Productivity and work tips are big with geeks. No idea why; probably some inadequacy complex we have about the fact we still haven’t finished our novel and we’re already in our late twenties.

Ahem.

Anyhow, one tidbit that I’ve been trying this week to surprising effect comes from a sentence fragment in Dan Hill’s review of his time at Monocle magazine, namely:

“coats in the cloakroom not on the back of chair”

And so, this week, I’ve been putting my coat or jacket on a coatstand in the corner of the office, as a very deliberate action, to see what difference it makes.

I’ve rather enjoyed it, to be honest. There’s something nice about not feeling like you’re in some transition state between indoors and outdoors – feeling like you’re about to be called away somewhere. There’s also something nice about the ritual of having to pick up your coat if you want to go outside. There’s probably a noticeable social effect from everyone doing it, but still, I’ve been surprised by how much I’ve been getting from it. Yes, it’s nice to not have anything resting on the back of one’s chair… but it turns out the net effect is more than that. So I think I’m going to try to stick with this habit. It does, somehow, feel more civilized, and has helped me shift from “outside mode” to “work mode” a little bit more smoothly.

This week, after 18 months there, I left my job at Nature Publishing Group. I’m sad to go, of course; I’ll miss the friends I made whilst working there and the chance to work with many smart, engaged, talented people. I also had the opportunity to work on and help shape several exciting projects, most notably Nature Network and Nature Precedings.

It’s been an enjoyable ride, and I’m surprised at the sheer amount I learned in those eighteen months. For starters, I appear to have learned how to be a programmer in that time. I’ve also had the chance to stretch my design skills, notably in the design of interactions.

I knew from the start it would never last forever; one day, other opportunities would arise. It turned out that I was right.

On Monday, I start work at Headshift, making technological things to help people better engage with one another. It looks fun – and it looks challenging.

I can’t wait.

A long while since my last “real” post, then. In that time a lot’s happened; most significantly, I failed to pass comment on Russell Davies’ Interesting 2007, which was pretty excellent. There’s lots of stuff scattered around the web and Russell’s on site about it. It was a delightful, gentle, eye-opening, very British day of talk, tea, and apples. So good, I stayed out eating and drinking, rather than heading to Hack Day until the next day.

What I saw of Hack Day on Sunday was pretty good. I even attempted a hack in about half an hour, which went far enough as proof of concept without really being worth showing. It was a gag-hack, basically, but fun to have the challenge.

My talk at Interesting is available on Slideshare. Not only that, it’s also available on my slightly-revamped talks page. I say “slightly” revamped, because the whole markup could do with an overhaul, really, but for now, there’s lots of Slideshare action – including slides from my ETech talk last year, previously too big to host on my pitiful hosting.

Workwise, we had the official launch of Nature Precedings, which is a place for life-scientists and life-science researchers to share pre-publication and in-progress work; something a bit like a preprint service for the life-sciences community. If you’re within the larger scientific community, you might understand why it’s reasonably significant. It generated a fair bit of buzz, and I hope it goes from strength to strength. Great to work with many colleagues from NPG on it, as well as with the team at Thoughbot.

As ever, I’ve been neglecting the blog, but I’m thinking of ways around that – less, more often, might end up being some kind of solution. Right now, I feel on the cusp of something, but I have no idea what – how big it is, what it is. I’m just pushing myself forward, hoping to find that edge at some point soon.

In the meantime: I’ll keep linking, keep taking pictures, keep writing, and keep aggregating the results of those endeavours here.

There’s been a long silence here, punctuated by del.icio.us links and the odd post (and the odd picture) but not much else.

There are various reasons for this. The first is the new job – and everything that’s entailed, namely, trying to tie up loose ends at my current job before I leave, today. It’s also been a busy month at work anyway, so that’s made things even more hectic.

And then for the past month or two, at night, and at those weekends, I’ve been working pretty hard on my talk for ETech. I’ve been nervous about that – still am – and it’s taken a fair amount of work to knock it into the shape it’s in. I’m pretty pleased with it now – just hoping it doesn’t bomb at the conference. So that’s the other reason I’ve been busy.

Now, though, it’s practically all done. I’m flying out to LA tomorrow, and then down to San Diego for a week, Saturday to Saturday. I’m really looking forward to ETech. Bar the fear of speaking, I’ve followed it for a fair few years and have always wanted to go; now I’ve got the chance. It’s my first visit to the US, too; the last transatlantic flight I did was Canada when I was 11. So it’s all rather exciting, all told.

If you’re interested in saying hello during ETech, do drop me a line (tom at this domain), or look out for the redhead with the sideburns. I’m going to try and update this blog a bit more frequently when I’m there (which won’t be hard), but it’s not going to approach live-blogging or anything – I’m going to be too busy taking notes, I hope. Keep an eye on my Flickr stream, too.

A bit of a holiday, then, mixed up with a frenetic burst of data that I can’t wait to see. In a few weeks, once I’ve settled into the new jobs, I can start pulling the chocks out of a few other little side-projects. (And, of course, giving myself and the girl some quality time).

All good things come to an end.

I’d been meaning to write this for a while, and then I saw Alex’s post on his leaving-bash, and decided now was as probably a good a time as ever.

So: I’m leaving the New Statesman after nearly two years there. It’s been a great two years, and a fantastic first job. I’ve had a lot of great opportunities, learned a vast amount, and been given the space to put that learning to use. I’ve also worked with some lovely people, who I’m not planning on losing contact with anytime soon. I’ve developed a great deal – as a designer, as a developer, as a writer, and most importantly as a person – in those two years, and enjoyed them hugely.

But, you know, first jobs come to an end, and we move on. And so I’m soon going to be starting work at the Nature Publishing Group, publishers of Nature and a whole host of other journals, to work as a CSS Developer. It’s a slightly bigger operation than the Statesman, which will be an interesting experience for me, and I’m looking forward to the new challenges it’ll bring.

I’ve got two weeks left at the Statesman; then it’s off to Etech, and when I return from there, I’ll be starting at Nature. Then, 2006 can really begin.