a call from British Gas. I called them back but the relevant department was closed. On asking them to call me back, I was told they don’t do outbound calling. Er, yes you do. Otherwise, how would I be able to respond to this voicemail?
Companies merge and companies diversify their offerings. And in doing so, they lose sight entirely of the customer. Making money and creating efficiency (for themselves) becomes more important than the experience of the customer. No beef that a customer has to call a few different numbers and spend money on the call (despite his mobile service provider giving him free minutes to cover bog-standard numbers), so long as the call centre staff can follow a script and can process the callers as if they were shelling peas.
Streetcar has got this model right. As well as their cheap rate number, they also publish their landline number. Where’s the hassle in that? And when I call, the person who answers my call is polite, knows what they’re talking about and always addresses the issue I called about, often throwing in an hour’s free driving to account for my inconvenience at having to call in the first place.
We customers are not peas. We come in all shapes and sizes, and our needs are often different from those of our fellow customers. Go ahead, streamline your processes and get efficient. But don’t do so at the detriment of providing a decent service.
Cabbies: think of the customer
I use about 1.2 taxis per week. The 1 is a given. I have a meeting that runs a little late on a day I pick up my daughter from nursery. The bus isn’t sufficiently reliable to get me there before closing, an option with which I fear that my daughter will be tied to the railing when I arrive to save her from walking away on her own, the nursery lights turned out and the place deserted. (I have no idea what actually happens if you rock up after closing time—nor do I want to find out.)
The additional 0.2 is to account for one taxi I might use about five weeks, one that I get either out of necessity or out of luxury. Rarely the latter.
Anyway, I was in a taxi recently, and was discussing with the very pleasant driver my ideas for how GPS could connect prospective passengers with taxis whose orange lights are burning bright. He talked of some old system that used to be in place to alert people of pick-ups in their area, but that it died a death (a) because the taxi driver had to pay for the privilege of the introduction, (b) because the cabbie suffered a reduced utilisation owing to the drive to their prospective passenger’s pick-up point, and (c) because the cabbie often had to ignore a bunch of hailers along the way.
(My idea, btw, is to develop a free iPhone app. for prospective passengers to allow them to say exactly where they are trying to hail a London cab; and a sister, paid-for app. for cabbies to be made aware of this information.)
Not once in the conversation did the cabbie reference the customer experience. It was all about what was good for the cabbie, or more to the point what wasn’t. I was suggesting pairing a cabbie trundling along a deserted Charlotte Street with a prospective passenger on Whitfield Street (the next street along), who otherwise wouldn’t have encountered one another. The cabbie might pick up a fare if they were quickest to the pick-up. While the passenger would get home a few minutes earlier than they otherwise might have, possibly a little drier too (on a night like tonight).
It’s not an app. that I’d have much use for. But I think there is some proverbial mileage in it, particularly if the cabbies start thinking about the customer experience, rather than solely the bottom line.
Ça va? Ça va. The French are lazy
I work with a French lady. Out of respect for her language, and in an effort to introduce a little office-based banter, I make a rather trivial attempt to make her feel at home each morning with a standard greeting: ça va?
She always plays back to me my question, without the questioning intonation at the end: ça va.
If you think about it (and I never have before), it’s just plain lazy. And particularly non-committal.
Does it go?
It goes.
It goes is hardly an underlining of one’s joie de vivre, to coin another Frenchism. Yet I suppose we Brits are similarly ambivalent when it comes to stock responses.
How are you?
I’m fine.
But as I said to another colleague recently, rarely does the questioner care much as to the answer to the question. Certainly people are freaked out if you as an enquirer are particularly intent on the answer, and if you continue the conversation with follow-up questions to ascertain more detail.
Get away from me, you freak!
I’m tempted to start using the French approach in the future, informing colleagues on asking as to my general well-being that: it goes.
Bus observations
Of late, I’ve noticed how reluctant bus drivers are to accept the very passengers that pay their wages.
Three days a week, I catch the bus from its terminus. (I’m uncomfortable with this word in this context. I want a word to indicate the place at which buses start, rather than that at which they terminate. Startimus? Beginnimus? I digress.) Several bus routes start here, and often my route of choice has two, possibly three, buses waiting to depart, all lined up in and amongst the other buses in a style that Evel Knievel would have been happy to jump over.
But the buses are lined up in a random order, the routes interleaved with one another and no indicator as to which of the buses might pull out next. In some of the buses the driver is waiting, drinking his or her coffee and/or reading the news of the day. Others are empty.
The prospective passengers generally stand in front of the buses in an effort to catch the eye of their chosen driver, or to force the driver to make the decision over whether to run them over or to allow them on board.
The other day, though, a bus sporting my route number of choice was hiding behind one of its brethren. It was parked slightly shy of the other buses, giving the prospective passengers no knowledge as to its existence. And suddenly, without a murmur of warning, it zoomed out and up the street, bereft of passengers but no doubt guided by a driver grinning from ear to ear over his achievement. Cock.
In other news, I have a slight insecurity on buses. My bus generally fills up before a whole heap of people alight at Stockwell to continue their respective journeys to work sub-terrain. Having boarded at the terminus, I always opt for and secure an window seat upstairs. After a few stops and once each double-seat is occupied by a single arse (bodily part, not a slight), the aisle seats start to be filled, and usually, someone sits next to me. But when we hit Stockwell, lots of people alight, and some double-seats become available.
Here’s my issue: if the person sat next to me is staying on the bus, does their moving to a double seat indicate that (a) I smell, (b) I creep them out or (c) they want the extra room afforded by the double-seat.
The first e-orchestra?
I’ve wondered recently whether a group of musicians could perform together live online.
The problem with playing music is that you need the feedback of the other players in order to understand where you are in the piece, and to react meaningfully to the circumstances of the piece. With an orchestra, each member works in harmony with the others (often literally), compensating for balance changes and working with the imperfections that are inherent with human-created music. If the tempo is slightly faster than you’d expected, you don’t resolutely stick to the tempo you know to be correct. If your instrument is tuned slightly flat, you can compensate (with stringed instruments, at least) by playing sharp. And if your fellow members are drowning you out, you can play slightly louder to ensure your section can be heard.
If you set the 50 members of an audience off on the same piece of music at exactly the same time without any feedback along the way, they’d all end at different times and the result would be a cacophony. Hence the need for a conductor.
So what if we had an online orchestra, each member playing in physical isolation from their fellow members, connected only by the internet.
Here lies the problem. Your fellow members need your audio feed to be played to them to allow them to play their own piece in an informed way; and you need your fellow members’ respective feeds to be played to you to allow you to play in an informed way.
Even in an orchestra that is collocated of course, the finite speed of sound means that there isn’t the immediate feedback. Assuming an orchestra pit 14 metres in diameter, the harps (stage left) won’t hear what the double basses (stage right) were up to for a whopping 0.04 seconds. (At sea-level, at least.) With the internet, we’re dealing with the speed of light (880,991 times faster than sound), but with a physical distribution greater than 14 metres, and processing steps in between.
So here’s my question: if everyone had a pretty decent broadband connection and a musical feed piped directly into something internet-enabled, how long would it take for the feeds from the c. 50 members that make it up to be amalgamated and piped back to the people? If it’s a small fraction of a second, then we’re in business.
If so, then I propose getting out my dusty old violin (not a euphemism) and arranging what might be the first orchestra never to meet. Maybe on Twitter. To inform whether or not to do this, I’ve constructed a detailed decision-tree.
Techies, is this doable?
If yes, then: Musicians, are you interested?
Else: sorry to have wasted your time. Carry on.