Houston, we have a sore head

It's the last day of the conference and I'm hiding in the main hall, pretending to be working so that no one will try to talk to me - I'm suffering a bit from what's basically been a three-day bender and am in no fit state to talk retail strategy. It's been a lot of fun though and, despite the lack of sleep, insane heat and the occasional moment when I realised I was completely out of my depth, I'm really glad of the opportunity to do this. I'll be coming home with a sheaf of business cards, a pretty good understanding of how partnering with Microsoft works, and a firm resolution to detox next week.

Naturally, the thing I'm looking forwards to the most is getting back to my London, my flat and my Kiwi, but there's a whole lot of time in between now and then; two flights (including that horrible connection again) and hopefully not too much stress. What I want to do right now though, is just go... to... sleep...

Houston, we have a conference

A bit of a day of firsts for me, yesterday (or at least, the past 36 hours or so, thinking in terms of days is challenging at the moment). Getting into the Virgin Atlantic lounge was one, all lovely and great and all but somehow not quite the land of dreams I'd hoped for. Perhaps, because we only had about 30 minutes in there, I didn't really get the full effect. That said, it was a damn sight better than the alternative, fast track security and free wine and all.

Second on my list was actually flying Virgin, which it sort of surprises me I've not done before for some reason. Although the promised upgrade to Upper Class didn't materialise, I was in Premium Economy, which is better than it sounds. I spent most of the flight in the bar being force-fed red Bordeaux by the barman.

Third was actually being late for a flight. I know how anal this sounds, but this is something I just. don't. do, and haring through Newark airport trying to negotiate the (irritatingly chatty) immigration and customs people, pick my bags up, re-check in, go through security AGAIN (this time with the plebs) and get to the gate isn't really my idea of fun. Travelling's mental enough without that sort of stress, and to top it all we proceeded to spend the next hour on the tarmac. Fortunately, for some reason I was in first class, which meant there was a lovely lady on hand to make sure my wine glass didn't get empty. So much so that I had to pretend to be asleep so she'd stop.

So after all this, we got into Houston at about midnight-ish, which as far as my body was concerned was 0600. Getting a good 6 hours' sleep meant today's been reasonably ok, but I'm not sure how tonight's going to be - a networking cocktail thing followed by a dinner we're hosting for some people or other. I'm currently wearing a pink striped shirt with a frankly enormous collar, which I'm rather enjoying - most Merkins are so excruciatingly dull and conservative with what they wear that I'm standing out as if I was wearing a clown suit.

Fortunately we're taking cabs everywhere. I don't imagine they like pink shirt-wearers here, it's still very much a moustache and cowboy hat sort of place*. Over lunch, I was introduced to the various forms of the contraction 'y'all': 'y'all' refers to one person. 'All y'all' refers to more than one person.  And, dear god, 'y'all's' means 'your'.

Needless to say, my accent has moved into the sort of RP register of which Laurence Olivier would have been proud. I might even start drinking tea.

 

*yes, the irony hasn't gone unnoticed. The Village People are probably seen as 'good hard-workin' decent men, 'cept for that injun' by those who remember them.

Keeping it going

Everything's gone sort of mental this week, and it's been a while since I had a proper rant so here it is. It's the first proper week of building the Irish project, and as I sort of suspected, it's taking the team some time to grasp the relatively complex concepts we're dealing with. Unfortunately it tends to come down to the business analyst to sort all this stuff out. Which is me.

Now, as I've said before on this blog, I'm not a natural business analyst. It's all about detail, translating business and functional requirements into technical tasks and so on. I hate this sort of stuff, and because I'm not naturally predisposed to break things out to the tiniest bit of detail, it's a bit of a struggle for me, and I'm convinced that I'm not doing a particularly good job. To be brutally honest, there are natural BAs in the business who could be doing this job much better. They're the buttoned-down looking people with lots of pens.

My natural role, as colleagues have pretty much mentioned in my reviews, is business consultant - the strategy, business modeling pieces which use my experience to bring context to the businesses we work with. This is where I'm comfortable - the fluffy stuff, basically. Delivering on it is one great big bore.

Add this to the fact that there's still loads of genuinely exciting stuff going on elsewhere in the business that I ought to be involved in, not to mention very real requests for help coming from colleagues involved in projects with very large clients, and you get one rather conflicted blogger.

However, I'm not blind to the fact that beggars can't be choosers and, particularly with a mere six months under my belt, I'm not in a position to go around demanding certain roles, and billable work is billable work. So, I'm buckling down and sifting through the billion pieces of detail that go to make up a website these days, answering the billion tiny (and some massive) questions that the development team have to ask, and all this until Christmas. There's another 5 months to go on this project, but frankly the that thought terrifies me.

So this gives me three weeks to engineer my way out of this and onto something more interesting. Watch. This. Space.

Grumpy, stress, but some good news

Ooooh something of a day of contradictions today. On one hand, the Irish project I'm on is becoming somewhat tiresome, with fiddly bits of detail bothering me slightly and those who know me will know that I'm so not in the detail. So this is bothering me. I'm also seeing things going on in the business that I'm sure could benefit from my input but instead I'm here counting servers and adding up license costs.

