Oh, so that's what networking is about

I guess I'm returning to the theme of celebration of "the internet" or rather communications technology.

Once again the other day I heard the accusation of people who surf the internet a lot are less well balanced than the rest of the population, suffering as they do from greater levels of depression.

It's entirely possible that the study to which the news was referring was perfectly well carried out and a proper causal analysis done but the bite sized media story was, once again that "the internet is a bad thing".

Actually looking at the story on an NHS website they are taking a more considered, complex view.

However, it does all bring a wry smile to my face. I can't say that the internet and associated technologies were exactly a lifesaver after "Idiot Boy" decided to take his leave of this world, but the people I met via various means on the internet since that time have very literally made my life worth living again.

The picture at the top here shows four of my very dear friends. Were it not for the internet, it is extremely unlikely I would have met any of them. What a shame that would be.

But this is a vague point that I've made before. However, this week has been the epitome of seamless integration of my "real" life with my life on line...and the gossamer thin veil that separates them.

So let me examine the three weekdays this week so far:

Monday: I wake late and check my email on my iPhone. I reply to a couple of the mails - they're mostly catching up kind of things but one is important. It's from my business partner, TD.
He's telling me that his internet connection has been on the blink but he's back on line now and if there is any rework to do on the handouts we're giving to potential clients at a meeting in the afternoon he's now awake, connected and good to go.

I met TD via the photo-sharing website Flickr. We commented on photographs, chatted by email and eventually met for lunch because at the time we were working at nearby offices.

We have been pals for a while and last year we decided to set up a business together. That business is mostly done electronically - from geographical information on maps, to technical research to information about planning regulations. We work in our respective homes mostly keeping in touch by email...although there is the occasional phone call.

We're sharing files via an internet filesharing and synching service. It makes collaboration relatively pain free without having to invest in an office to share and dedicated hardware for the job.

We complete our papers and I do a rare print job so we have something to present to our prospective clients.

We agree to meet in Bath and both have mobile phones to contact each other if there are problems.

I pick up further emails on my train journey and read up on some aspects of our work by using my mobile's RSS feed reader.

I also "tweet" and read people's tweets to me wishing us luck for our meeting.

On my journey home I read and send more emails.

My evening was a typical one of some surfing - work related and other things - some chatting to a friend on Facebook and reassuring her I'll meet her to go and fix her computer and set up a network in her house.

I read the comments friends and family have made on photographs of my niece's wedding at the weekend.

There is a lot of general "keeping in touch".

Tuesday: I wake up late again. Check my emails and find that TD has done the job he promised and the file is waiting in our shared space ready for me to email to yesterday's meeting attenders.

This spurs me to get up and start work.

All morning I'm keeping in touch with a number of people - by text, email, twitter, and various networking sites.

In the afternoon I go to Keynsham to meet up (separately) with two friends. I check the bus times on the web.

Both these friends are people I met in real life - one a school friend, the other a work friend.

On my walk to the bus station, I see a site we'd been interested in and see that it is being built upon. I take a picture and email it to TD. We can cross this off our lists.

I use the GPS and mapping facility on my phone to guide me to get off at the appropriate bus stop - I don't know that side of Keynsham very well.

Again, I read my RSS feed on the bus and find some useful articles that I email directly to TD to take a look at.

I have a pleasant, largely technology-free, couple of hours with my friend and we catch up. When it's time to leave she offers me a lift to my rendezvous with my other friend. She fears I can't find my way there unaided.

But I am aided - my phone guides me easily to my destination.

I then spend the afternoon an evening installing stuff, setting up networks etc, mostly so my "non geeky" friend, M, can do her social networking in her lounge of an evening.

When I fail to get her PC working I check the internet on my phone to find some technical fact out...then I work on plan B.

A couple of times, a friend had phoned but I was tied up so vowed to contact him later.

After a lift home I catch up with firends (all met via the internet) by email, text, twitter and facebook. Some of the catching up involves gently affectionate mockery...much as you get when you know a group of friends quite well.

I text the friend, MR, who'd been tryiung to get hold of me, apologising for my lack of availability.

Wednesday: I am woken by the arrival of a text message. It tells me the BBC has a news story that should be of interest to me, professionally. It's from DM - I'm planning to meet him for lunch, later.

Ten minutes later another text arrives - from my cousin - she's seen the same news report and thinks I'll be interested in it.

I email TD and ask him to investigate whilst I prepare an email approach to another potential client.

