Alex Muller

David was kind enough to invite me back to St Paul’s yesterday to hear Fraser Speirs, the chap behind FlickrExport and Darkslide, talk about his rollout of an iPad to every pupil at Cedars School of Excellence near Glasgow.

Fraser spoke about the situation that led up to the iPad decision; the scarcity of MacBooks in his school, the lack of faith in the iPod touch as a complete desktop replacement. He talked about the deployment process, and how it’s completely changed the way many subjects are taught.

The example he gave that stuck with me was Art. A teacher can use Brushes on the iPad to create a drawing that illustrates a particular artistic technique. Brushes will create a ‘recording’ (a timelapse) of the creation, which can be exported and played back. And then, the magic: during a class the teacher can talk over the video and carefully explain the technique. If you’re an Art teacher and that doesn’t make you want an iPad… I’m speechless.

Then, the Q&A (I’m paraphrasing from memory – please correct me if I’ve got this wrong). George asked whether Fraser was worried that he was sending kids out into the world who couldn’t use Microsoft Office.

Fraser responded by saying that it wasn’t a worry, but it was something to think about. He went on to say that there’s no way to tell what the world of work will be like in 2023, when some of these kids will leave school.

Having worked in a huge organisation for (only!) six months so far, this worried me. I’ve experienced the brain-achingly slow rate at which IT in corporations—at least this corporation—moves. Internet Explorer 8 was released in March 2009; it’s being pushed out in June 2011, over two years later. Our Windows 7 release will start in November this year and conclude in September 2014, a full five years after the retail release. By 2015, all 100,000 employees will be running Windows 7. I’m willing to bet (and this is a total guess, I don’t work in IT or have any inside information) that even in 2023, Microsoft will be an important part of this company’s infrastructure.

Is that a good thing? Nope, not one bit. But what’s going to happen here? Will the next generation start avoiding job ads that require some kind of Microsoft Office competency? I’m really worried about the future for large companies that have such a heavy reliance on Microsoft who haven’t learnt to adapt yet. To offer, for example, new starters the OS of their choice. This talk has prompted some really interesting conversations here about the future of education and work, thank you Fraser.

Facebook status after Facebook status after tweet of… people complaining that there are absolutely no summer jobs. I guess it’s to be expected (note please, I haven’t used the R word), but the effect is still incredible to see.

Twitter Search: summer job

(A way to search/filter my friends’ statuses would be nice, hint hint Facebook)

Today I finish three weeks of employment, the first proper work I’ve ever done. It’s been in a small restaurant startup in south west London, a place called The Kitchen. Owned, managed and run by Natalie Richmond and chef Thierry Laborde, the concept is something quite new and different. Here comes my ad copy:

You order a couple of meals on their site, book a date and time and come along to Parsons Green. Everything’s all set up for you (we’re talking ingredients, utensils, instructions) and you prepare it with a couple of chefs on hand to help. They package up the food for you, and you take it home to cook. Love the idea. It’s relatively cheap (£20 a week for evening meals?) and much faster than doing the shopping yourself.

The software used on the site is something called EATS, which in itself hasn’t been bad. The UI on the backend is more complicated than it needs to be, but this is a trend that can be seen more and more with new content management systems. I hope I’ll find time to write something more on the design and branding work they’ve had done there, as some gorgeous stuff has been created by a small company in central London.

Bulleted thoughts:

• Networking a printer on a Windows network is harder than it looks. Especially when you have a BT BusinessHub to contend with – yuck.
• Programming a cash register is so much harder than programming a computer.
• Fax machines are still used?!
• Outlook is disgusting, and Access is actually scarily bearable.
• Dell is fantastic. They delivered a machine five days before they said they would, and four days after I ordered it.

In any case: cheers, Natalie & Mark, Thierry & Claudio, Katie & Zuzana, Jhon & Nico and Clare. And Sophia for getting me there in the first place. As well as all the customers I’ve had to talk to over the last 20 days, of course – they have been great too. It’s done great things for my confidence, and I’m going to miss it.