Know Your Place – An Ideal Day In My Working Life

'Log Stock Contemplation' by dannymanic

Home-working can be lonely. Remote-working can be risky. Office-working can be stifling. In an ideal world I’d mix them up.

A number of factors – Perrin’s Blackhall concept and my new Android phone amongst them – have conspired to make me draw up this ‘ideal day in my working life’.

It’s based on my work in the Civil Service and is set in the not too distant future. I am well aware that all people in Palo Alto probably already work like this, as do many Londoners, but for Civil Servants it would be a major step.
7am
Get up to the new Fleet Foxes EP playing off my phone which is docked to alarm clock stereo unit. Have a shower and breakfast and then its out the house.

8am
Stop in for coffee and hook into the wifi to plan for the day, check meetings are still on and check the political and technology news.

8.45am
Train into central London. Sun streaming in, city unfurling past the window. Do research on the train; tweeting interesting stuff and bookmarking articles for specific project teams into shared space.

9.30am
Arrive in Royal Festival Hall. Set up webcam and mic to join my boss, Nick, in a mobile campaigns evaluation webconference with colleagues in Brussels.

10.30am
Straight off that webconference and into another. This time using Google Wave to review new project briefs with Project Reception Group and decide how to resource them. Ping off alerts to team members to request they call me as soon as they can so that we can set up a project initiation meeting.

11.15am
Log in to dashboards to review campaign and site activity. Update development tracker and email department teams with any issues and make suggestions for optimisation.

11.45am
Scan divisional team’s bookmarking resource, where colleagues have highlighted useful articles, tools and research. Ping some to department and agency teams I am working with for any comments.

12.01pm
Gran calls. She’s having problems changing her WordPress theme. Tell her I’m at work and I’ll call her back this evening. Crack on and make last minutes updates to presentation.

12.20pm
Meet up with Neil and Steph on way to digital engagement seminar with Digital Diplomacy team in FCO.

12.30pm
Seminar goes well and is very interesting. Presentation goes down well – it’s all about measuring ROI and what we regard as ‘best practice’ based on the results from across a range of campaigns. Tweet some updates and requests for more information during the event.

13.30pm
Quick lunch with project delivery team in the Marsh Ruby and over to Scooter Works for coffee. Lots of good discussion and agreement on way forward. Everyone does well to come out without spilling any food on themselves.

14.30pm
Head round into the office. Log in to secure network to access restricted reports and research. Log in to office-based StatusNet installation and say hello to colleagues around the office, get some project updates and get chased to play football next Monday. Follow up with some quick phone calls.

14.50pm
Make way over to Clerkenwell with team for meeting with agency and department teams to review first round drafts of strategy and campaign creative. Good coffee, excellent critiques and clever solutions. Monitor project updates and occasionally tweet with teams in background.

16.50pm
Grab a smootie with senior colleague from departmental team to get feedback on agency performance – seems happy. We talk about next steps and closure strategy.

17.30pm
Catch bus back to Waterloo. Complete contact report, circulate and file using remote access desktop.

17.50pm
Take call from NDPB digital manager who is interested in using mobile for crowdsourcing activity. Why crowdsourcing? Why mobile? What other options have you considered? What’s the live date? What’s the budget?

18.28pm
Catch train. Score a seat. Review day’s activity on dashboards, ping off last emails, read and comment on a couple of blog posts.

18.50
Get back home. Through the door, hug Gemma. She says ‘You’re late’. What?. She says ‘You’re late. The alarm’s going off. It’s time to get up for work’. It’s a dream? And, I actually work as a forest ranger in Mount Rainier National Park? Phew!