kate’s place

On Sunday I finally got myself along to the Katherine Mansfield birthplace.  I’ve lived a matter of minutes away from it for almost 10 years but never ventured in.  It costs only $5.50 for an adult but Sunday was open day so it was free.  Free coffee was also on offer but being such a coffee snob I didn’t partake.

I was told they were having a very busy day when I arrived but when I compare it with visiting similar attractions overseas, it wasn’t busy.  Then again it wouldn’t want to be because it is so small.  When I say small I don’t mean the overall size was smaller than I expected, maybe cramped would be a better description. There wasn’t enough space in most of the rooms for more than 1-2 people at a time.  I wished they had moved the barriers forward a little with less stuff in the rooms.  I didn’t spend long in the house but thought I might go back nearer christmas when they decorate for the season.  I’ll need to  try and find a quiet time when the elderly aren’t standing in doorways bending the ears of those who work there, telling them they recognise all the furniture from their grandparents’ houses.

It got me thinking about the Doors Open Days scheme in the UK.  You get free access to 100s of buildings across Scotland in the month of September.  Different towns have their open days on different days during each weekend. It is all about the buildings and you can see a mix of buildings which are usually open to the public and some which are open especially.  You can see buildings from the ancient and historical to the modern and spectactular.  Maybe Wellington could have a Doors Open Day.

underwhelmed

Sunday saw the first day of the new City Market.  I certainly hope they have things planned for that website – well more of a page right now.  The site made me cringe – all that arty white on grey and grey on white – could do with a bit of contrast.  Not much info on the site other than a location map.  They are on Twitter and that was a bit more informational as they announced the stall holders in the preceeding weeks.  

I was quite excited when I saw it announced but my experience was quite different to that of small acorns.  I’m guessing they got there much earlier than I did.   I intended to get there round 9am but I didn’t and by the time I got there it was overcrowded and I couldn’t see a thing. The only stalls I could see were the ones which were sold out. The space was a bit small for Wellington and the stalls were a bit crammed together.  It is great that so many turned out to support it and I will give it another go but my experience of the first week was nothing to rave about.

It seemed a wee bit pretentious.  It didn’t feel like it was anything special.  They should look at the popular famers’ market in Hastings, it has the same quality of produce in a more down to earth way.  On the plus side a number of the stall holders at the regular weekly produce market right next door commented on how much extra trade it had brought them.  Couldn’t they merge the markets? They’re so close they almost are.

Despite my negative first day experiences I hope it continues and I will return, just a few hours earlier next time.

GOVIS day 2 a vast improvement

So Day 1 did sort of improve as it went along but didn’t leave me super excited for day 2. I managed to arrive just before 9am today to find that the session had started early -  yes I hate it when things run over time but I also hate it if they start early especially when there are multiple streams.  There needs to be a 5 min gap between all sessions and you need to wrangle the audience at the beginning of each session to move to the middle of the rows. Honestly we’re all adults, can’t we sort our shit out already?

*Sigh* I wasn’t going to start this post off all grumpy but that didn’t last long.  So while I’m at it, the whole wifi situation or lack thereof – what century are we in? Day 2 and I can’t believe there’s no conference wifi. You seem to want the tweets, the blogging and the photos but you’re not going to help us get online? I know there’s cafenet and $10 is nothing to pay for a day but it was having its moments today so isn’t the answer. Besides, all these devices need juice and none of the venues have power boards set up for the attendees.  Have any of you been to Webstock? That’s how it is done.  Also some session in rooms with tables would be great. If you’re balancing your laptop on your knees you just forget to pick up the camera and take a few shots.

Today was a good day.  I couldn’t help but think it was a shame this wasn’t day one – maybe we’d have been less pissy about yesterday if we’d had the goodwill of today.  The conference proved itself today, yesterday it was just being annoying.  As pleased as I am with today, it did have what will probably turn out to be the best and the worst of the presentations. Before I look at some of the shining lights of the day I have to make some general points about presenting and presentations.

