As someone who works primarily from home, this presents me with a bit of a quandry – where do I work? When I made the move to 100% freelance I invested in a rather meaty Dell laptop with this in mind – I thought I could try various different working spots to see what suited me best.

So, I’ve been effectively hotdesking around the house. I started at the kitchen table which, as Winter set in, became too cold on the tiled floor. So I moved to the living room and, using my wife’s folding craft desk, set up shop in the armchair. Initially this was quite comfy with cushions piled behind me but just before Christmas I started getting a spot of backache no doubt associated with this set up.

Working in the chill out corner

Recently I’ve put the craft desk in the chill out corner, using a dining chair to sit at (plans on getting a folding office chair are likely to be realised during an Ikea trip at the weekend). So far this seems the best set up, giving me the warmth of the living room with the comfort of a high chair/desk setup.

I’m wondering if any other freelancers are in the same boat – no fixed office to work in. Where do you prefer to set up?

It was the year that was. The year of the shake up. A year of weirdness.

I can’t deny my life got turned upside down these past 12 months, psrticularly in the later half of the year. Truth be told, if you’d approached me this time in 2011 and told me I wouldn’t have a full time employer in 2012 I’d have laughed in your face.

But it’s the truth.

I still sit back and look at my life, wondering how on earth I managed it – yes, the stars aligned and consequences happened that allowed the shift but still…

I miss you guys.

No, really, I do. I’ve not updated this site since october because, in truth, I’ve been too damn busy. I’ve been working with companies like Kind of Digital, Gallomanor and Fu5e on some proper awesome website projects. I’ve been working with actor Colin McFarlane on his Making History project. I’ve been writing, making music, enjoying extended time with my family.

But I miss you. The friends and contacts I made while I was employed at the City of Lincoln Council, both in the organisation and in the public sector in general. You know who you are. I’ve talked work with you, had a drink with you, shared a laugh.

And now I feel like I’ve not talked to you for ages, like I don’t know what’s going on in the world.

So let’s make some new years resolutions…

• Update this blog more frequently (at least once a week) – that might mean more generalised posts!
• Go to more events – not on work, but as a participant.
• Get involved in more discussions, be they on twitter or other blogs, I’m going to try and be there.

So there we go.

Happy new year, all!

As part of this I’m going to be focussing on some of the work I’ve done over the next few weeks! It’s exciting times and I’ve been working on some very cool projects with some very cool people!

Anyhow, I’ve had this post brewing for a few weeks now – I was going to put it up after the last Apple conference but decided against it following Steve Jobs passing; I didn’t want to look like I was jumping on some kind of bandwagon!

I’ve been undecided as to whether I was going to make this post a rant or a discussion. In the end, I’ve decided it’s a love letter. A love letter to the iPod. Not the super shiny, touchy feely iPod that Apple splash around these days. The proper iPod; the Classic.

We’ve had Nano’s, shuffles iterations thereof, but nothing is more iconic that the touch wheel iPod. I’ve owned one since 2005 and wouldn’t be without it. There are many people who bash Apple for promoting materialism and selling dramatically overpriced designer hardware, but no one can deny the impact the original iPod has had on the portable media market.

While not the first MP3 player available, and certainly not the last, the original iPod has captivated me with it’s simplicity. Yes, it can play video and a few games (remember, we’re not talking the Touch here which can do all that and more) but at it’s core it’s as pure a music player as the old Sony Walkman I used to treasure.

I love taking my music with me; in my youth I’d spend hours recording CD’s (in real time kids!) to tape so that I could listen to them on my aforementioned Walkman, crafting mix tapes so that I wasn’t stuck with just one artist. For me, being able to have all my music AND mix tapes (playlists) available on one device still feels like magic, even though I know darn well how it works!

Sure, perhaps it’s not as shiny as it’s touch screen counterparts, and you  may have to use iTunes to sync content to your device (something many feel is a disadvantage) but the capacity of the Classic trumps the Touch and iPhone (160Gb over 64Gb on the Touch and iPhone 4S – a capacity drop which comes at a premium!) and, to my mind, the click wheel is a slick, simple, easy to use way of interacting with the device.

Initially it disheartened me that Apple gave no attention to the Classic in their presentation (indeed they’ve dropped the click wheel off the Nano iPod line in favour of a touch screen) and I got concerned that the gorgeous little device was under threat. Then I thought – perhaps it doesn’t need any more attention; everyone knows what an iPod looks like, recognises that wheel, the layout of the screen. Perhaps it needs no more publicity.

I do hope Apple don’t discontinue the Classic – it’s a piece of pop culture that deserves to live on.

So, I’m shutting down Stories With Words. I’ll keep it live, pointing back here, but, from now on, any new stories I write will be posted on AndrewBeeken.co.uk for all to read!

I hope you like them! I will say that some future ones may be a wee bit sweary, but I will warn you in advance so that you don’t take offence!

Here’s the archives from SWW for your reading pleasure:

Shorts

• Star to Star
• The Lovers Embrace

Six minute stories

• Downloading
• His Return
• The Cleansing

This is a big move that has been fueled by other changes in my life, but needless to say I won’t be jumping into a big empty space devoid of work. I’ll be doing things for Mr Dave Briggs at Kind of Digital, as well as helping out on the I’m A Scientist… family of websites for Gallomanor.

