Show us your work

[Jobbo]

As MickN doesn't post here anymore, I'll put this here on his behalf...

Is that from his fishing blog? I'd forgotten about that, just googled and he's still updating it. Blimey.

[tim]

Yeah the dedication to his 60 followers is impressive. How does he get all his gear in a cash-bought GT3 though?

[Jobbo]

One of the reasons I like property law is that there's usually something tangible to look at or visit with my work. Sometimes it's just a substation cabinet but here's a nice field which I'm turning into a housing estate:

[duncs500]

Won't you think of the animals Jobbo!?

[Rich B]

Liking some of the stuff so far.

@Rich B My wife's worked in a few similar environments and I've often wondered what that must be lke. Working for much smaller firms everywhere I've worked has been firmly of the grey box variety. Certainly far from inspiring.

well designed offices do bring a lot of positives - obviously there isn't a one size fits all though! It's not all table tennis tables, juice bars and sleep booths!

Most will still have areas with proper desks, but increasingly people have desks at home, so aren't so bothered about travelling to sit at one in the office. So it's loads of collaboration opportunities and places people actually like being in.

One of the biggest drivers these days is attracting and retaining new and younger talent, plenty of oldies don't give a fuck and just want a clean desk, but it's always nicer being in a well designed and fitted out office.

[Jobbo]

Won't you think of the animals Jobbo!?

They'll be able to graze on the tarmac and drink from the attenuation pond.

[duncs500]

Won't you think of the animals Jobbo!?

They'll be able to graze on the tarmac and drink from the attenuation pond.

[Jobbo]

Yeah the dedication to his 60 followers is impressive. How does he get all his gear in a cash-bought GT3 though?

I haven't been keeping up but he seems to have a Jimny: http://calamitymn.blogspot.com/2020/07/ ... aries.html

[Swervin_Mervin]

Won't you think of the animals Jobbo!?

They'll be able to graze on the tarmac and drink from the attenuation pond.

[Swervin_Mervin]

Liking some of the stuff so far.

@Rich B My wife's worked in a few similar environments and I've often wondered what that must be lke. Working for much smaller firms everywhere I've worked has been firmly of the grey box variety. Certainly far from inspiring.

well designed offices do bring a lot of positives - obviously there isn't a one size fits all though! It's not all table tennis tables, juice bars and sleep booths!

Most will still have areas with proper desks, but increasingly people have desks at home, so aren't so bothered about travelling to sit at one in the office. So it's loads of collaboration opportunities and places people actually like being in.

One of the biggest drivers these days is attracting and retaining new and younger talent, plenty of oldies don't give a fuck and just want a clean desk, but it's always nicer being in a well designed and fitted out office.

There was a rpogram on a few years ago about the effects of hte office environment on productivity. They specifically went to a fairly modern office environment in The Netherlands IIRC, and as an experiment made a few of the staff work for a day in a more traditional grey box environment. ISTR it had a noticable impact upon productivity levels. THey were contrasting that approach with that often adopted at the time in the UK, and they were taking a look at the Shard as an example. Stunnign fromthe outside but dull as dishwater inside - you could have been anywhere. But it was all geared towards maximising the rental potential.

Have you found that client requirements have changed much since Covid? We know of a few clients that have downsized their office space, with increased WFH. And in the building we're in, a couple of the bigger units have been split up into smaller rental spaces.

[McSwede]

Couple of the more interesting projects recently (for some of the braver clients!)

Some interesting stuff there Rich, especially for me having worked in lighting and the last few years in lighting controls.

[Rich B]

Have you found that client requirements have changed much since Covid? We know of a few clients that have downsized their office space, with increased WFH. And in the building we're in, a couple of the bigger units have been split up into smaller rental spaces.

yep, lots downsizing/ditching entire sites, but we don't really do "cheap plain offices full of desks" anyway, so smaller more bespoke design and build offices are what we're set up to do. The majority of our work is computer gaming companies and landlords wanting their vacant space to stand out - basically people who want to spend a bit more to have something better.

[KiwiDave]

Not sure if related to your stuff KD but the Triceratops Horridus exhibtion at the Melbourne museum has some incredible interactive 3D displays running from scans of the fossils. Deeply cool (and fun for kids big and small).

That's not specifically me (but the team in Melbourne are about as good as it gets) but we have done a lot of similar stuff. Last big win was 3D scanning a giant moa, the model got picked up by a science museum in Japan, recreated full size and was part of a full TV series teaching kids which was pretty cool. Score one for doing the work and making the content free and open - everyone benefits.

[Beany]

Open data is cool. One of the guys I was chatting to at our works thing has contributed a lot to a project linked to http://openplaques.org/ called https://www.openbenches.org/ - where you can see memorial plaques on benches.

It's a little thing but it's pretty cool to see what people can do with data like this.

[RobYob]

Not sure if related to your stuff KD but the Triceratops Horridus exhibtion at the Melbourne museum has some incredible interactive 3D displays running from scans of the fossils. Deeply cool (and fun for kids big and small).

That's not specifically me (but the team in Melbourne are about as good as it gets) but we have done a lot of similar stuff. Last big win was 3D scanning a giant moa, the model got picked up by a science museum in Japan, recreated full size and was part of a full TV series teaching kids which was pretty cool. Score one for doing the work and making the content free and open - everyone benefits.

fantastic.

[KiwiDave]

Open data is cool. One of the guys I was chatting to at our works thing has contributed a lot to a project linked to http://openplaques.org/ called https://www.openbenches.org/ - where you can see memorial plaques on benches.

It's a little thing but it's pretty cool to see what people can do with data like this.

I find the concept of open data brilliant in some contexts. For cultural heritage places, they're almost all paid for in some way, or belong to the public at large anyway - it's already the people's information. As an org, do good work and give it back to them - the way it spreads around as adds value all over the bloody place is insane and brilliant.

On the flipside, for creators, copyright and the respect of it, is pretty much the only way any of them will ever make money (another irritation of mine, the global decline in value associated to people who create new things) and yet in this space, open data is practiced probably more than anywhere else. See any social media platform where people just take something and reuse it as they see fit and you're lucky if you even get a credit, let alone asked or paid for the re-use of the stuff you created.

It's one of the things with the digital world I find most frustrating in the work I've done the past 20yrs - stuffy old bastards in big museums trying to copyright the digital reproduction they made of a painting hundreds of years old which is entirely, legally in the public domain to monetise it (and there are many studies showing the cost to monetise a collection is never covered by the money it brings in). That versus digital stuff which should be protected for the benefit of the creator is a free for all...

Open access and rights/copyright since the advent of the internet is a fucked and dysfunctional mess, again, only benefiting the silly rich.

[Jimexpl]

Couple of the more interesting projects recently (for some of the braver clients!)

Some interesting stuff there Rich, especially for me having worked in lighting and the last few years in lighting controls.

What lighting controls do you do? I'm mainly KNX with some Lutron.

[Rich B]

Couple of the more interesting projects recently (for some of the braver clients!)

Some interesting stuff there Rich, especially for me having worked in lighting and the last few years in lighting controls.

What lighting controls do you do? I'm mainly KNX with some Lutron.

All sorts, we sub out all the packages so it depends on who we employ to do the lighting, what budget we've got and more importantly what the base build systems are.

[McSwede]

Couple of the more interesting projects recently (for some of the braver clients!)

Some interesting stuff there Rich, especially for me having worked in lighting and the last few years in lighting controls.

What lighting controls do you do? I'm mainly KNX with some Lutron.

I work for CP Electronics (Legrand) and we offer controls and modular wiring solutions for a huge range of applications. We do some KNX but not a lot in the UK.