Cycling in London

I cycle to the office in London when I need to go there. It's fun, healthy, environmentally friendly, gives your body a great lift for the day, faster then the train, and cheap. However, I have heard people say cyclists are a nuisance in London. That they cause accidents and that they all 'jump' red lights and so on. This is evidently not the case. Undoubtedly some do behave badly, but the majority [including me] comply with the laws of the road, whilst trying to protect themselves from other road users who are not so considerate. We're not all lycra wearing urban warriors.

It's interesting how the hazards a cyclists faces change as the journey goes through different areas. My route home starts in the City and for the first mile or so pedestrians are the biggest hazard. They step out into the road without looking and often with iPods in their ears so they can't hear your bell, whistle or shout. It's a real problem and is not the cyclists fault. For the next couple of miles it's buses and coaches - especially London buses which seem to think the normal courteousies of the road don't apply to them. They indicate without moving, move without indicating, pull over in front of you without warning and so on. However well they are being driven I always give London buses a wide berth as I'm not convinced they can see me anyway. Further out of London it's white vans who seem to think every cyclist is on a mission to stop them getting home. They often pass dangerously close and try and overtake when there isn't room. Ironically, they never get very far as traffic is so slow in London they come to a stop a few hundred yards down the road anyway.

Anyway, rant over. The main point of this post was to link to the excellent City Cyclists site which conducts a much more thorough analysis of the issue and the response of the City of London police. Well worth a read.

What is an intranet?

Intranets in large organisations are fundamentally different in nature to intranets in small organisations. In fact I believe only large multi-site intranets can truly be called intranets. Single site intranets are not really intranets as they tend to be managed centrally, with content responsibilities detached from the processes that generate the information. However, I think the social media platforms - in particular wikis - offer a chance to change this. So, instead of going to expensive design and production agencies, these smaller organisations should deploy a wiki platform, tell people about it and then see what happens. I'm sure you'll then see a true intranet emerge - i.e. with distributed content responsibilities, with the added benefit of building in collaboration capability from the start. Just a thought.

Medway Mariners

Well, once again the 2008 baseball season is upon us. There's still no word from the BBF on our fixture list for this year, but we seem to be confirmed as being in Division 1. Indoor training has now finished and we move outdoor to our diamond in Maidstone at the end of the month for a few sessions before our the first fixture towards the end of April. You'll be able to track our progress on the Mariners' website. As I'll be 50 this year, I'll probably make this my last season trying to play competitively so it would be good to make it a good one!

Playing a minority sport can be a real eye opener. There is huge amount of politics within the national organisation which seems to take a lot of their time - at the expense of simple things like timely notice of equipment changes, fixtures, league structures etc. It just seems so unnecessary and unprofessional. It's a wonder the sport survives at all in the UK!

Juno

What a delightful film. Quirky, beautifully acted, at times very funny and equally thought provoking. Even though it’s a simple but strong story, I found myself on the edge of my seat at times wondering in which direction it would go.

Ellen Page is a big star in the making as the lead actor, and Michael Cera played the part of the geek perfectly. In fact all the performances were great. Heart warming stuff. If you liked Little Miss Sunshine, you’ll like this.

Speed The Plow

Saturday we went to see Kevin Spacey, Jeff Goldblum and Laura Michelle Kelly playing David Mamet's Speed-the-plow at Old Vic.

The Old Vic is one of my favourite theatres. Large enough to foster an atmosphere, but small enough for intimacy, so I always have great expectations when I do go. And I was not disappointed.

This is a great show. Mamet's play about the cut, thrust and ultimately fickle nature of Hollywood is a simple story, beautifully acted. The speed of the dialogue is awesome. The interplay between the two principle actors - Spacey and Goldblum is mesmerising, yet easy to follow. And Kelly's more gentle role as the office temp provides a perfect counterpoint. This was one of the best plays, and best stage performances I seen for ages.

See it if you can.

