Steelso vs Real Life

Ego Driven, Alcohol Fuelled

Had a great night in the pub with Allan last night as we chewed the fat and went over the last two years or so. It was very, very cool. Though we were only supposed to be going for one pint….

Had a great session on the application that Allan built for the GFO. Last week I had a meeting with the GFO and all the location managers that are active in the Glasgow area. The application Allan built can be seen here and it’s really very, very clever. Considering the old version of this application that was originally built the new version is a million miles away.

The meetin that we had was largely constructive and we had some great ideas fed back to us, not just about the application but the website in general. A number of these idea will be hopefully put in place early next year. All good. So why didn’t I have a huge sense of elation after the meeting?

Well, after talking to Allan it was because I was too much in love with the technology. I was wanting oooo’s and aaaaa’s and the eway that the page doesn’t refresh when you get new data, etc, etc, etc. They, quite rightly, looked at the way the technology was going to make their live’s easier.

I had put the technology above the outcome.

Now, this is rare for me and I’m surprised at this. As a lighting designer you had three kinds of reviews:

• A review that praises the lighting
• A review that doesn’t mention the lighting
• A review that criticises the lighting

You don’t want the last point, you’ll love the first point, you aim for the second point.

Why in that order? Well you are there to become a whole solution, to be one part that makes the whole greater. I always belived in that, I did a huge amount of shows in my time and didn’t recieve one negative review (though I probably deserved it, Endgame anyone?) a few ‘Wow’ reviews and lots, lots and lots of not being mentioned.

Don’t get me wrong. Each time I read a review I was was wanting to see my name. After all I’m ego driven, alcohol fuelled. If I wasn’t mentioned I was cool, I knew I had done my job, I took it a s very good thing and moved on.

So it was odd that I felt unsettled by last week’s meeting. It was a great meeting but I was looking for the validation of our work, probably as it was the first time I met a user group who were using this technology that we had not fully let loose to the outside world yet. I am happy though becuase we used the technology not for technology sake but to make the life of the end user better. And the non-reaction to the technology demonstrated that we had achieved that goal.

So we talked about that. And other stuff.

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