Today was the kind of day where I just seemed to get distracted every other moment. Tick, tock, tick, tock - like a metronome….
- Start the day in the unofficial second office with coffee, and a good ol’ fashioned brainstorm. Haven’t done one of those in a while….
- We’re talking Christmas party. Yes, this is part of what we do. Yes, we’re talking about it in April. IT WILL BE THAT BIG. Maybe. Possibly. Come work here and find out!
- Satisfied that we have a corker of an idea, we come back to the office to find that apparently, someone has sent me a brick through the post. “Perhaps it’s a note… wrapped around a brick… sent in the post. It’s the genteel way of making a very serious point,” I wonder aloud.
- Actually it turns out it’s a stack of fliers for the UK Games Expo, which we’re exhibiting at, and which we’ve said we’ll pass around at other shows. Unfortunately they didn’t arrive for the MiniCon, so now I just have to tell you; we’ll be at the UK Games Expo. It will be excellent.
- As I sit down, I notice that people keep disappearing into the meeting room near me and coming out looking happy. Then remember: it’s massage day! And I have a half-hour slot booked at 11:45! Woooo!
- Crack on with the artist bios spread for the sketchbook, which still needs to be fully edited and is still missing a few bios and pics. Andrew’s provided a couple overnight, but there are still holes, and our designer is needing to get the page laid out…
- Work on that until - yay! Massage time! In case you’re wondering, a local company sends a masseuse around to our offices every couple of weeks. The company subsidises it, so you get a cheap massage if you want one. Boy, did I.
…. Imagine half an hour of blissful massage here, accompanied by strange techno-chanting music….
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February 28, 2008 – 6:56 pm
Fast, fast day. For some reason listening to a 32-year old interview with Gene Roddenberry (I don’t even like Star Trek… but hey, I like my pop culture trivia) has made me slow down.
- Get another sketch in first thing… well, ’sketch’ isn’t really fair, it’s more of a painting. Al Davison continues to impress!
- I joke with Andrew Wildman via email that he now needs to ‘raise his game’ - he hasn’t done a sketch for the sketchbook he’s really happy with, yet. A conspicuous silence.
- Straight into a meeting with my boss and our Biz-Dev manager at 10, in which I manage to get said Biz-Dev manager squirming when I suggest that we should do something for no money “because it’s good for the community”. I actually feel kind of sorry for him… but I also win the argument. Yaaay!
- Bounce emails back and forth with Andy at Omega Sektor, and chat on the phone with another Stephen, the ‘Omega Sektorian’ about his presence on our official Forums.
- Start working on the inevitably large announcement story about the MiniCon for our official sites…
- … half way through, get an email with Melissa Bianco’s flight details. She’s going to have some early mornings but I know she’s a trooper. At least… I hope she will be.
- Lunch is at our local coffee haunt, where Aero/Chris and I start hacking out the mammoth schedule for the entire weekend. We have something like 24 hours to fill and it’s not easy when we have multiple ‘tracks’ of activities, but we make progress. Somehow we decide having Hamidon raids on all four EU servers in the same night is a good idea.
- Back to desk. Expenses, really overdue. They expand into a massive pile of paper as they leave my wallet. As usual I wonder where these all came from. Worry about how I’m going to use the Excel sheet I have to use on my incoming iMac (Google Docs??).
- We get quotes for the two vans we’ll need for the MiniCon - one long wheelbase transit and the other a minibus for staff. Together they’re… very expensive. It’s the damn Bank Holiday weekend - we have to rent each for five days.
- At 5pm, sit down to re-record sections for the podcast, as we needed some extra bits and time has moved on, making some earlier takes irrelevant. I realise half-way through why professional voiceover types do their job in a sealed room without anyone else present. Somehow when you have to speak properly, and someone’s watching you, it gets harder than usual.
- Later, I listen to Chris laugh as he hacks my lengthy bloopers down into a usable form. It takes a while. We maybe use 20% of what we recorded.
- Amanda calls at 6pm to remind me I don’t have to leave until we have dinner later. Glad she called, I’d forgotten….
- Talk to Melissa at NCNorCal about the MiniCon, her flights, etc. She is, as I thought, a trooper about it. Phew.
Right. Plenty to do and miles from home….
February 21, 2008 – 10:38 pm
Get in with a nagging feeling that no matter how much I do today, it won’t be enough.
- Pass by several members of our localisation team moving across the courtyard to the other building we take offices in. Realise this is a prime chance to get footage for our ‘Year at NCE’ Documentary, and send Chris to tape them moving.
- Check the thread I posted yesterday about the MiniCon; there are 37 responses and lots of questions, so I start to answer. It takes a while so I have to be short.
- Get email from Andrew Wildman pointing me to Doug Braithwaite’s sketchbook contribution. It’s great.
- Concerned that I’ll forget important stuff, I scribble down the six or so things I need to do today…
- … and then run off to a local coffee shop for some extensive brainstorming of the MiniCon. We talk for about 90 minutes, and then I have to return to the office to get anti-cold drugs in my system.
- Lunch is soup at my desk and movie trailers.
- I have five pages of notes from the MiniCon chat that I need to get into a Word .doc, so I type fast.
- Two pages into it, I get an email with questions for our interview with Titan Gaming Radio at 3pm. I try to read them over but I’ve got to keep going.
- To my surprise, the .doc’s done by 2:30. Chris and I puzzle a bit over TaskForce: Omega requirements and potential prizes.
- 3pm - sit down for a 90 minute chat with Titan Gaming Radio, which is pleasant enough.
- Get back to my desk and realise I’ve done none of my to-dos, and I have an urgent email requiring me to brief an artist… right now.
- Get the brief done by 5:30 or so, but still end up in the office at 7pm. Strike five out of six to-dos off the list.
Still can’t believe I have to go to Birmingham tomorrow. No offence to Birmingham; just such short notice.
