A quiet moment during casting earlier gave me time to reflect (You’ll get it).
Archive for the ‘London’ Category
Working Out
Andy Parkhouse - June 2nd, 2010Working remotely is something Team Rubber does with mixed success. Sometimes we’re very good at it. Sometimes we’re not so good.
I’ve found working in a remote (or distributed) way massively productive, but I don’t think remote working looks like as much fun for other Team Rubber staff as it should be, so I’ve been thinking about how we could and should do it better.
It was a handy co-incidence that I found this piece from Jason Z at 37 Signals about remote working and team parity.
In short, when most of a team work together in one location, it’s very hard to prevent remote team members becoming second class citizens. It’s very easy for the people in the same location to share information and solve problems with quick conversations, white boards, a quick sketch or a quick list of actions on a post-it note. They can also have lunch, tea and banter together.
Those working remotely miss out on this shared ’stuff’, or worse, get the negative side-effects (”we were just talking about the project and we’ve decided xxxx”, “sorry we missed your call, we were having a meeting” etc.). I’ve seen this happen and it doesn’t look like much fun 
Meanwhile I collaborate almost every day on open source projects where all work is distributed. Using tools like internet relay chat (irc), forums, and web-based project management apps, I get stuff done with people in different countries and different time zones (I’m currently collaborating with people in Canada, Germany, Holland, Spain, Sweden and Russia). We use English, we use a lot of short written communication, a few pictures, and an awful lot of emoticons (to indicate when we’re really not cross…or when we really are). It’s fun and we get stuff done.
I’m not advocating that Team Rubber works remotely by default. Having a base is really important to us, and by working together closely we’ve built strong personal ties, developed seriously impressive capabilities to get stuff done, and had fun. That’s massively valuable – but we should get better at working in a distributed way, because it’s also fun and valuable, and because we already have people in multiple locations.
Wednesday is a great day to work from home – or somewhere else out of the studio/office (get out in the world!). It won’t be compulsory – and some jobs are tied to a office phone – but I’m strongly encouraging distributed working on Wednesdays, and I’m going to be very interested in how we do do it better. Our tools are things like email, irc, trac, and (omg) “picking up the fricking phone”. We’re going to learn how to do it right, and it’s going to be fun 
cheers,
Andy
Making things better from a hospital bed
Chris Quigley - December 2nd, 2009
Pain can be a beautiful thing. And in my case quite an inspiring thing too. For the last 5 days I’ve been stuck in hospital with severe back pains – which have meant I’ve been totally bed bound, and completely dependent on the nurses at Kings College Hospital London (who have – by the way – been really great!)
Anyway, lying in bed – in pain – inspired me yesterday morning: could I be of any use to hospital lying here? The hospital staff are being great – but could I add anything – could I help improve how the hospital is run?
And the answer is of course YES. As a patient I – and the hundreds of other patients – are in the best place to help the hospital improve, as we’re the ones at the coal-face, experiencing the end products that the hospital delivers – whether that’s a quick fix in A&E, or a longer stay in one of the wards.
The only issue is how you collate and make sense of this collective experience. And the answer to that is the internet – create a crowd-sourcing website with a focus on collating “ideas of how to improve the hospital” and let patients share ideas, and self-organise the value of those ideas via rating and commenting systems. Given I’m the co-founder of an e-democracy company – Delib – that specialises in citizen empowerment – this was the easy bit!
So lying in my hospital bed – I asked Andy, Jess and Dave in Bristol to quickly put together a patient crowd-sourcing site using our one of our apps – and 2 hours later we launched “Help us Improve Kings”.
Check the site here (and add ideas if you have any!)
With the prototype site up and live, I’m now in the process of getting patients to take part and share their experiences and ideas – a bit of a tricky feat given I can’t walk, but they’re coming in slowly as I lynch people walking past my room! I’m also in the process of talking to the Patient Involvement team @ Kings – as obviously to make this work, we really need them on board to actually turn the ideas generated into concrete actions.
So there you go – an example of bottom-up patient power – empowered by the wonders of broadband and a wonderful set of e-democracy tools. Social media empowerment at its finest!
