Swimming pond, fountains, steps and the darknet...

On Wednesday of this week I went to a RUGIT  (Russell Group IT Directors) meeting in London. I got there a bit early, so instead doing what I normally do and having a cup of coffee, I went for a walk. I needed to get my steps in for our Global Corporate Challenge team! I went round the back of St Pancras station,where the area is really being developed. I found a swimming pond, filtered naturally by vegetation, though there weren't many swimmers as it was a bit cold, and dancing fountains outside the University of the Arts Building. After a very early train, it was nice start to the day.

The meeting started with a discussion about our relationship with JISC, the future funding model for JISC, the services it offers, and which ones we use. We also talked about the possibilty of a shared datacentre in the north of England, similar to the one in Slough which a number of London Universities use. We'd be quite interested in being tenants in it, especially if was located in Sheffield :-)  We also had a presentation on our Security SIG (special interest group), which raised a number of questions about things like web filtering, and whether we know how much of our internet traffic is using the dark net....

I mentioned earlier that I'd been trying to get my steps up for the Global Corporate Challenge which I've mentioned before. There's a team of seven of us from CiCS taking part in it, about 43,000 teams worldwide, and about 75 from the University. I've upped my daily step minimum from 10,000 to 15,000, and am doing about 17,000 most days. Still not as much as some other members of the team though! Currently we're on day 66 and are third in the University and have virtually walked from Japan to Europe. Here's hoping we continue to do well.