Entries Tagged 'Work' ↓

Team Orange is expanding – I’m getting another orange helper! Well hopefully. Position is advertised, blogged and twittered so we’ll see how it goes. Hopefully it’s not so nerve-wracking now that I’ve done it once already!

This time the Mister has a 2-page spread – he’s in the IT Brief magazine again – a real interview with him on geeky CTO stuff. Will post a link to the article on their site when they update it seeing as you can’t buy the magazine in Whitcoulls!

Day 2 at the conference was way more geeky than the first day. I went decked out in my orange flair again, complete with new WordPress button and wore an orange top!

Thought I’d be the most orange person in the room but in fact there was another girl there in an orange top and she had an orange cover on her Mac Book! We exchanged cards – she had a mini Moo card too! And she’s from New York! So I was pretty excited for a while there. Oh! And then I ‘won’ a Supreme spot prize – not quite sure how, perhaps something to do with waxing lyrical about the Supreme coffee and baristas all weekend but after lunch the guy giving out the prizes said “And now we have our last Supreme pack to give away. Is there a Catherine in the room?” Oh. ME!

So, take-aways from the weekend in no particular order:

• You’re liable for any comments left on your blog.
• And because of that, you shouldn’t moderate comments to the point of editing or allowing/disallowing because that implies you agree/disagree with the comment therefore making you more liable than normal.
• Every other person was tapping constantly on a laptop or iPhone. As a presenter I don’t know what it would be like to address an audience of head tops. I couldn’t handle it. I’d find it so rude and on the rare occasion I do speak I glare and pause dramatically if I see people whispering and not paying attention so god knows what I would do if people were doing something else. And I know they’re not taking notes because I saw some of the screens and what was on them.
• What *is* the etiquette when sitting next to someone who opens a laptop – it’s so much clearer and not easily hidden like a note pad – should one avert their eyes? I almost told the person next to me at one point they had a typo in a Tweet they were writing but thought that probably wasn’t right.
• People who don’t blog and Tweet are referred to as people ‘out there in the real world’.
• Heard the phrase ‘Fairy Dust’ for when a geek does something to the server or user account to fix a customer’s problem.
• Facebook seems to be a place to keep in touch with old friends. Blog is for current stuff.
• Not sure my life will take a different path now, feels like this is it. A guy presenting was 16. On stuff that proper grown ups do. Made me wonder what I’ve been doing since I was 16 and what I was like when I was 16 – god that mustard jumper, that Lady Di hair do and braces. So so different.

At a WordCamp conference this weekend – a collection of people using the tool WordPress primarily for blogging – we use it at work and it’s what my ‘new’ blog is now running on. It’s up at the Mt Vic Bowling Club – a very yesteryear type establishment inside – complete with flowers in the toilet and engraved boards of lifetime members. It’s in a lovely sheltered spot and the bowling green out the window was incredibly green and lovely and sunny and warm for our coffee and lunch breaks.

The founder of WordPress was a guest speaker today, very charming and inspiring. This is my first conference like this, the few work things I’ve ever been on in my career have been training type things and I think today was fairly typical of events like this based on the stories The Mister brings back from the ones he’s attended. The people that are used to presenting, especially Americans (like the WordPress guy) are really good and really inspiring. I couldn’t stand up there and speak as freely as they do. And answer questions from left field with such aplomb.

The guys from Coffee Supreme were there and them (the actual Supreme guys) making coffee was fantastic. Enough to make me switch from Fuel even except there are absolutely no guarantees when you go to a Supreme cafe that you’ll get a decent barista.  I just can’t explain how good it was, perfect temperature and it was like drinking silk – thanks Ralph, Olivia and girl who’s name I don’t know.

Went for a wander around the block at lunch time and found this great house with an orange car, orange front door and orange picket fence!

Either some naughty person yanked this tiny tree out of a park somewhere and tossed it up onto the roof or it lives in/on that building and decided to leap off. A rather sad site out my office window.

A magazine just arrived at work today with the Mister on the cover! Again! For everyone keen to rush out and buy a copy (Mothers), I doubt it’s the kind of magazine you can get at Whitcoulls, it seems to be a little subscription-based IT magazine. But still! Exciting and he’s chuffed!!

Am pretty mean all over the place really. We’re getting a bit cramped at work and there’s now 4 of us in Team Orange’s space and we’re all for the ‘no smelly lunch’ rule. Except now there’s a boy in here too and he’s not sure about it. And for some reason I am the main enforcer of the rule. To the point that if he’s out buying his lunch, he thinks of me and picks a reasonably smell free option, which sadly for him normally means healthy! And if he does get tempted by the smelly smells and gives in and gets fries or something, he scuttles away to the back of our training room to eat his lunch by himself!

And just now, Jiff came in and asked him if he wanted to go get McDonalds, and then roared with laughter when he glanced guiltily at me before accepting the offer! They’ll be having lunch in the training room!!

W H A T ?? Share price just gone up to 1.70 this morning!!

Am famous on Xero’s Twitter account! http://twitter.com/TeamXero. If you don’t know what Twitter is, don’t worry, it’s a kind of open online chat.

It’s a roller coaster – share price has gone from 0.67 to 1.13 in a week!