• Talk about a topic you know. There will be lots of people in the audience who only know a little about your topic but there will probably be a couple of super experts. They may not challenge you after but they will be getting bored, dissecting your failings and twittering about it.
• If you are a vendor don’t turn it into a sales pitch.  I’d guarantee you abstract didn’t declare that you “will sell the audience X” so don’t do it. You cheapen your presentation and we see right through it.  If we want to chat about your product we’ll visit you in the vendor hall. I want to be challenged by your ideas and thinking, not sold your product.
• Bullet points and lots of text doth not a presentation make. Do we have to keep doing silly small text on PowerPoint? Can we move on? I’m done with ugly PowerPoint templates too. Just saying.
• Teeny tiny diagrams – seriously, you expect us to read those? I don’t know if I’d understand them after a half hour chat with you, 5 seconds on the screen certainly isn’t going to cut it no matter how many boxes, arrows and colours you use.
• The audience is in front of you. I know sometimes the light is bright and you can’t see us but do you need to look at the big screen? Surely you know what is on your slides, and besides, it is on the monitor in front of you.  I’d rather not see the back of your head.
• /rant

Well, not quite the happy day post I started out to write.  Honestly, there was some good stuff today and I even took notes, so more posts to follow as I get time.

GOVIS day 1 1.30pm-5pm

I turned up to my session after lunch and started to wonder it it was going to be another no show from the SSC.  The session minder finally decided to mention we were just waiting for the speaker to arrive when he showed up.  He started a little bit flustered but soon got into it. On the whole I enjoyed the session but a couple of things annoyed me. The presenter several times either didn’t seem to know the different between government and parliament or just didn’t care. He even seemed to criticse the parliament.nz domain for not being part of the .govt.nz domain. I don’t mean to be unduely harsh but there were also times when he didn’t seem to remember he was talking to a bunch of computer/techy/geek people.  Some stuff was presented as though it would be new to all of us but just wasn’t. I thought we’d have been past even mentioning information overload these days.

Mike Pearson’s “Working without walls” was a rare treat. Even in the deadly post luch slot he had us making spooky ghost noises on cue several times – you couldn’t afford to nod off or you’d be found out. More pictures than bullet points and plenty of twitterable phrases it was my kind of presentation.  I really like the idea of the hotel.gov concept he spoke about. Goverment departments housed in a building run like a hotel, book the rooms and space you need when you need it rather than occupying large buildings which vary between being too small or too big and you’re stuck there. Of course I’m still not sure how I’d personally cope with the idea of hot desking – I mean, would I have to carry all my lucky gonks and squishy balls with me? I like to have toys on my desk.

Afternoon tea supplied us with little chocolate afghan cakes and another chance to “chat” to vendors. After tea I decided to go to Jana Lyn Holly’s “Citizen Services Workshop”.  It was sort of what I expected. It was a real shame there were so few of us there and that we had one who dominated a little too much.  The rest of us didn’t really agree with him and he didn’t seem to accept that. He just kept insisting we had mis-understood him and restating his case. Maybe we did misunderstand him but I personally found some of his comments domineering and too much.  There were some opinions in the room I’d like to have heard more from, there are some people I’ll try to have a chat with in the next couple of days. Jana has been sketching GOVIS keynote speeches since 1997 and I’ve long been a fan of her infographics/mindesigns.

GOVIS day 1 11am-1.30pm

The food at morning tea may have been disappointing but wandering round the vendors was a very pleasant experience. It was however a little different from how it has been in previous years. I must admit I was really surprised to see so many attractive items of schwag begging to jump into my bag.  Honestly I wasn’t really expecting to get anything with the way the economy is but instead it seemed like they’d made an extra effort.  I didn’t seem to get any of the hard sell of previous years either.  It isn’t like I have any authority to spend any money anyway so shmoozing me is pretty much wasted.  I can actually say I enjoyed the conversations I had with various vendors today. Coolest schwag item of today has to go to Eagle Technology for the very cool orange highlighter set – like those chocolate oranges only with highlighters and no chocolate. 2nd prize goes to, umm, *shuffles awkwardly*,  the lovely person with those squishy coffee cups. So I’ve looked at the vendor map in the booklet and the names on the coffee cup and they don’t match so I’ll see if I can figure it out tomorrow and add a link. Third equal are SWIM for the world’s smallest highlighters and Brother for the recycled pencils.

