Posts Tagged ‘buzz’

That’s life on a planet in a binary star system.

Having pushed back my leaving do at Buzz Sports to accommodate the other four people who were leaving, it turned out it handed directly on top of the first social event of the new organisation I’m now consulting with.

I know what you’re thinking – the obvious thing to do would have been to constantly make excuses about going to the bathroom and then rapidly running between venues pretending I was simultaneously attending both events in some kind of sitcom setup.

Unfortunately, I eventually opted for something far more pedestrian. Having worked round Sandinista, The Lounge, Mojo’s, Fibre, Revolution and Call Lane Social with Gooroo, I headed over to Maven to find the Buzz crew. By this point (11pm) there were only two of them left standing – Simundo and Ian.

As it turns out, Maven is quite a find (and number two in the best kept secrets in the UK, according to Ian). They don’t seem to have cocktail menus – I just went up to the bar and told them what ingredients I liked and two minutes later I was sipping on a very nice raspberry based long drink. Delicious. Further investigation is definitely required.

Last year, ATOS boss Thierry Breton announced he was planning to bring internal emails to an end at the company.

It’s a brilliant idea. As his research shows, most of the internal emails we get at work these days are junk. In fact, up to 85%, perhaps even higher, are messages we didn’t actually need to get. Yet we spend hours and hours every week reading all of them!

That can’t be productive for a business.

That is all on top of emails being a distraction in themselves. One thing Gijsbert has commented on in the past, and that any “how to study” or “how to focus” book will talk about is disconnecting yourself from the outside world and not getting distracted by things like email.

So, over the past week at work, I’ve been “switching off” my emails. When possible, I read them first thing in a morning and shortly before the end of the day. Between then I close my email client and get on with actually doing my job – writing code!

Overall, I’m more productive. I’m not missing important emails either. I was expecting a lot of people to come to me and say “did you read my email yet?”, but nobody has. Nobody! You could almost argue that as it wasn’t important enough for them to come chasing me up, was it really important to send to me in the first place?

Of course, this isn’t the same thing as banning internal email, but what I think it shows is that emails have, on the whole, not become more of a burden than a benefit and the workplace can be made more productive by finding alternative routes of communication.

I’m pleased to say that after much blood, sweat and toil, we have finally launched ZonePlay live with one of our internet partners, PlanetWin365. It’s been a tough couple of months with plenty of late nights, early mornings, but it’s very gratifying to see the product go live in a brand new outlet. Full credit to Russ and Andy who have worked their metaphorical socks off to get it there.

With it being that time again, we set about having the work Christmas party. It was the worst one ever. Not that it was a bad event, but last year, the Buzz Social Committee (myself and Jason) were consulted and we suggested murder mystery dinner. The year before, we saw a great night of karaoke. This year, we weren’t consulted, and so the end result was a standard meal, without any theme. Good, but not as good as if Row One had been consulted as they should have.

The dinner started at 12 noon, and we were sat next to a table from RBS, though they wouldn’t officially admit they were from RBP for fear that they could get a load of abuse given they were enjoying a rather expensive Christmas lunch at our expense (our referring to use, the tax payer).

After that, it was Row One to the rescue (along with Average Matt), trailblazing the path to the German Market where we enjoyed good times, stein’s of beer and the live band. Finally, we finished the night at Shooters, were Wendy took a bit of a sleep. I ended up going home just before 10pm which I’m pretty proud of given we started at 12 and I’m still off all alcohol and caffeine!

Last week, we headed down to Alea Casino for a poker night that had been organised by the analysis team.

Row One, aka myself and Jason where there to represent the office and I brought Norm along too. After the night we had, I think future tournaments might be restricted to analysts only though.

As part of an elaborate tactic, I went out first to make sure I wasn’t stealing chips off Jason and Norm. They then went on to place first and second, taking almost all of the prize money. Good times.

Last week, we headed over to Trio for a bit of a work social. Despite making it clear that partners were invited, but not welcome, it somehow quickly turned into a bit of a couples-fest and as a possible first for Buzz, actually ended up with an equal gender balance.

The drinks were good. Their Rekorderlig was a bit of a rip-off, they had a “special offer” of bottles for £2.50, but it wasn’t the kind of bottle you would expect if you got a bottle of Kopparberg, it was a small beer style bottle.

Far more importantly, however, we were there for the two for one cocktails.

These started well, they had a menu but the first bartender we got was willing to mix up anything and I was soon sipping on an apricot martini. The second bartender we got was far more disappointing, however, despite working at a cocktail bar, he had never even heard of a sloppy joe, let alone being willing to mix one. Service was at least reasonably speedy, however.

The restaurant was far more of a disappointment. Despite charging almost £20 for a fillet steak, it couldn’t even compete with the likes of Brooklyn Bar or The Restaurant, let alone Blackhouse or Cattle Grid, all of which are cheaper, despite being in the city centre!

All in all, a good place to go for cocktails, but I can’t recommend eating there.

Last Friday was Simon S’s last day at Buzz, which was unfortunate as, as a Leeds graduate, he was one point in favour of the Leeds side of the office (as opposed to the Leeds Met side). Never the less, he is leaving to return to the university to undertake a PhD – something the other side doesn’t really suffer from ;).

We saw him off in the usual manner – by hitting The Original Oak for lunch and getting the shots in. At one point Rebecca suggested we should do one shot per week – something that worries myself and Jason, who would now have to do over 100 shots to leave!

Recently, we headed out to Revolution for a work social. We started with a buffet dinner, which was very nice, but then I really hate buffets because, as a Yorkshireman, I have to eat until I can eat no more to get my value for money, and that is quite frankly, uncomfortable. Never the less it was quite a good night though starting tailing off at around midnight so we headed home.

A few weeks ago, myself and our office manager Rebecca were engaged in a casual conversation about life, the universe and everything. We ended up on the topic of universal justice and how the only way we could really ensure that was to have some kind of vigilante system, like Batman.

She agreed, so I asked if we were to get her a Batman costume, whether she would wear it to work. She launched and said she would, if it were a Batgirl outfit.

So half an hour later I arrived in the Snooty Office (that’s the other side of the building where the business development team sit who are far too above coming to the pub for lunch) with a tin full of money – it’s amazing how the office really come together in donating to a good cause.

At the end of March, we headed over to The Original Oak for Simon G’s leaving do.

Unfortunately, what we hadn’t factored in was the amount of end of term Otley Run’s which would be in there. Still, as time went on they moved on to later pubs and actually gave us chance to get somewhere near the bar.

It was disappointing to see Simon go as he had really come out of his shell since handing in his resignation and was actually a treasurer trove of interesting stories – not nearly as entertaining as those told by Disco Dave but then you get the sense that when Simon was telling a story, it was actually true (not that I’m saying Dave didn’t have a gunfight with a drug dealer in Nottingham…).