Then I get up and dressed, make my coffee and start work.

More emails, lots of research (on the internet), some sleuthing (by TD, not me).

Then I leave to meet DM. Before he arrives MR phones me to tell me that the evening before he'd attended a meeting that might well be of interest to me. He's right - it is. We vow to meet and have coffee and a catch up later in the week.

I lunch with DM and he gives me some information and we chat about stuff in his professional capacity which is related to mine - and we talk about an exhibition we're putting on.

All the time I'm out emails are arriving including one from another old friend who passes on a mail for something that I ought to investigate for work.

I'm amazed that so many leads have come through today. I'm also touched that my friends think to pass on this information to me - and persist so much to do so.

This evening I've been maintaining friendships by email, comments, Twitter, Flickr and text message. It's all really low effort stuff but enough to maintain the bonds and to know the stuff that's going on with people.

So - there's my week so far.

Dominated by the internet and associated technology.

I'll come back to an earlier point. I would never consider myself to be a "people person". I don't natually seek people out or engage in Networking activities and yet my life is full of people of people I have met by that very means. Not only that - I actively seek their company.

I'm even considering going to networking breakfasts to extend that.

The world at large can conclude nothing from one woman's steady change from inward looking, isolated geek to willing Social Networker and entrepreneur.

Idiot Boy would not recognise this woman - after all, with him around I really didn't want or need anyone else, for the most part.

Yes I made all this happen by "putting myself out there" but it is the internet as medium for communication that has been the means to make all this happen.

So I say "Yay" for people
I say "Yay" for the internet
and I say "Boo" to people who don't understand the medium properly who blame it for everything.



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The Usualness of Unusualness

A long time ago (I was about 16 at the time, so practically aeons ago, in fact) I was the only one amongst my regular group of friends with both parents married to each other.

My ma said "I expect you're glad that you're the only one with a normal family".

Being something of a pedant, even then, I pointed out that it might be considered to be more "normal" to be a child of divorced parents, since the numbers kinda stacked up that way.

My ma took comfort from the idea of "normal"...I didn't.

It's been dawning on me that my circle of friends, as it has widened, has become less "normal" (by my ma's definition, not mine) and as my range of companions has become more diverse, I have felt more at ease with myself.

As I've met more people I've stopped worrying whether or not they'll think I'm a bit odd for being bookish, geeky, lacking the housework gene and refusing to wear grown up shoes. Don't get me wrong, some people I meet undoubtedly think I am odd...it just doesn't really bother me any more.

At the zoo the other day, one of the most well balanced, sanest, funniest people I've met tells me how they'd had a troubled teenage. "How come?" I ask... "Small village. Gay" V replies, in a matter of fact way.

I have to admit I'd almost forgotten that being gay was anything other than reasonably usual - yeah, I'm straight, but so many of my friends aren't that I barely notice it any more. It brings me up short.

Then I realise that's exactly what I like about the people I spend time with. Diversity.

In interests, in skills, in living circumstances, in sexuality, gender and gender identity, in age and size, in background in occupation...

How could I fail to be comfortable with this lovely bunch of folk who only ask me to turn up and be me?

How lucky am I?


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Pointing at the Glass Ceiling

So - I'm now an unemployed person...or, officially, a self-employed person.



I've spent the last couple of weeks regrouping and with my business partner, TD, sorting out the legalities of our company.



We have a lot of hard work to do to get our potential clients to learn about us and to take us sufficiently seriously to actually employ us.

It's gratifying that everyone I've explained the idea to - from the bank, to friends, to a Businesslink advsor - thinks it a wonderful plan. But these are not the people we need to convince.

Fortunately, 50% of the company directors has a lot of experience in the industry. The other 50% is less well endowed with knowledge of architecture, landscaping and construction.

The other slight disadvantage I have is, let's not put too fine a point on it, that I'm a woman.

Back in the day (in the late 80's) I was full of rage with how badly women were treated in the workplace. Insurance wasn't the most sexist industry to be in but even so the number of women in senior management jobs was vanishingly small.

As I moved away from the operations side of things towards working with IT folk it became more noticeable that it was hard to be taken as seriously as my male colleagues.

It's a simple fact that there are fewer women working in IT disciplines than there are men. It was the same at school and in my studies for my degree. I can't opine, with any authority, as to whether it's nature or nurture.

