What stuck me is that i never talk about what has happened since, I’ve gone very quite on the Job front, and I’m not entirely sure why – probably because I was worried people would find me out to be a nutter – well that ship has sailed so lets talk about my current job.

Kevin Jump – Technical Director, LDL Web Services

Gosh I must be bought in - it's the LDL Logo

Now that’s a grand job title isn’t it? it’s not quite as good as the one I like to pretend I have ‘Chief Digital Overlord’ but it will do – So what’s the job about, well it’s not a million miles away from what wikipedia says it’s about I provide direct technical strategy and stuff for web things.

I would like to be a thought of a bit broader than just Web. I’m currently on a bit of a crusade to drop Web from the team name – but we can’t just be called services can we?

On the staffing side, the bit of the service i look after has 15 people in it – I directly manage five of them with three of them managing the rest (look you’re not getting the org chart – just a summary!) – I use to manage loads more, but we split it up – the theory being i get more time to actually do strategy and less holidays and sickness.

So yes I’ve left my developer roots behind, I honestly can’t remember the last time I opened visual studio in vain, but I have poked about in other things but only to cover not as a day job. I don’t look at lines of code anymore I stand back away from the screen and say “there’s two much blue” or “it looks a bit to indenty for me” but mainly people just close the windows down before I get to their desks.

The more observant amongst you will have noticed that when i left JMU I didn’t go for a technical director job, I came to a Web Developer Job, so how did I get here?

Kevin Jump – (Senior) Web Developer – 6 months

I started with the web developer role, writing code – and boy did I churn some out, mainly back end managementy stuff – but there was lots – it was quite a culture shock to be honest – It turns out I had been coasting at JMU getting quick lax deadlines – floating about for a bit then cramming to hit the deadline – at LDL there was a lot less floating and a lot more cramming. then my then boss left – which meant there was a Development Manager role going – Now cunnigly just before that I had got myself on the Leadership course, so I was being groomed – and when the job came up I went for it – and did rather well at interview I thought.

Kevin Jump – Web Development Manager – 12 months

The Development manager job was a bit of a baptism of fire – the team had been growing, we had lots of projects that where handed to us from other departments with pre-set deadlines, oh and after three months in the job the head of service left (did do a month of being head of service for a while) ! It took a while and left not fool ourselves I still work for a large organisation so change wasn’t quick. but I think we made life better.

Only problem by the end of it (with a new head of service – I wasn’t that ambitious!) I had 13 staff to manage which is way to many and I was getting bogged down with people management – so we introduced a new level so other people who could focus on it better could manage in the specialist areas – this meant we effectively created a development Manager post below me – so i needed a new job title and i bit of a better defined role.

So here we are – I direct things technically for web – if you need to know more – you can but ask.

I can sit at my nice big desk, with the windows wide open, and almost no disruption. We’ve got a bit of a resourcing issue at work at the moment; namely we have loads to do, and not enough people to do it. So it’s drastic action time as I am coding – hence the whole at homeness of it all.

One thing about working from home is you can get into the zone. I’m sure you all have your different zones, with programming it is said it takes 15 minutes to get into the zone and only 10seconds to get pulled out of it again, So sitting alone is a good way to go if you want to get something done; it’s a lousy way to go if you want to talk to anyone, or not get a bad back.

That’s why today I made sure I took lunch. If I was in work, i reasoned, I would take a break and go for a walk to clear some space in my head. It’s just when you are home it’s a much nicer walk – I went to greenbank park, and I took my camera.

I did get quite a lot of work done too. mainly through the process of ignoring my email. I’m a bit scared to look actually.

Then came Tenders: We’ve just finished doing a rather large Tender in work, and I was glad to see everybody was the same as me. “I can’t really do the work unless I have a really tight deadline”.

It all gets quite stressful. you think, “can I go back to that, simple life of just writing code?”. it’s all over (for) now. So the rest of the team have had to put up with two days of floaty light management. coming out of the tunnel and distracting anyone who will listen.

next week I will look at my mountain of email – the 75 projects I said i would start this finical year, and maybe even sorting out those bits of the office that we haven’t finished yet. like Hanging the clock.

I am so close to becoming one of ‘those’ people, it’s scary – I have lots to do and somebody stole a day out of my week, and that was before somebody trapped me in a room for three hours and then somebody else required a 2 hour email response.

The problem is I want to lead by example, and working stupid hours all night isn’t the example i want to set.  Yes I want people to do work, but I also want them to have a life, and not get burned out and all stressed on me, in the long run that’s much much harder to deal with, then a missed deadline or two.

anyway procrastination rules, lets just search flickr for photos and maybe play a bit of scrabulous.

In my last job. PDRs where seen as a chore, the boss didn’t like doing them, and he let you know it. some of them would go on for hours and you could see through his office window, he was squirming. you would go in, talk about the same things as you did last time, and get the same responses, often with a sense of resignation. once i got.

