I’m still trying to find a solution to the 3G issue but the power problem has been resolved thanks to a random blogpost from author and internet fiend Warren Ellis. This post introduced me to the Anker Astro2. The Anker has been a god send these last three weeks – happily holding enough charge to completely resuscitate my empty Nexus4 and have enough juice left to charge my iPod Nano. It also comfortably refuelled my iPad3 on a trip back from Titchfield.

It is not lightweight but justifies the extra strain in my shoulder when carried and Amazon have been selling them half price recently (I think there is be a new model).

It is recharged itself via a standard mini USB wall charger so is pretty low maintenance and while I haven’t ‘crash tested’ it it certainly looks like it could take a beating (though the connectors it comes with look a little flimsy so I swapped them for stuff I had laying about.)

For anyone who has a lot of commuting in their life I’d definitely recommend it. It will have a permanent spot in my commuting bag going forward (now just need to get a new bag – but thats another post!)

It is determinedly old school in its organisation – I love the fact that is a fiver on the door There are dozens of high quality speakers throughout the day which many a £1000 entry conference would kill for though despite this at least for me a lot of the joy of the event is the conversations in the bar and corridors.

I was actually early for a change so I managed to find a seat in the Main Hall and settled in for a morning of talks.

The day kicked off with a bit of a ‘what I did last summer’ talk from @russs (is that enough S’s?) and the geek festival in a field he and friends organisation – Electromagnetic Fields.

All in all it was a very impressive undertaking, though the guys are clearly not going to become location scouts anytime soon – choosing a field next to a motorway, a sewage plant and in danger of flooding maybe not the wisest – thankfully the wind was blowing the sewage smell away from the camp! They supplied power AND high speed wifi to 300 people in tents for a weekend of hacking and beer (with a bar under the M1!). In fact the wifi provided by the 30 metre microwave mast they installed and the network routers hidden in portaloos was so good they were upset that the bandwidth didn’t get worked harder!

They are going to give it another go in 2014 (September-ish) though at a different location and aiming for more like 900 people!! Check the project out on Twitter at @emfcamp

[as an aside it sounded a lot like a scaled up version of that Big Bathcamp Mike arranged a few years ago at Rutland and I seem to remember him having an idea for a Geek festival so another one to cross off the to-do list mate!]

The second talk was something of a love letter to the NHS though to be honest it took a bit of a while to get to any kind of point. The speaker clearly had something of a reputation as a bit of a showman but I found his style a bit difficult to engage with even if when he got to the point I found the core of the presentation really interesting – using open data to identify spending patterns in the NHS and in particular spotting where the NHS trusts aren’t taking advantage of the saving offered by generic drugs and are instead still in the pocket of big pharma. He showed some genuinely interesting maps (I especially liked that they had been filtered so as not to just follow local populations)

which really illustrated his points nicely and were a fine example of simple but effective visualising of data – something I am clearly interested in these days.

After a short break it was time for a GOV.UK double header. Tom Loosemore was first up giving a whistle stop tour of the work of GDS which was an impressive mix of light hearted, politic and making some serious points.

I’ve followed the work of GDS closely since before it was actually GDS (I was lucky enough to see the Alpha before it launched and even did the original ‘alphagov’ Wikipedia page ) and I know a few people involved so it wasn’t exactly new ground for me but there some new nuggets amongst it. The fact GDS can veto appointments at some level (I missed what) is huge – forcing the Civil Service to put digitally savvy people in to senior roles not just moving people in because they are the right grade.

The scale of the work fixing transactions was also an interesting insight as its the area I know least about – also always funny to see that picture of Daffydd at Number 10 again! Also when talking about the more to open source and the culture change that invoked he linked to the best tweet ever for those of us in this corner of the web by world (for context CESG are the cyber-spooks at Cheltenham)

Tom does give great presentation. He handled some quite difficult questions later on with aplomb and kept the crowd onside throughout – he also gave very honest answers right up to (but not beyond) crossing some kind of Civil Service line. Skillful in of its self.

Early on he also spoke about how his role (since he was banned from coding 8 years ago!) was about ‘creating space for others’ to do their work. This is very much my aspiration as a manager but I wonder how well I manage it.

Next up with Jordan Hatch talking about how GDS avoided ‘breaking the web’. I really enjoyed this slightly more technical talk – some elements of it were above my head (NGINX could be a Star Trek: Voyager character for all I know!) but I am a big believer in this particular goal of “no link left behind” and believe it is something too often ignored or at the very least shortchanged. GDS built custom tools (now available on Github) to manage the migration mapping (the Migratorator) and also a gamified tool with scoreboards that then allowed people to check old page v new page and decide if it looked like a correct mapping (the Review-o-matic). The redirect engine (if thats the right term) is currently managing 180,000 redirects from what was Directgov, Businesslink and the 26 department (and No10 and the DPM) websites.