So back to the serious stuff. I headed off to the sessions. It took me a little while to settle into the first session after morning tea. Mentally I was crossing my fingers it wasn’t going to be a video. Next I realised I was watching the presentation as though I was critiquing it. I’ve been doing a  lot of thinking and reading about presentations recently and I found myself running through my checklist of what could be improved instead. I switched off that voice and for the most part became absorbed in the presentation. The GOVIS banner at the immediate left of the slide space was annoying though. It just looked part of the slide and my eye was drawn to it more than it should’ve been. It isn’t fair on the speakers using that stage. The second session had two speakers. The first, well, I struggled with. Maybe I just wasn’t the audience that talk was meant for, it was a bit general and had too many of those phrases which sound good but mean nothing. The second speaker was excellent. She had a real project and real examples to talk about.  She had plenty of content, finished in good time and got some excellent questions from the audience. She did have a “that guy” in the audience with one of those questions which makes you groan but she handled it well.

Lunch was a little ho-hum but thankfully came finished off with chocolate caramel slice. Phew, sugar levels restored. I found a power point and charged up my devices I’d forgotten to charge last night *doh*.  I twitched at my work email but mostly managed to ignore it.

GOVIS day 1 9am-11am

When GOVIS was first advertised for this year I pondered whether I should go or not.  In face with Webstock this year as well I thought I’d only get to go to one conference and I’d pick Webstock every time. But then I read the programme and looked at the speakers and decided that I didn’t want to miss GOVIS after all.

This morning I arrived, got my first shock at the sight of the farmers market hessian bag which was purporting to be the conference bag. On the bright side, the stickers peel off and it will be a handy bag to take to the vege market.  Peering inside it was bereft of any of the usual conference goodies, not even a pen to write with *gasp*.  Welcome to the recession I thought.  In all fairness, given the current climate, I’m sure organising this conference has been no picnic.

My second shock was walking into the main conference hall.  I was a *ahem* few minutes late and thought like previous year I might be sitting on the steps. Hell, this time I could’ve had several rows to myself. It seemed like there were only about half the number of attendees compared to the last GOVIS conference. I was starting to feel a little more fortunate to be there.  Clearly there are many government departments who can’t afford it this year.

Conference got off to a really awkward start. The welcome finished early so then the Minister’s speech finished early. Mike rustled out  a couple of filler TED talks, both of which I’d seen before and I wasn’t quite seeing the relevance of.  Plus fillers so early on was worrying me. Full marks to Mike being prepared for this but worrying all the same. It got worse. The State Services Commission was a no show.  Mike had a statement to read and we all know it isn’t an easy time. Changes are happening, people will lose their jobs.  Lots of people have to reapply for their jobs and there wont be enought to go around. There are announcements to make but we are a couple of weeks too soon. It was just really awkward and it didn’t seem right not having a keynote to set the scene for the rest of the conference. UPDATE You can read about it in Computerworld.

The replacement act was the video US Now. Great film, loved it, loved it the first two times I watched it.  Second time I saw it I went and looked at the various sites on the internet they  talked about and read some more of what those interviewed had to say. Did I need to see it a third time?  While some twittered about being trapped in Hell’s own mini theatre, others walked out. I decided to stay and just hope it all got better. Morning was afterall next and held much promise but alas our hopes were dashed – WTF wraps? No sugar in site, no sniff of chocolate brownie, nothing. I know it was good for us and probably kept us awake till lunch but really, we’d have prefered something chocolately.  Thank goodness for the exhibitors trumpet stash. EDS icecream to the rescue.

early=bad

I paid my credit card off early and Westpac charged me interest. The system made them do it or at least that’s what the customer services person said.

Let me explain, when I paid my tiny February bill I noticed that March’s bill was going to be huge.  A few days later I paid a bit more off.  When the March bill fell due I paid the rest of the March bill off in full.  I’m sure the bank hates me for that, but that’s just the way I manage my money.  It turns out when I paid the extra in February it was 2 days before the March billing period so as far as the computer was concerned I’d not paid my March bill. It only looked for payments in March. So it charges me interest on the money I’d paid earlier in February. That’s adsurd!

So I phoned westpac and thankfully it didn’t take too long to get through to a real person.  The customer services person offered to refund me half the interest I’d been charged. HALF! Not bloodly likely. I don’t care that that was all he was authorised to do. You’ve already got my money, how dare you charge me interest? Blaming it on the system is lame – may I suggest your logic needs some adjustment. I asked them to send me the section of the terms and conditions which says you’ll be charged interest if you pay back your credit card early. I’ve heard nothing so far.