And most importantly this is a lesson to all those brands / businesses / government departments out there who are trying to work out how to make their business work better – the answer: empower your customers and employees and they will in turn help power your business!
Santa ClaUSB is coming.
Kirk Hullis - November 9th, 2009Last year saw us secret-santaing mugs to each other and let’s face it, it has made the office a better place. Rory’s eternal struggle to pick between Jimmy Saville or Obama, Ian’s rude mug and Ally’s christmas-music spectacular have brightened many a beverage in their short time in the office.
This year we’re turning to something altogether a bit simpler to organise by no less impressive. If you’ve ever coveted Tim’s USB-powered mug warmer or smirked at Michaela’s 4-port flower shaped USB hub then you’ll enjoy taking part in this year’s (kind of) secret santa.
We’re doing it lucky dip style this year, just before we head out for the Christmas Dinner. If you’d like to take part then all you need to do is buy a USB device for about a fiver, wrap it and drop it into the lucky dip box/bin that Jake and Katrina are making. If you put one in, then you’ll be able to take one out on the 22nd December. Easy-peasy.
I know what I’d like to get….
(People) Shipping News
Andy Parkhouse - September 8th, 2009Newly Arrived
Dave: epic wielder of the internet crayons. This job is now filled. Hi Dave. Welcome.
Robin: care and feeding of the css and javascript. This job is now filled. Hi Robin. Welcome.
Recently Departed
Mathilde: development intern. Thanks Mathilde, good luck.
Leaving Soon
Becca: Bristol’s all-star media intern and writer of case studies and other useful things. Becca will be teaching English in Paris. Thanks Becca.
Lauren: London’s all-star media intern and researcher of local government and other useful things. Lauren has landed a great job at a political research agency. Thanks Lauren.
Matt Wilkes: Plone wrangler and current longest serving employee, Bristol’s principal consumer of sausage. First job was sticking stickers, Matt will be freelance, so also leaving but not leaving. Thanks Matt.
Rose: debonaire tester of internets. Leaving, but not leaving, Rose will be working remotely for us in Brighton, testing shiny new Viral Ad Network features two days a week. Thanks Rose.
Arriving soon
Yo av: development intern, Yo av has been exploring the Ukraine and will soon be back for round two of summer work (except it’s now autumn). Hi Yo av.
Stan: our new debonaire tester of internets. Arriving September 25th. Hi Stan.
Atten-tion!
Jess Gurr - August 13th, 2009I don’t reccomend trying this for real, but for the purposes of this Saatchi & Saatchi New Directors Showcase call-for-entries, it’s rather jovial:
Rubber Republic talking at Rushes Soho Shorts festival
Adam Abu-Nab - July 28th, 2009Our Matt Golding is talking at two events at Rushes Soho Shorts festival tomorrow.
One is the Encounters Contentertainment talk (Soho Film Lab, 13:00) which is a private event invite only for ad industry creative directors chaired by Colin Marrs, editor of digital at Campaign (see above flyer).
The other is a public event on the future of short film at Apple Store Regent Street from 5pm – 7pm.
Details:
CONTENTERTAINMENT ‘30 SEC LATER DEBATE’ (Vicky, Matt, Irfon & Adam)
12am – meet at the Soho Film Lab, 8-14 Meard Street, London W1F 0EQ
http://streetmap.co.uk/map.srf?x=529623&y=181041&z=0&sv=W1F+0EQ&st=2&pc=W1F+0EQ&mapp=map.srf&searchp=ids.srf
1pm – start
3pm – finish
APPLE iStore ‘The Future of Film’ (Matt speaking, Irfon chairing)
4.30 – meet up at the Apple iStore, 235 Regent Street, London W1B 2ET
http://www.apple.com/uk/retail/regentstreet/map/
5.00 – start
7.00 – finish
It’s outlined on the Apple website – http://www.apple.com/uk/retail/regentstreet/
GENERAL MAP
See the map on page 71 of the Soho Shorts brochure – http://quicktime.rushes.co.uk/2009_rssf_web.pdf
Hiring Hiring Hiring
Andy Parkhouse - July 20th, 2009We have no fewer than *three* shiny new jobs to fill (and a few more besides):
Rubber Republic Account Director
Programming and development that doesn’t suck
Check em out, tell your friends!