After a bit of a liquid lunch (Staropramen for less than 3 quid a pint in London – good times!) I settled in for Bill Thompsons talk. This is the second time I have heard Bill speak and the experience was identical to the first. I was swept along during the talk and felt smarter just for following along but at the end I realised it was some kind of illusion and I didn’t really understand anything! Thankfully he has had to good grace to post his text on his blog so at least I can link to it (and reread it a few times.)

The was about it for any formal session attendance from me – I did catch a bit of Richard Popes ‘Tiny Data’ session which I enjoyed – he also wrote the tweet that summed the whole event up for me as well:

#opentech was lovely. No reason at all, that other conferences should not be that good, cost £5, and be community led.

— Richard Pope (@richardjpope) May 18, 2013

I was sad to miss Paul Clarke give his session but I mistimed it and the nature of the room layout meant arriving late would have meant crashing in right at the from of the room when Paul was in full flow.

As always I had loads of brilliant conversations – I caught up with Zoe and her tales of Stockholm and launch parties with Labrinth, chatted to Phil for the first time in ages, shared a beer or two with Tony discussing open data, MOOCs, hacking and who knows what else. Met Harry for the first time in person and had a good chat about a little ebook project we find ourselves coming at from different, but complimentary, directions. Had a great insightful chat with Nick about some shared challenges and his idea for an ‘exceptions club’ and randomly met Dan Wilson who was a co-founder of Timetric one of the big third party users of ONS data – that was also very helpful.

I ran out of steam a bit early though (that liquid lunch probably didn’t help!) and heading home to Bristol in time for Dr Who and a much needed Chinese takeaway.

Huge thanks to the team who put it together;

Huge hugs and high fives to @smithsam and team for a great day! #opentech

— The ODI (@UKODI) May 18, 2013

My 3rd week showed no sign of letting up with the learning curve – though there was less travel this week as I skipped my trip to Titchfield and am working from home today (even if that proved to be a challenge – the problem is always the last thing you check and I was pretty sweaty and throwy before I discovered the ethernet cable was a dud!).

This week I really started to get me head around the task ahead and started to at least get a rough roadmap of what steps are needed to get us there.

I had some great chats with people in my team and am quickly coming to the conclusion that the solutions are close at hand and it is more of a case of harnessing the existing knowledge and talent than starting anything from scratch.

Some of the prototypes being worked up before I came into the role are brilliant. The team is looking in to a Datawrapper-esque tool I am referring to as ‘graphic-o-matic’ (much to the amusement of others) which I believe has huge potential internally and some of the more bespoke work they have been doing is of the highest quality.

There was a bit of an ‘open data’ theme running throughout the week – the release of the ‘Shakespeare Review‘ and some meetings about internal open data initiatives meant the topic was never far from my mind. It is funny really how despite my best efforts these open data projects keep following me around and just how much I have learned out things by accident.

I gave an intro presentation to as many of my team as possible on Wednesday – as is my way it was pretty informal and lighthearted but I hope I got across the idea that I know what I am doing and I am passionate about this stuff (and more interesting in the work than in the bureaucracy and hierarchies.)

Despite the fact I have spent so many years in and around the public sector I am still finding aspects of life a challenging transition. Internet access is locked down to a terrifying extent – even for someone in my role and it is slow going just getting access to the sites and software I need to work. The admin overhead for line management is pretty significant – certainly more than anywhere else I have worked. Recruitment is also a hard slog. The team has a great deal of unfilled spots at the moment – some in really key areas which makes things extra tough.

At the moment I am researching a paper about fixed vs responsive web design – I thought it would be a no brainer to be honest as I have been pretty all-in with responsive over the last 18 months or so but a couple of things I have read have made it less straightforward. The ‘Go Cardless‘ blog post in particular made for interesting reading.

Looking forward to OpenTech tomorrow and sleeping all day Sunday probably.

“Comment is free, but facts are sacred.”

It is safe to say I have mainly been on the ‘comment’ side of that equation as far as how it relates to the web (particularly when you consider the Guardians own use of the term) but increasingly I find myself in the grip of a data driven world.

I have, I think, a pretty complicated relationship with ‘data’ on a professional level. I was a major supporter of the early ‘Free Our Data‘ campaign – I even once hired Mike Cross as a freelancer off the back of some writing he had done on the topic. Later though I got soured by what I felt at the time was the hijacking of the entire topic by the Semantic Web/Linked Data crowd – a subject still known to bring me out in hives to this day Talk of RDF,SPARQL or ‘triples’ is one of the best ways to get me to leave a room for any of you who are ever bored of my company.

