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Macpatible: A PC product or device that works on a Mac, as in: “Yes, but is that plug-in Macpatible”. Sadly, Google search finds there are already 113 mentions, so no originality here either.
I thought I had invented this term, but Google comes up with five results for a search on blogumist. Anyway, its a very useful term for a print columnist who has a blog or a blogger who has a print column. Or a column who has a print blog. Or a blog who has a column of print. The Times is going to have some good ones.
When I got in this morning the newsroom was buzzing with excitement. I recognised most of the new faces from interviews and chats over the last three months. Chairs, laptops, MacBook Pros and log-ons were all behind schedule, but everyone was so excited about the first full-time day that it didn’t matter. A series of welcoming speeches were given, staff were taken step-by-step through the dummy by designers Stephen Haw and John Tsatsi. After that training guru Paddi Clay went through the next two weeks of intensive training on editorial systems that will follow. By the time we were finished, laptops and chairs had started arriving. Soon we’re going to have lunch in the courtyard. Then the serious stuff begins …
Tegan, originally uploaded by hartleyr.
Spent today moving my stuff downstairs into the (considerably less accommodating) desk on the hub. There is still quite a bit of construction to be done and the May 2 staff intake* will not be walking into a finished newsroom. But it is 90 percent there.
The only people in the newsroom were Tegan and Dave who worked the May 1 shift for online.
Display at IFRA, originally uploaded by hartleyr.
Yes, it will. It will deliver news across new digital platforms. But news won’t change. News remains what you tell your mother when you walk in the kitchen door, ne?
Stressed, originally uploaded by hartleyr.
The moment is finally arriving when I finally say goodbye to the office which I have used for the last six months or so. I have had an office for most of my fourteen years at the Sunday Times, so its going to be quite a change to sit at the hub downstairs (see previous post) where I will be sitting at an open plan desk.
The decision was a simple one: I want to build a corporate culture which embraces communication and in which managers are accessible and that means no offices.
What I will miss most is being able to crank up the volume on iTunes – I somehow think headphones are not going to be the same.
What I won’t miss is that trapped feeling you get when the doors closed and a meeting is going nowhere. In an open plan environment, distractions will be plentiful.
Hub Build, originally uploaded by hartleyr.
I’m afraid its another one of those ‘office under construction’ shots, but this is the single biggest headache we have with the bulk of our staff coming on board on Wednesday. Sunday afternoon saw the skeleton of the ‘hub’ going up. Its a semi-circle of desks to house news managers (other than those for business and sport which have their own space). The empty space in the middle will be home to a semi-circular table so that the managers can turn around and hold conferences whenever they need to. The wall will be home to the behemoth 64″ plasma TV that has been temporarily sitting outside my office. The idea is that we will be able to watch multimedia and have discussions aabout the site whenever needed and without have to set up equipment or move to a meeting room.
