Offsite

I've just returned home from my first departmental 'offsite' event, which was certainly an interesting experience, if not a thrilling one throughout. The idea is that everyone stops doing their work, travels to a sub-par hotel in the middle of the country and watches some Powerpoints, then goes drinking.

Oddly enough, it worked quite well, with the 'teambuilding' exercise of making a one minute video on what the department actually does (no-one knows) proving great fun - as did the evening/night of drinks, of course. The 'forced fun' of a Murder Mystery night fell mostly on its face unfortunately, as did most of the presentations - but this just led to more fun making/hearing amusing little comments about them all. I was also involved in a coding 'competition' to show off the powers of some fun new technology, but the less said about that, the better.

Fun though it was to have yet more drinks out of BillG's pocket, the most useful thing I took away from these two days was a presentation from 'eclectic guru' Eddie Obeng who gave a great talk on the art, and science, of telling a story. I won't steal all his IP by telling you about it all here - but if you're interested, let me know and we'll chat, I was really, really impressed.

--

Various tidbits that amused me on the way there/back:

Ibstock - Innovators in Clay
I'm fairly sure that making bricks out of clay isn't exactly a recent innovation..

Interbrew - Making Beer Great
Such a hard job.

Steve Lamb - "Why isn't monosyllabic?"

And also from Steve's blog (wot I just found):



A car outside a showroom with the number plate:
HI IAN M

--

I'm sure there were more, but I'm tired and forgetful :)