What I found refreshing about this book, and about the whole of ‘data journalism’ really, is how little any of that is mentioned. The tools of the trade seem to be Excel, a suite of free or cheap web tools and a lot of hard work and patience. I can appreciate that.

Probably not surprisingly the book is heavy on the Guardian influences. Despite being a regular reader I was still surprised at how much I had already engaged with to a pretty decent extent; Wikileaks, MP expenses, the Olympics and the Riots (as well as the Dr Who stuff) were all stories I knew well and had experienced the advantages of the data crunching (and had also followed those stories through to the background on the Datablog at the time.) I guess what is impressive is how mainstream and normal all this seemed in such a short period of time.

I enjoyed reading about some of the history of pre-computing data journalism – the mentions of Florence Nightingale, the Detroit riots in ’67 and the data based story in the first ever Guardian give the whole thing a nice grounding in the past.

There were a lot of nuggets of interest to my current job – one of my favourites was this one early on;

“Data journalism is not graphics and visualisations. It’s about telling the story in the best way possible.”

This is something I am keen to reinforce – not every number needs an infographic.

My favourite section of the book is actually not written by Rogers but by Jonathan Gray of the Open Knowledge Foundation. His chapter, 9, is titled ‘The new punk’ (though I’m not sure about that title.) Gray puts data work in a wider context and makes clear that getting the data is just the beginning and that a lot of work is needed to add the value.

***an update from Jonathan himself 16/05/2013 “Just to clarify, only the section titled “What data can and cannot do” is mine, the rest of “The new punk” section (including the title) is not mine.”**

“Open information about government is not the same as open government, participatory government or good government”.

He also expands in more detail the point that data journalism isn’t be default graphics. In a section too long to type out here Gray makes it clear that data “[..is] the ultimate in flexible formats.” He also goes on to make the point that “simplicity and brevity are huge strengths in visual communication.”

I found the book a genuinely interesting read and a really useful grounding in the realities of data journalism at the moment and with a great deal of practical insights, snippets and leads that are going to make my education in this space.

I’ll finish with a quote from the final chapter about my current employers;

“It should be pointed out that the ONS has incredible information on [it's] site – but it is also the world’s worst website.”

I’d hate to be the guy who has to…oh. Right. Oh well

So to coin a phrase ‘that was the week that was’.

Week two had the distinct benefit of being a little shorter due to a much needed and unusually lovely Bank Holiday.

Tuesday I was back to sunny Titchfield. It is a train journey that takes you (slowly) through some truly stunning bits of the country. It was another day of back to back meetings with lunch an after thought

We had some very interesting discussions about taxonomies (I know – is that really possible!), the information architecture of the site and some potential UX elements. I also chipped in to the debate around responsive design that has been going on for a while I think. The morning had quite an ‘agile’ feel with plenty of show and tell amongst the discussions and I felt I learned alot and was also able to start contributing.

There was also some discussion about site search and the benefits of Solr. This took me down a bit of a rabbit hole Tuesday evening as I re-acquainted myself with the ins and outs of Lucene based search (well as much as my little, non dev head could cope with).

Later on we had a fascinating conversation with some external folk from Make Sense who amongst other things introduced me to the Miso Project and Datawrapper - both of which are now high on my learning list.

Wednesday we met up with Neil Williams, Product Manager supremo for the Inside Gov stuff over at GDS. Neil had one of the all time worst First Great Western experiences getting out to Newport (and back!) so it is safe to say next time we’ll be going to him

The conversation was the start of what is likely to be a longer dialogue about how best to display Government funded statistics online when for the ONS in particular the need to be clearly independent of the Government of the day is fundamental to the organisation. It is a knotty issue that will require technical, design and policy thinking to align but I think it has the potential to be a genuinely useful piece of work.

One of the primary objectives of my role is this idea of developing ‘digital products’ that will improve the experience for the citizen user.  What I discovered Wednesday afternoon is that just about every product that has a multimedia dimension (video, screencasts, audio, slidecasts, animations…) is called a ‘podcast’ here. Was more than a little confusing for a bit! I am lucky to have a really enthusiastic team with a mix of editorial and CMS skills (with a sprinkling of A/V technical know-how that will grow) and alot of people in the organisation keen to try out new channels. The challenge now is to identify formats that work for the topic and can be sustained at a high standard going forward to ensure we live up to user expectations.