Obviously this is just a start and, as such, I’m keen to hear about other opportunities to get involved in cool and interesting projects. I’m looking forward to getting out and about in Lincoln and talk to some of the people locally to find out what’s going on. I’ll still be operating partially in Local Gov related things but I’m hoping to spread my wings wider and diversify my work!

I’ll also be taking the opportunity to spend more time on my writing and (haha – hopefully) film making ventures, so keep an eye on both this blog and my writing blog at Stories With Words for more on that.

So, until next time, when I will be operating as a free agent, ta ta!

Anyone working in a public sector office environment will know of the dreaded internet blocks. Those tools that sit on corporate internet connections, making sure no one accesses naughty things during work time. Unfortunately this often encompasses sites which have practical use, such as social networking, tools like Google services and, my biggest bugbear, blogs.

Blogs are huge. They are sources of information, allowing anyone with the right mindset (and some without!) to set up a news platform. A lot of the time this is purely to feed the individuals ego, but there are masses of blogs out there which can actually provide practical information which might actually help people do their jobs.

If they could read them.

Over the last month or so I’ve tried to share countless links with people who simply cannot read the content as they are denied access to the site the content is hosted on. Through discussions, I can see the issues IT have – site blocking is a blunt instrument, a canvas approach to catch everything including unsavoury websites. This approach is hard to manage to allow individual, one-by-one access; I’d have to tell IT every single website I’d like to be made accessible which is obviously something hard to think about when link sharing is a very spontaneous thing.

So what to do. I could copy and paste content into an email, send it to the relevant people. But then it might get lost to the ether (granted, the same could happen to an emailed link) – what about a more permanent approach?

The Interesting Stuff site on our network

On our network, we have a WordPress install which I use for development purposes. Being internal, this is not blocked to staff. A few weeks back I set up an experimental blog called “Interesting Stuff”. The idea would be that I (and other members of staff) could use this to share and tag links and information internally, creating an information base that could be shared across the authority. I decided to use P2 as the theme to keep things simple.

While the blocking made link sharing tough to do, I remembered a tool that can be used with WordPress called Press This. Available in the Tools menu on a WP blog, you set it as a bookmarklet, select a bunch of text on a page which you want to share, hit the Press This link and boom – instant post.

I tried it out on this link http://wallblog.co.uk/2011/07/25/how-the-bbc-lost-60000-twitter-followers/ which had previously been blocked.

I have to say it works VERY nicely, immediately turning the selected text into a post which can be tagged, categorized and published. Now people can read the article and content in our own domain without having to be blocked.

What this doesn’t do is allow people to read the post comments which can often be just as valuable as the main post, however it is a start to trying to get this kind of information distributed around the authority. I’m going to start publicizing this, particularly on the new intranet we’re developing.

For more information or to chat about any WordPress based projects you think I may be interested in, get in touch!

I put pen to paper and signed away half of my hours at the City of Lincoln Council.

Why do this? Well, things have taken a very different turn for me over the last few months. Towards the end of 2010 I made a loose decision to pursue some additional, freelance work to broaden my horizons and give me more opportunity for hard development work. After UK GovCamp this January I strengthened my resolve for this and, subsequently, have worked privately for a number of people on some very cool projects.

I decided to take it to the next level and started negotiations to cut down my working hours at the Council, enabling me to take on more freelance projects and longer term contracts.

That happens at the end of this month and I am both excited and a little anxious. I know, however, that I’ve got some ace people behind me on this and I hope that it will be the start of a very exciting new step in my professional life.

So if any of my readers have any projects they think I may be interested in, please drop me a line at abeeken@gmail.com, and watch this space for some more announcements!

[photo by Flickr user Rodeo's Sight...]

So, after signing up, I attended the event last night. Here’s my thoughts.

The Event. Being used to the “unconference” nature of the GovCamps, the more structured presentation approach here was different for me. The event itself was more of a meet and greet with a few helpful presentations for the attendees – I felt these were pitched either at SocMed newbies or businesses but Emily Leary‘s case study on BT’s use of WordPress was rather fascinating. Nothing inherently wrong with these; the speakers were all interesting and presented some good points, but it would have been nice to see some more variety, for example the use of Social Media from a social engagement viewpoint. Perhaps this was down to the length of the event (four presentations and mingle time crammed into two hours) so maybe a longer event covering more diverse subjects would be considered in the future.

The Venue. The recently opened The Showroom is a brilliant venue. Nice and airy with plenty of space to move around, I also noticed plenty of conference rooms off the main drag so perhaps this would be ideal for a future Lincoln GovCamp 2 (which I’d still love to hold!)

The Future. There’s already rumbles of continuing the event, possibly every six months. I’d welcome this. I met some good people who are likely to have good ideas surrounding our digital playing field, and I feel that Lincoln is growing in such a way that we can embrace tech in a greater fashion. I’d go again and I’d like to expand the discussion beyond simple good practice and business models. What can we use these tools for? How can we innovate with them? That’s the beauty of social media, I guess – we can have discussions like this outside of these events (I always say I’d not have done ANY of the things I’ve achieved over the last four years if it weren’t for my contacts on Twitter) but the events are always good to cement contacts and widen ones social net.

So, long story short, if you didn’t attend last night try and get to the next one. This should be the start of something pretty cool for Lincoln.

(photo by @CeliaLacy)