Marathon disappointment

Today's gentle training run turned into a disaster. My Achilles heel was sore from the off and after 8k my right calf pulled again. And I was only jogging a I'm still recovering from last week's Adidas Half Marathon. I think that probably ends my London Marathon ambitions for this year. I'm hugely disappointed as I'll have to go back into the lottery for a place in 2009. So, my next race will now the the Darenth Valley 10k in May. I've never run that race before, but it's local and even though the course undulates, there are some long hill stretches, so that should be fun!

TelePresence

I was given a demo today of the TelePresence product from Cisco. Wow! Video conferencing has really grown up. It’s close to being in the same room as I guess you can get without actually being in the same room. Likelike, no latency and directional audio make this a fabulous solution for cutting the travel miles for face to face meetings. Well worth a look.

Social Media Panel

This week I took part in a panel session on Social Media at the British Library. I was on the platform with Euan Semple, ex-BBC and well known in social media circles, and Conrad Bird, Deputy Director of Government Communications.

It was an interesting morning. I still find it surprising how many organisations are still thinking about whether social media is important to them, or the theory and concepts. Few seem to be dealing with the practicalities of introducing and running blogs, wikis, social networks etc. on a day to day basis inside their organisation. I don’t understand why the delays.

Inevitably SharePoint came up in the discussion and I was interested in Euan’s view that SharePoint does not support transformation. It reaffirms the status quo. This is something I have felt for sometime. SharePoint is far too comfortable, it is not a disruptive technology. It integrates well with the way we do things, with the existing culture, and with the existing technologies. It doesn’t force change. In my view it is far better to go with an open source wiki type solution, or a Facebook type social network which causes an organisation to re-think many things, taking us out of our comfort zone.

We also discussed revolution or evolution - and whether fast evolution is the same as slow revolution. I think not. Revolution implies a radical shift in many things, whereas evolution is a much less challenging affair. Having said that, one of the keys to success when deploying social media tools into risk-averse organisations (and amongst risk averse colleagues such as HR and legal) has to be to emphasise the evolutionary dimensions. Even if the results are revolutionary.

The Sound of Music

Perhaps not my first choice of a West End show to see, but I was there on Saturday afternoon for the matinee performance of The Sound of Music at the London Palladium. I knew the songs, of course, and I’ve seen the film and I’m afraid I still find the story twee. Predictable, cliché-ridden and over-hyped. I wonder if it would have had such a successful run if it the casting hadn’t been conducted via a reality TV show? I often fall asleep in the cinema, but rarely in the theatre, so when I found my eyes drooping I knew it must be bad. Even the lady in the seat in front of me was texting her friend with the message “Not good, almost asleep”. Watching her send the text was more interesting than the show itself. See it at your peril!

2,375th

I made it! I came a splendid 2,375^th out of over 4,800 runners in Sunday’s Adidas Silverstone Half Marathon. I was pleased with my time of 1 hour 57 minutes 53 seconds – a couple of minutes inside my target time of 2 hours. Although it was cold on the day, the weather wasn’t too bad, but it did get quite windy during the second half of the race. There was a great atmosphere at the start of the race – there always is – but running round the track meant there weren’t many spectators, nor much encouragement, as the race went along. It certainly wasn’t as much fun as the Bath Half Marathon last year. Nevertheless, I’m glad I did it as now my sights turn to the big one – The London Marathon in just five weeks time. At the moment I’m still thinking I’ll be doing it, but I’ll need to get a gentle 25k training run in this weekend, and a 30k run next weekend to be sure. I have moderated my target time though. Realistically I haven’t done enough road running to seriously go at 4 hours 15 minutes, so I’m settling for a target of 5 hours.

Jumper

Sci-fi is not my favourite genre, although I am a fan of Doug Liman – particularly his earlier work such as “Swingers” and especially, “Go”. So I wasn’t expecting to enjoy “Jumper” much, and I didn’t. Slow, poorly developed characters, mediocre acting all led to a very disappointing experience. It’s a shame because the basic premis is a good one – the ‘hero’ having super hero powers yet not behaving like one – a point made in a very unsubtle way when David was watching TV towards the beginning. It could have been a much better film. And why can't the camera be held still these days? I can't wait for that particular technique to go out of fashion again!