I spent some time with the guy who heads up our social media team (I know – a team!) and am getting a good feel for the kind of opportunities we have in that space. Thanks to Anne at GCN I also kicked off the process to get the Twitter account verified and also got permission to start a team blog – taking our lead from the GDS and MoJ blogs in particular (and not forgetting my friends at BIS, DH and Jisc). I’m going to take the GDS route to getting it launched in particular and just use a WordPress.com site and pay the $99 to map our domain, get rid of the ads and tweak the CSS to get it on brand.

A major move to using Agile is underway in the organisation at the moment and I attended a meeting about that and was pleased to be invited on to a working group to help with that going forward. My preference for Agile is pretty well documented and it is already well established in my area which is hugely pleasing.

Today (Friday) I had a bit of breathing space and spent it following up on the various actions I noted down for myself over the previous nine days, properly digesting the business case for the programme I am working on and trying to consolidate and synthesize seven years worth of persona work. Felt good to actually get some stuff done. That said I have a terrifying to-do list for next week and have brought work home with me for this weekend so the bad habits are starting early!

I’m giving week notes another go as a way of trying to kickstart  my blogging mojo and thought this time I’d go with a bit of a comic book theme to brighten things up (learn about DC 52 here..)

This week I started my new job at the ONS. At the moment there is some slight confusion about what my job title is but it seems to start with ‘Head of..’ and then be a pick and mix from Rich, Digital, Content and Media

I am responsible for the social media, analytics, design and web editorial teams and am operating as part of a major change programme. It is all very exciting with all sorts of opportunities but it is clearly a challenging environment with some unique constraints around publishing and security that effect everything on the digital side.

A lot of the topics for discussion so far have been very familiar (social media policies, podcasts, video, blogging, accessibility, CMS improvements…) but a major strand around visualising data (rather than Data Visualisation which is a respected department in its own right) is something I need a more in-depth understanding of so I am reading ‘Facts are Sacred‘ by Simon Rogers, late of the Guardian, on my commute and have the ‘Digital Journalism Handbook‘ waiting on my Kindle (funnily enough I was a Mozilla volunteer at the event that spawned that book and watched it unfold a little!). I have also signed up for ‘An introduction to visualising data‘ which is a Guardian ‘masterclass’ on my own dime and am hoping to learn a little at OpenTech in 2 weeks.

The team have been great so far – I am very much the new boy – a lot of people I am working with have been at the ONS a long time and have an incredible depth of knowledge about how the organisation ticks but they have all been lovely so far and made  it easy to settle. The tendency for meetings to be booked in over lunch and people starting at dawn (well 7!) is going to take some getting used to though.

The team I am a part of is once again split over two sites but this time instead of the commuter train to London I catch the little chugger down to Fareham once a week. Prettier journey and less commuter angst seems like a positive so far. My daily commute to Newport has also turned out to be much easier than I was expecting (and even cheaper).

All in all it was a good, if intense, first week. I’m not sorry that this is a long weekend thats for sure

On Thursday I said farewell to my friends and colleagues at the Research Council and Monday I start my new role in Newport with the ONS.

I was sad to leave Swindon in the end – an element of this is probably ‘graduation goggles‘ but a bigger part is I was lucky enough to work with some genuinely lovely, talented and hard working people.

I stayed in the role 30 months – which I know doesn’t sound like much to most people but to me was virtually unheard of. The first year plus it was a dream job in many respects but unfortunately a combination of my taking on too much (and not delegating enough) and a particularly dysfunctional project I was drawn in to made the latter half of 2012 especially difficult and left me a bit broken by the Christmas period.

I won’t dwell on that though. When I started the organisation was still a little bit uncomfortable with embracing digital and in my own little way I like to think I have helped changed that over those two and a bit years.

The success of the blog, the Centenary website and the upcoming citizen science projects that will spin out of that, the experiments with the Annual Reviews – 1st with an early responsive site built in Ruby and then publishing ebooks for both Apple and Kindle, starting to take Twitter and Facebook more seriously as genuine channels, working with Wikimedia (which is continuing being led from outside the digital team), the use of WordPress and open source throughout the wider organisation (including for commentable documents and intranets) and the increased acknowledgement of the importance of analytics and data for decision making are all things I am proud of even if sometimes my involvement was peripheral.

My failure to deliver a new CMS and corporate website in that time however is beyond disappointing and will haunt me for a while I fear.

I’m confident the future of digital there is in safe hands though and just like I still do with Jisc I’ll continue to watch with interest in the months and years to come.

So Monday. I am excited and unusually nervous about this new role. It is a bigger role at a bigger organisation and while I’m pretty confident in my own abilities it is still quite daunting. Ever since I was offered the job I notice the ONS mentioned on every TV news story and in every newspaper – every. single. day.

It is undoubtably a wonderful opportunity though and after a long notice period I cannot wait to get started. Hopefully I will also return to regular blogging here as well now.