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.

an interesting evening

Saw Thorndon on film at the Film Archive tonight.  I don’t know why I don’t go there more often. It was a collection of clips from 1906 to 1972 and they were fascinating.  The non-speaking clips had a live piano accompaniament which was really well done. There wasa little bit of unnecessary commentary – all she did was read out the titles of the clips which were already on the films themselves. 

My journey home was amusing.  Clearly the students are back in town and celebrating the beginning of their year. I heard one young man complain her kept getting ID’ed everywhere just because he was carrying a skateboard.

Waiting for the bus I had two guys sit beside me and promptly unzip a padded cloth case.  From it they retrieved some religious work.  One promptly started to read out loud, very loud, to his friend. At this crowded busstop they went on to discuss the meaning of what they were reading.

The bus trip itself was more entertaining. The woman ahead of me spent ages quizzing the driver before she finally got on.  It was quite annoying as it took a long time till she finally asked the question she actually wanted answered.
Passenger: Does this bus go up Bowen St?
Driver: No
Passenger: Where does it go?
Driver: Molesworth St
Passenger: How far up Molesworth St?
Driver: The whole way, then through Thorndon.
Driver: Lady, where do you want to go?
Passenger: Railway station but I don’t know where to get off.
Driver: Hop on and I’ll tell you.
Passenger: (Holding a snapper card) Will it just be a dollar?
Driver: (looking a bit confused) Yes, are you paying by snapper or cash?
Passenger: Snapper
Driver: Then just hold it up to the reader, it works it out for you.
Passenger: But how does it know how far I’m going

Meanwhile there’s about 10 people behind her waiting to get on the bus. She sits right up the front and everyone files on. Then the questions start. So many questions about the bus routes and timetables and fares and anything else about the busses you could imagine.

After about 5 stops the driver completely flipped out. He got up and collected one of every different timetable from the little plastic holders. Over and over he kept saying to the woman, “Take the timetables, they’re free, they’re full of all the information you’ll need, take the timetables.”  He did it in a way which was half creepy, half helpful. It was really odd but more bullying then anything. The passenger really didn’t want the timetables, she said she didn’t use the bus often.  She had a snapper but I don’t think she was a local yet the snapper made her look like she should know how things worked.  I thought it was kind of sad, she just wanted reassurance she was heading in the right direction.  I’ve caught enough buses in foreign cities where I know my destination but I don’t know the streets or suburbs along the way.  You rely on drivers or fellow passengers for help getting to where you want to go.  The driver, he didn’t help her, he made her feel stupid for asking for help.

passengers are an optional extra

Have you tried catching a bus lately? I’ve lost count of the number of buses which have just simply not bothered to slow down and stop to pick me and other passengers up from my stop.

It used to be that if a driver approaching a stop saw someone looking at the timetable they’d slow enough to check that the passenger wasn’t looking for that bus.  At the weekend while on a bus I watched a person signal a bus then turn to pick up their grocieries. The bus started to slow when signalled but then sped up and drove off while the person was picking up their groceries – that’s just mean.

I heard one bus driver complaining about the super gold cards - he thought more elderly folk are catching the bus and it is slowing the bus runs down – the super gold card users take longer to get on and off the bus and apparently expect the drivers to wait till they’ve found a seat. It seems therefore the best answer is to rush past potentially fare paying passengers in order to make up some of that time.  I guess they’ve run out of things to complain about with snapper so the free rides for the elderly is the next target. Where’s their christmas spirit?

no live blogging

On Friday I attended the Victoria University Post election conference held in Parliament’s Legislative Council Chamber.  It is about my third one I think and they are always fascinating.  A mix of media, campaign managers and academics disect the campaign.

It is held under Chatham House Rule so you can use the information just not identify who said what, nor the identity of their organisations.  After morning tea, the request was also made for no live blogging – to be honest the person doing the asking appeared as though they weren’t sure what they were asking.  Besides they were already too late. Some blog posts had already been written and released to the wild, just not by me.

So over the next few days I will sift through my copious notes and prepare an entry on how each party’s campaign went.  Lots of people talked about multiple parties and there were plenty of questions and comments from the audience so you can’t make assumptions about who said what.

apostrophe crime

I just can’t help myself – if I see an apostrophe out of place on a sign or printed material, I have to let someone know. I’d like to think they take this information and do something about it, correcting the offending apostrophe in the next print run. I rather suspect they quietly roll their eyes and moan in the staff room about how picky some people are.

On Friday I pointed out an error to a bartender. The cocktail menu included fejoa’s [sic] in a list of  ingredients. I didn’t expect his reponse “I didn’t write it”. That doesn’t make it okay. There is no defence to a mis-placed or mis-used apostrophe.  And besides, that was poor customer service on top.  All I wanted was some kind of acknowledgement that he’d pass the information on to management but I suspect he doesn’t care.