Where has all the blogging gone....

Well it's been 4 weeks since my last post - the longest blogging break since I started writing this in October 2007 I think. A number of reasons for that. First, I took a couple of weeks off work in August, one of those was for my annual pilgrimage to Whitby Folk Week, and I know how much some of you look forward to the obligatory morris dancing picture following that, so here it is - the wonderful Seven Champions Molly Dancers, straight from the Frittenden Treacle Mines.

Look at the colour of that sky - it was like that for almost the whole week we were there!

I suppose the second reason for the break, is that I just don't seem to have had a lot of time. I'm spending a lot of time during the day getting out and meeting Heads of Department. I decided I would visit each head over the summer, and I've almost made it, just a few more to do. The other thing taking up time, especially in the morning, lunchtimes and evenings, when I often write this, was walking. Back at the beginning of the summer, a stalwart walker in the department suggested that we enter a team in the Global Corporate Challenge, so I volunteered. Seven of us formed the Trekking Techies of CiCS, and set out to see how far we could walk in 100 days. I was used to walking between 10,000 to 12,000 steps a day, and originally set myself a new target of 13,000, but to keep pace with the others, and with other teams, I soon upped that to 16,000 and in the last 40 days did 18,000 a day.  When you get all your steps from walking, I don't cycle or run, this can take up a lot of time! Many evenings I got home from work and then went for a long work to get my steps up. But it paid off, and we came third out of 75 teams entered by the University, and depending on when you took a snapshot of the final results, we came about 780 out of 42,000 teams worldwide. A very respectable result. So, thanks to George, Dave, Andy, Steve, Jenny, Tessa for being great walking companions.

So now I'll get back to blogging and telling you what I've been up to. I'll try and post a couple of catch up posts in the next couple of days to get up to date.

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.

Back.....

Well, I'm back, from two glorious weeks in Turks and Caicos. Didn't walk as much as I should have done, but it's really hard work when this is the view you have when you're walking.

Lots of steps to catch up on now! The CiCS team is currently third out of the University's 75 teams in the Global Corporate Challenge, so not bad, and we've walked as far as The Hamptons!

Past couple of days have been spent catching up on emails and what's been happening. Been to a meeting about how we might formally and informally open The Diamond, our new teaching building which is coming along well. I'm also spending a lot of time meeting all Heads of Departments, talking to them about how they interact with us, what their issues are, and how we can work together.

I also had a very productive and interesting meeting with some of our sabbatical officers and one of our students who's developing an app and social network to encourage students to cook together and for each other. It should reduce food waste, and help students meet each other. Called Foodhall, it looks really interesting.
You can see it on our Sheffield Crowd website here and watch a video explaining it.

Keep right on walking

Today I've been either walking, on a train, or in meetings! The train bit was to get to London and back.

The walking bit was part of the Global Corporate Challenge, an initiative to improve employee health and well being all over the world. Teams of seven from organisations either carry pedometers or use their own devices (mines a Fitbit one) to measure how many steps you do a day for a 100 days, and your combined distance is plotted on a virtual map starting in Japan, and the aim is to see how far round the world you can get. And to get fit of course. We have a team of seven in CiCS, and we started the challenge yesterday. I usually aim to walk 10,000 steps a day, but I'm going to up it  over the challenge  if I can - today by walking to my meeting in London and back, and walking back from the station I've done 15,000. Not bad on a recovering and still painful sprained ankle! Of course, the published aim is to get fit, but we're only doing it to beat the teams from EFM and the Library....

The meetings in London were the UCISA Executive, and then a conference organising committee. We spent quite a lot of time at the Exec discussing our structure - we're made up of a series of groups, made up of experts in the relevant field who do an excellent job of promoting best practice, organising events etc. But, they do look a bit technology based, and maybe don't show the services we support - research IT or teaching and learning technologies for example. The support is there, but perhaps not obvious in the current organisation. Its a bit like trying to map a service catalogue onto a line management structure. We need to make the matrix clearer - and that's our task over the coming months.

The conference committee is now well into organising next year's event - getting the speakers booked is the priority at the moment. As a charity we have to look after our funds, so we can't afford the big fees that some speakers demand, so our negotiating skills are often put to the test!