What I can say is that in my relatively limited experience that women in IT management-type roles tend to play one of two parts. They either get down and dirty with the boys or they turn into bitch-queen and shriek their staff into submission.

I'm a down and dirty kinda gal. I mean, I've been a geek my entire life. Nevertheless, you are received with a mixture of suspicion and patronizing tones, quite often.

Towards the end of my career in insurance, I totally forgot that there had ever been a time when I wasn't respected by my male colleagues for my ability and knowledge. I could walk into a meeting and be taken seriously.

BW is a network engineer. He says that women have to be at least twice as good to be taken seriously in the industry. It makes him angry. BW is a rarety, I believe.

I can't imagine that the industry I'm moving into that I'll have an easier time of persuading the some of the men I'll have to work with that I've anything to contribute. I will have to work damned hard to get enough understanding and technical knowledge to bridge my credibility gap.

I fully expect to have to be at least twice as good as I would need to be if I didn't wear a bra...

So I could bleat on about it. I could rage against the injustice. Or I can just suck it up and prove that women can perform well in these sorts of jobs.

Maybe the more of us do that and the fewer of us whine on "Woman's Hour" about how hard life is, the quicker it'll be the norm to take us seriously.

Wish me luck, eh?

Oh, and wish TD luck - he's got the job of educating me sufficiently to not let him down.

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Readjustment

It's all been rather a whirl since I finished work. A couple of work-related social engagements; Christmas shopping and a school reunion.


I've had no time to miss my old job. Actually, it just feels like I've not been in for a couple of days.

M asks if I feel OK about it. I'm non-committal.

The seminal moment for me was at the school reunion...or should I say, an informal gathering of people who went to the same school.

This is the second such meet-up in about as many months. This time there were a few more people, including someone I used to hang out with, and play music with. It's been 27 years since I've seen him.

We sit and chat. 27 years pretty much drop away as we catch up with what we do now and how it relates to how it was then.

Wandering off and talking to other people was pleasant and polite. I suck at smalltalk but we all got by.

Once I got home, still smiling from the pleasant evening, I realised that none of us had changed all that much.

The popular girls were still the popular girls. The outsiders were still on the edge a little but the differences were a lot less marked. I still found the guys a little easier to chat to than the girls.

What struck me is that the difference for me is that I no longer care that much whether or not I fit someone else's definition of "normal".

It was a timely realisation in that the one school friend I kept in touch with told me her teenage daughter seems to be having a bit of rough time of things - and it seems to be in part to do with the pressure to conform.

Today I go out with my business partner for a survey trip for work. We've been pals for a couple of years and part of the reason I find him easy to be with is his lack of coventionality. He's told me that he didn't really fit in at school either.

It was a pleasant afternoon. A coffee, a sandwich in the car...a drive, a look at some land, some photos, no hidden agendas, no subterfuge. Just a couple of mates doing some work.

My 16 year old self wouldn't believe I could do this. My 22 year old self was striving but failing to fit in so much that she wouldn't have even seen the opportunities.

This 46-year old says that you know who the real friends are. The ones who love you just for you are. Who, even when you're pissing them off, would never ditch you for someone else just because someone else "better" or "more interesting" came along.

Despite the uncertainty I have in my life at the moment, I've never had so many real friends. 27 years seems like a long time to learn what's important...and no time at all.


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The view from up here

So...there we go.

27 years in the financial services industry ends with a low key presentation (at my request) and a quiet exit with a few hugs.


Some conniving by a couple of colleagues with an ex-colleague/friend with an entirely un-work-related friend (through the magic of Facebook) sees me with a gift token from my camera provider of choice.

Messages flow in, people pop to my desk to see me...promises to see me at the pub on Thursday. All saying I'll be missed.

I have a note from the department boss - low key, appreciative & understanding of my reasons for leaving.

So just remind me again why I'm doing this?

It no longer fits. It's difficult to get passionate about financial services. It's very important, it provides a vital safety net for people...hell, I've even been on the receiving end of the benefits and I can attest to the peace of mind it gives.

But passion?

Nah...

I didn't leave to do something else specific...I left because I needed to leave.

I guess all of this started with the loss of "Idiot Boy". Suddenly I needed to look around me again and take stock.

I suspect this is the natural culmination of having more time to look around at things and think; more new people to be inspired by and seeing the world again with new eyes.

It's not all good and it's not all bad. It just is.

The question remains..."any regrets?"...

The answer is that I don't really do regrets - and haven't for about 20years...regrets are largely pointless.