He assured me he’d send the job onto his manager and she’d call me in the morning. So far I’ve had no phone call,  no email returned.  I went and checked my balance online and yay the full amount of interest has been returned. That pleases me of course, but they could have improved the experience by calling me back.

media circus

Reading today’s Herald on Sunday is just making me angry. I’m talking about the mess a certain sports broadcaster has gotten himself into.  I love this quote:

“He has struggled with the fact that people do not seem to understand that he is extremely remorseful and he has reached a stage where he just doesn’t know what he can do.”

I don’t know, but here’s a thought, why not just shut the fsck up.  (And yes I know we should all stop blogging about it too – I get the irony here).

Honestly, he did the deed, he admitted to doing the deed.  He can say sorry all he likes but it doesn’t stop me from knowing what I’ve read about the original incident.  He may be a thoroughly nice guy, this may have been a one off lapse in judgment, he may never do anything like this again - I don’t know, I don’t know the guy.

Funny though, the domestic violence ads on TV always say don’t go back.  No matter how sorry he is just get out.

guide to shoplifting

Have you ever wondered which stores actually use those security systems they have at their doors?  I’ve never given it another thought till I got my new bag with the 8 magnetic catches.

If a store has a magnetic system and actually bothers to turn it on I know about it.  Annoyingly my bag triggers those systems as I walk through the door.  The thing which amuses me is the stores which only turn it on sometimes.  I’m also fascinated that not once have I ever had someone come after me and challenge me. Part of me is pleased I don’t look like a shoplifter but I also wonder why the shops don’t care more.  It can’t be cheap to install one of those systems so I wonder why they bother if they either don’t use it or ignore it.

And of course I’m growing to hate the sound of beeping at those few stores who do use it.  I don’t really need my arrival announced to all shoppers.  I’ve noticed the only people who turn to observe what’s causing the beeping are other shoppers.  Curiously, in the Sydney CBD, the trend seems to be to turn the detection systems off at the weekend – a higher volume of shoppers with magnetic fastening bags causing too much noise I expect.

And no, of course I’m not going to tell you which stores.

all aboard the mighty 200

Planet of the dead started like a cross between Tomb Raider and a James Bond film.  All the while I was thinking OMG it’s Zoe Slater.  She was annoying on Eastenders so I wasn’t holding much hope.  Michelle Ryan’s character Christina had an air of smugness and superiority about her right from the start as she robs a gallery of a golden goblet.  She of course in her get-away ended up on the same London route 200 bus as the Doctor.  Did he really need to be eating an Easter egg as he got on the bus?  I know it is the Easter special but it was all a bit naff.

As one would expect the bus enters a tunnel, drives through a hole in the fabric of reality and ends up on another world with 3 suns.  The bossy boots/little rich girl/dominatrix Lady Christine da Souza proclaims herself leader. The bus driver attempts walking back through the hole and is fried, they realise the bus has protected them like a Faraday cage but of course it is now stuck in the sand and then runs out of petrol.

Back on earth UNIT is called in and mad professor/welsh nutter character Malcolm begins his work.  Of course cell phone coverage between earth and the planet is no problem.  Another bus passenger, Carmen (Ellen Thomas who played the acerbic Liz in Teachers), can hear voices, lots of voices of the dead. Christina and the Doctor head off to investigate and run into a couple of human size fly creatures – Tritovore – turns out they crashed on the planet too. The Doctor and Christina soon learn the sand storm heading towards them is actually a swarm of metal sting-ray type creatures which have devoured everything on the planet.

The Doctor explains his pseudo science to Christina with my fave line of the episode when he describes something as a “super clever out of spacey way”.  Anyway, alien tech scavenged from the fly ship, fly-people devoured by the sting-ray creatures the Doctor and Christina race back to the bus.  With the final element – the golden goblet- the bus powers up and levitates back through the wormhole and over London in a very Harry Potter-esque moment.

Gratitude all round – nutty Malcom hugs the Doctor and can’t stop saying I love you, the Doctor seems fine with that but is disgusted when saluted by the UNIT boss.  Predictably at the end Christina wants to join the Doctor, he says no, she is handcuffed for the theft and led away, he relents and pops her handcuffs, she escapes and flies off in the bus.  Meanwhile Carmen tells the Doctors “your song is ending sir”, that it is “returning through the dark” and “he will knock 4 times”.

 I’m just pleased Christina didn’t leave with the Doctor.

Of curious interest is the title of the next episode – The waters of Mars. It is an anagram of both “The masters of war” or “The war of masters”. Coincidence?