The fearsome blog of Andrew Davies

I love water. Some of the best of my youth was swimming in the stuff…

Family week at the beach. We’d rent a cottage with my grandparents. All the aunts and uncles and cousins would show up. I never liked to lie on the beach. I’d rather swim in the waves.

Then when I was older, there were times when friends and I would get the mad idea to drive through the night to the sea shore.

There was also a favorite rope swing, and cliff jumping into the Potomac river.

Later came my trips on Greenpeace ships where sometimes we’d be months without land. Those were something special.

Everywhere I go, I see people having the same fun with water. Even in northern countries, like Sweden, they jump into icy cold lakes in between sauna sessions. And in the summer, swimming down on the lake. Same with places I’ve been in Africa, Asia, the Mediterranean and South America.

Of course, for a large chunk of people, water is more about survival. It’s in short supply or polluted. Recently, a photographer spent time with local fishermen and their families in a small Chinese village. The brutal reality they’re facing is mirrored by many communities around the world. Even in the USA. That river I used to love to swim in has paper factories up stream, and serious problems with run off.

Almost every day of the year I take plentiful, clean water for granted. But not today. Today, I’m taking a moment, along with thousands of other people participating in Blog Action Day, to appreciate it.

I’m looking forward to taking part in Blog Action Day this year.   The White House and UK Foreign service will be joining me and tons of other bloggers talking about water on October 15th.  Will you join us?

We started our migration push today.  The strategy is go for speed.  Keep scope small, use a big team, go for it.

Today, I had four interns, four web editors (including Osvaldo, who runs the Portugal site), a graphic designer and my boss (head of digital communications) on the job.  Plus, we had a couple of welcome “volunteers” – a project manager (techie) from the IT department and the head of the photo/video library.

Start was bumpy, more technical problems than anything.  Getting user rights straightened out with the global IT support team.  That sort of thing.  Plus, everyone is still learning the new system.  We had a week training for the web editors and designer, but the rest only had a couple of hours.  We’re training them up on specific tasks as we go along.

Process worked well.  I’ve turned into a post-it note addict.  We’ve got green notes for big categories of work, with yellow tasks under them.  That’s on one wall.  We’ve put our names on notes on another wall.  Everyone takes a next task, and puts it under their name.  I can see what everyone’s up to, give them additional information they need, make sure people are working to their strengths and make sure people who are working in the same area are helping each other out.

All told, today was good.  Spirits high.  It’s to early to tell if we’ll hit our launch target (May 3rd).  Stay tuned.