This might all go horribly wrong but a wiser man than I said "I'd much rather think that didn't work, having tried it than I wish I'd tried..."

So thank you all I've worked with and for over the last 27 years. Thank you everyone contributed to my leaving gift - and for the connivers SK, JAF, MD and TD for getting it just right. Thank you to "the boss" for respecting wishes with just enough pushing of boundaries.

Thank you for all the friends and family who didn't say "how stupid are you?" but instead said "Go for it".

Oh, and thank you my new business partner for grunting the words "it'll not happen unless you're involved" over coffee one day...

Here's to all the frustrations and difficulties ahead...


x

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The geek shall inherit the earth

It won't come as a surprise to anyone reading this who knows me but at all...

I'm a geek.

Meeting people and making small talk is most definitely not my forte. I'm always anxious if I know about it in advance. In fact, I used to avoid it altogether if I could.

These days, I make more of an effort and most of the time the effort is well worth it (we'll leave aside a couple of cringe inducing incidents, shall we?)

So yesterday, the combined desire to get somewhere new to look at taking some stock photos and to meet up with someone with whom I've shared the odd email, tweet and Flickr comment saw me on the train (and replacement bus service) to Birmingham.

I have to say, Brum is a place I only travel through and would never have considered as a destination so when M lists some of the places I might consider looking at I have to re-evaluate.

I arrive at New Street and locate M...or rather, he locates me.

Naturally, first stop is coffee/tea and I fear my lack of ability to talk about the weather, Big Brother and whatever else is often a good common starting place will hamper flowing conversation. I needn't have worried...

M is a programmer. We were soon geeking away like old pals. His enthusiasm for his work is apparent and once again I'm envious of anyone who is so caught up in what they do to pay the bills.

Then we have a wander around the city. I am transfixed by the place. Far from dingy tired image I had of it, I got the impression of a lively and vibrant place.

We stroll down to the delightful "Gas Street Basin" a regenerated part of the inner city canal system. The place is clean and tidy without being sterile. The bridges and brickwork are original but not looking tired. James Brindley would have been pleased, I think.

It's possible that there was some canal geekery on my part at this point. I make no apology for it but I probably got nearly to seal-clapping territory and I forced M to listen to me enthuse about the Pontcysyllte Aqueduct.

Fewer pictures were taken than I'd planned but I'm perfectly content to wander and chat and then go and drink more coffee.

Over coffee we chat about how neither of us have lifestyles that would be considered entirely conventional - I mean, we spend our time happily fiddling with bits of machinery, taking photographs and chatting to people on the internet. We also agree that we like it that way - golf and car obsession being largely over-rated, an all.

It was very, very relaxing to not have to spend time feeling the need to explain away some of the aspects of my life in the way I so often do.

I did squeeze a few minutes "new" work into the day but mostly it was about good company and strolling and looking at a new city. A city I'll undoubtedly return to because it's clearly got a lot of photographic potential.

A big win all round for me...

Thanks M


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The meeting of two minds

At the moment the perpetual question from friends, family and colleagues is

"So, how are you feeling about leaving work?"

With about a month to go until my last day in the industry I've spent the last 27 years in...I would say I'm in two minds.

Mind one says "can't wait" and mind two says "Holy crap! What have you done?????"

Mind two had been winning.

Then a week or so ago, TD makes a suggestion to kick start the business proposition we'd been steadily working up for the last couple of months. What followed is a flurry of actvity to get from almost a standing start to a point where we almost have an organization to work within.

I've learned about domains, webhosting, HTML, limited companies vs LLPs, VAT, corporation tax, and, and...

It's all been a bit of a blur.

Voice one got a little louder in my interview at the local Business Links office. As I explain to the advisor what it is we're trying to do, I see that I've made myself understood...and he thinks it's a great idea.

I'm even surprised, when he asked me some pertinent "feasibility" type questions, that they are questions I've already asked and we have answers for.

Then today TD and DM come round to my place for a discussion about another potential project. Listening to two of my favourite people enthuse over design, and architecture and stuff like that is a treat in itself. Then they include me in the conversation like I have something to contribute beyond nailing them down for dates and agreeing who does what. Bliss.

It was hard work and, damn it all, this is the weekend. But if this is what work can be like - at least some of the time - then bring it on.

As I sit here fiddling some more with website stuff I barely understand, and trying to get more soon-to-be-work stuff going voice two ain't getting a look in.



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