“well after being here five years I would expect you to leave” (i did)

they weren’t exactly inspiring.

Looking at them as I do know from the other side. I wonder if he ever did get anything from them? because I get lots.

It has to be said I do them quite differently, for a start they are in a coffee shop (get out the office, people will talk!), and I ask people how they are, what they think, just what is happening… We ramble off subject and talk about tea, children, football, philosophy, art, the west wing, and occasionally work. Yes sometimes they last for two hours – but I get to know people more (i like to think i do talk to people outside of these and I do know them a bit already), and genuine ideas come out of them.

From the last set of PDRs I went away and restructured the team, thats worked really well, from this set it looks like we are going to sort out our strategic direction (I had one, it just needed fine tuning and then we’re going to run with it). It all reinforces my getting to where you want to be by not looking directly at it thing. Which is why I sent all the designers of to an art gallery, and when i get the bottle to do it. all the developers will be off somewhere getting inspiration too.

I don’t know what my staff think, I hope they see them as useful to, I am careful to try and remember what it was like… tell people they are valuable to the team (fortunately they all are!), give people hope.. and try to inspire. It all sounds terribly fluffy doesn’t it.. maybe I am a bit of a floaty in the clouds manager.

*one point I am confused on is PDR or PR&D. It turns out I have no idea which one it is anymore…

Being web doesn’t excuse you from this league table obsession, in-fact it’s all automated. thanks to sitemorse – A company who have realised that measuring things is one thing. put them in a league table and you’ve got the public sector hooked, it doesn’t really matter how or what you measure.

Sitemorse measure the accessibility, function, code, performance and something else* of a website, every month they do this for all local goverment websites and make a league table. Liverpool.gov.uk was first once, and then it wasn’t nothing changed but the scores did. Over the last few months it’s been quite low [for us]. Mainly because Sitemorse a company who measure websites, decided that the way MessageLabs a company who handle email didn’t do it they way they thought they should- this ment our website had poor performance.

We talked to Sitemorse, and we talked to MessageLabs and came to the conclusion that changing the email system for a league table is silly – so we didn’t.

This month liverpool.gov.uk is 32nd. We haven’t changed anything. infact according to sitemorse it’s worse than last month, but we’ve gone up. It’s all very odd and it might sound like sour-grapes; but we (the webteam) don’t care any more about this league table.

We care about the quality of the site. but not about how it performed for a few hours one day at some point in the month (you get marked down if sites you link to are down during the test… a bit hard to control).

Of course a lot of this highlights the silliness of league tables and the supposed choice they offer people, but if you live in Liverpool, what use is it for you to go to South Bedfordshire website to find out about your leisure centres?

“so that’s why Liverpool got slated by the audit commission“

Sitemorse have recently started branching out and now do league tables for banks, and news sites. I wish them luck, but who is going to change there bank because the website isn’t top of a league table?

*none of this mesures how easy it is to find or do things on the site.

It’s been quite a ride, 2 months in my boss left, so 5 months in I was acting head of service then we had a baby, and then I came back restructured the entire team, and started changing how we work. Last week we got a new office, and tomorrow (well today). we are having an away day, where I am considering delivering quite a radical* vision for the team.

but i tell you what.. it’s fun

* radical for public sector born things anyway.

we now have our own office just for the web team, and gosh it was quite,? I think it’s all a bit of a shock and it’s going to take us a while to get use to it. before we where put in open office hell, we had a quite nice office in the main council building, a wonderful 140 yeah old masterpiece, built when the city had loads of money, and didn’t mind spending it. Since then we’ve scuttled between the non-descript 60′s building that make up the rest of the councils’ office buildings – but at least as of today it’s our own non-descript 60 office.

For this week we are squeezing our dual monitors onto call centre desks, and trying not to knock each others tea over.? until they can get around to putting our rather plush (and much bigger) desks up on Friday. this of course means another desk move. but that’s OK.

This morning I worked out that I am now on my 6th desk since starting here 613 days ago, that’s a little over one desk every 100 days. and I get my 7th next Monday.

I’m not going to go in to the details of the rantiness, but there was lots of people taking sticks from the wrong end, it blowing up to stupid proportions and people who work for me getting treated unacceptable. oh and broken servers – I stepped away from that last one, and decided to rant about it tomorrow. because there was no real way I could have improve the situation and in the mood i was in by then it would have only gotten worse.

I’ve employed one of my old JMU tricks and I have written an incredibly ranty? set the world to rights word document now. I doubt it will ever see the light of day, but it should help me sleep.

At the end of the day I got a text message to put me to shame, a friend at work is having his first baby, well he’s not “having it” his wife is, today they went for the scan. and the text I got was.

“Babys are cool! puts youtube and boxing into perspective”

and I thought, yes it does. and I’ve gotten two of those – I’ll go play with them instead.

The Gaston Leisure center pool now open at 8:15 on a Sunday – who said I sat around all day doing nothing?

[Swimming Debacle]