Bah.

Anyway, if I'm seeming a little bit ungrateful and unwilling to do the necessary grunt work to get ahead career-wise, that's because I am. I reckon I just need to get my head down and plough on through it for a month or so before pulling the 'been there, done that, now show me something interesting' card and we'll see what happens.

That said, I am learning a ton of stuff at the moment, not only in terms of the techie stuff I'm being forced to read up on (who knew how useful an MVC Model could be?), but also in the whole project management, business analyst sense. Much though it galls me to say. It's a bit like muesli - you know what I mean, good for you but no fun.

On the other hand then, I've passed my six month probation period, which means I'm now officially an employee with rights and everything. The feedback I've had has been really quite good too, and constructive, so I'm feeling an odd mixture of massive smugness and huge inadequacy as I make my shoddy attempts to write technical specifications.

So woo for that. And for my Kiwi, who despite her monthly headache, presented me with a pretty good-looking bottle of wine as a well done present. No drinking in the week right now mind... GOD I'm so dull right now. I'm going to have to have a moment of irresponsibility soon, I can feel it coming on...

Must... blog...

Very quick one, as falling asleep on keyboard. Somehow wearing self out without seeming to be terribly productive. Hotel was lovely, lunch today at Tate Modern was too (albeit rushed), going to Manchester this weekend hooray, only in Dublin for a day trip next Thursday hooray again, mind leaking out of ears due to uncontrollable heaving beast of a project - booooo.

More comprehensive stuff next time, promise. When I've had some sleep. And maybe some of that EPO stuff that gets cyclists to the top of hills. Should be able to get me to week 5, I reckon...

Dublin 1

Very quick one today as I'm supposed to be working really and have a meeting in 23 mins, but I wanted to drop a note in to say the I'm installed in Dublin and about to embark on this project proper.

After getting up at 0445 yesterday morning and flying over here, we got straight into the client's offices and went through all the admin stuff you have to do when working on a client site; security passes, laptop access etc and went through a series of project kick off meetings, resulting in a very tired and head-spun me stumbling off to the hotel later that afternoon in no mood for anything except a hot bath and a big soft bed.

Bit clearer this morning having had some sleep, went for a run down the Liffey for an hour or so at 0600 and very lovely it was too on this sunny, crisp morning. I got thinking about river cities on the way out and back, the Liffey's a very quiet, slow river, very calm and inky black and so still you can see the insects rippling the surface in places. Compared to the churning, milky, rolling Seine or the purposeful power of the Thames it's really quite sleepy and village-like. Got me wondering if you can define the sense of a city through the character of its river, which is the sort of not-entirely-nonsense-but-nearly I'm prone to dreaming up whilst running.

I know I've only been here a day, but I've not really got the measure of this town yet (it's my first time here). Architecturally it's a weird mish-mash of styles which don't really compliment each other at all; this feeling carries on into every aspect of the place creating a sense of laissez-faire and general lack of aesthetics which I'm not finding too endearing at the moment. Perhaps I'm being too harsh, but it still feels like a bit of a frontier town, with everyone building their own thing regardless of context - don't they have town planners here?

Anyway, I'll have more of a wander round later in the week. Everyone says this place is wonderful; I'm never one to take the received view without finding out for myself though. The client is great though, very welcoming, very forthcoming and supportive, and in many ways we've a totally blank sheet to work from, and a 7th floor office with a gorgeous view to work in. Fingers crossed this could turn out to be a very cool project to work on... although four days a week without my Kiwi is a very high price to pay.

First milestone

Ok, quick work update. Mid-project presentation this morning with about a million people from the client and no shortage of people from our place, including the CEO and assorted senior chaps. This is basically the point in the seven week process where we say where we've got to, describe the approach we're taking and open it all to debate.

Now this might sound all huggy and friendly, but realistically this is crunch time. We are presenting everything from the commercial model to the processes and people involved in operating what we're implementing. We're talking about a business which will need to turn over hundreds of millions of pounds in a few years' time. It's worth a fair bit to my company so if this meeting goes well, we're half way there.

It went well. The client engaged with us enough to show they were listening and taking us seriously, we got plenty of interaction and some very positive comments, and to top it off, the main sponsor of the project made it abundantly clear at the end that he was very happy with what he'd seen.

Marvellous. Much thanks from internal people (including the CEO, who's ace, btw) and the sheer relief of a job well done. This far, at least. We do have three weeks to go and a whole lot of work to be done and difficult questions to be answered in that time. Nonetheless I'm happy with the result of my first presentation - by my reckoning, I and the project manager did very well indeed.

So a moment's relaxation is called for. Tomorrow will be a bit of regrouping, one or two catch up meetings, lunch from Borough Market (I'm heading for the cassoulet myself), perhaps a pint or two in the Market Porter and then home for a quiet one with the Kiwi before she jollies off to New York for a week to do massively important stuff with really important people. Dead proud of her I am: my girlfriend's going to New York on a business trip. That's how important she is.

And the rest of the marigolds are flowering.