Recently in Work Category

Since my job morphed from "head of blog development" to "editorial development manager" (which happened a while before the job title change), I've struggled to give a clear, one sentence description of what I do. The closest I've got is "figure out how changes in technology, journalism and social media present us with business opportunities as a publisher - and then do everything I can to make sure we take advantage of that". Not exactly a conversation-starter at a dinner party.

This problem is afflicting the whole of journalism, I think. Jobs are becoming less defined as the work we do becomes more mutable. Arnold King sums up this trend in employment thus:

The paradox is this. A job seeker is looking for something for a well-defined job. But the trend seems to be that if a job can be defined, it can be automated or outsourced.

The marginal product of people who need well-defined jobs is declining. The marginal product of people who can thrive in less structured environments is increasing.

Something to think about…

[via Jackie Danicki]

1. The problem with a job that involves looking at how technology changes will impact on editorial content is that the rate of change of technology is a lot greater than the rate of change of editorial businesses, so I spend all my time panicing about how far we have to go...
2. All meetings should be measured on their Reggie Perrin Quotient. 0 RPQs is the perfect, enjoyable, productive, work-affirming meeting. at 100 RPQs, you're driving to the beach and preparing to fold your clothes neatly... (never went higher than 15 RPQs today)
3. People who just go ahead and give things a go, without being told to do A, B or C are worth their weight in any precious metal you care to name right now. 

The good folks at Estates Gazette have launched their first iPad app. The Special Edition focuses around the property issues (and property people) involved in sporting events like the Olympic Games, coming to a London near you next year.

There's a real mix of images, text and video, and the whole shebang is free to you on the App Store, thanks to sponsorship from property firm CBRE.

A few more screen shots:

At lunchtime today's anti-cuts protest passed Estates Gazette's offices in Holborn. I couldn't resist nipping out to grab a little footage and see how quickly I could turn it around. Just two pieces of kit involved - my iPhone 4 and my MacBook Pro. This is the result:

Method:

1. Shot on an iPhone 4, handheld, at 720p
2. Imported into MacBook Pro
3. Edited in iMovie, using image stabilisation. Analysed for stabilisation on import.
4. Uploaded to Vimeo using tethered iPhone (on the 3 network)

Total time from import to online was under 30 mins. The major delay way the analysing for stabilisation on import, which accounted for nearly half of that time. I suspect I could have brought the time down significantly by only analysing the clips I actually used (the bus sequence at the beginning was much longer, and I suspect accounted for most of the 16 minutes analysis time).