The 100th ‘Big Brother for Guardian readers’ comment…
Becca - July 10th, 2009We’re two weeks into my Media Internship with Team Rubber, and, though I can’t speak for everybody, it’s been a weird fortnight for me. After living the laid-back student lifestyle for three years (studying English, not Medicine, obviously) I’m suddenly surrounded by people who can be creative on demand. Sometimes for hours. Sometimes even all day.
As a stranger to off-the-cuff performance, I’d be disappointing in ‘One And Other.’ It’s Antony Gormley’s latest idea, as I’m sure you know: filling the fourth plinth of Trafalgar Square with the activities of a different randomly-selected member of the public every hour, for 100 days. On-demand creativity (or lack of it) has never been more exposed.
Take the girl up there now, Ciara, swigging with deliberation from a bottle of Veuve Clicquot. She’s not badly-dressed, in fact quite conventionally on-trend, and her bio says she ‘co-runs an art space,’ but she doesn’t seem to have any bright ideas on how to use her hour on the plinth apart from smiling rather inanely. Being up there is enough for her. (Edit: The next girl does exactly the same, minus the champagne.)
Perhaps the most fascinating thing about the whole curious experiment is the interaction it’s inviting, both online and offline. There’s a live webstream on www.oneandother.co.uk from which the view is better than the one tourists get in the plinth’s immediate vicinity. The Guardian is panting for details, setting up ‘plinthwatch’ on Twitter and Flickr, so readers can “help us document” the event. I’m sporadically searching #oneandother for the many pithy comments, and looking forward to the weekly highlights (catch them tonight at 7 on Sky Arts.
Gormley’s plinth has a certain amount in common with the internet itself, in that it’s a catalyst for interaction, communication, and debate, while at the same time being a godsend to the ordinary exhibitionist. One person, one pedestal, one hour of being beamed around the world, talked about, slagged off or idolized: frankly, I’m amazed so many people want to do it. But they do. Plinthgoers (a good proportion of them Art students, but not all) are embracing their hour in the spotlight. Gormley’s intention is to build up a picture of Britain. So far, so representative, in that these days, it seems perfectly normal to believe you have a right to be famous.
Whether everyone with a voice deserves an audience is debatable, but what’s amazing is that this democratic opportunity for self-promotion does exist online. Everyone has the chance to introduce themselves to the world, and share their love of llamas, Civil War re-enactments, scrabble, giant foods, or whatever their passion may be. Ordinary people no longer need financial backing, political influence or a twenty-six foot high column to share what they think. Personally, I’m taking the ‘One And Other’ project as a celebration of the fact that literally anybody with access to an internet connection has a platform they can use to be themselves. Fortunately – to borrow a pun from Boris Johnson – if there’s one out there for everybody, I can have faith that some day my plinth will come.
(Sorry. I’m pretty sure I just earned myself an hour on a stone platform, in the rain, dressed as a rubber duck.)
Baby’s Got Backspin
Ian Ochiltree - July 3rd, 2009Here we are again: the semi-finals of Wimbledon. We’re almost at the peak of that beautiful stretch of summer when every English man and woman become strawberry scoffing tennis connoisseurs; tennis puns lighten the muggy summer air and the Williams sisters scare all of us.
To top off this annual gloriousness, we even have a British person with a chance of winning! National morale is at an all-time high, sitting proudly and distinguished inbetween those familiar warnings of floods, droughts, heatwaves and mutated flu strains that visit us – unwanted – each year.
As Rory put it, it’s ‘Andymonium’.
Some people don’t like his face, but we’re proud of you lad, dead proud!
In celebration of all of this, I have selected a clip that harks back to a period of British cunningness and tennis domination. Please enjoy, have a great weekend and use the phrase “Hard cheese old boy” for the remainder of the summer!
