In the FT.com tech strategy wrap-up (which Anna has written up) I spoke little bit about next year's work in extending and improving our visual & data journalism capabilities. Lately I've focussed on packaging, selling and delivering news in different products - so I'm genuinely excited that my teams are now also working on its expressiveness!
Tuesday saw the annual company wide Christmas party - the first one in-person since the pandemic. Our subterranean venue had a sunken dance floor with windows at the sides and so between the moving atmospheric lighting and the lengthy queues to get-in, it felt like an exclusive bizarro rave. I left once it got too loud to talk.
I've been using the Kindle Scribe a bit at work to take notes, and have discovered another nice use-case: Having a selection of books already downloaded means I can reference them really easily. The note-taking is nice. I do wish that it synched up to something I could use on a laptop. Feeling the Amazon extreme MVP factor here.
Flourish's office in Hoxton is pretty cool, and definitely beats Assay Studios where I used to be based. But what's significantly cooler than their office is the work they're doing. Nobody is producing data visualization software remotely as advanced or ambitious.
This was my second-to-last working week this year, so with everybody wanting to wrap-up their stuff and a few mandatory administrative activities, my workload felt very high. Compared to the same period last year there is more on, but I'm significantly more relaxed about it because Customer Products is a really supportive environment. Glad I joined. Still looking forward to the break though.
Wow, they were right. Usenet really is great.
Over winter there are so many strikes happening, that there are now timetables being shared to chart them all. I mean - it's absolutely a consequence of Brexit and successive Conservative governments (trickle-down, eh?) - but my most immediate problem is that it's really difficult to plan where I'll be and when. To everybody I've made tentative plans with: SORRY!
