What is service design?

I’ve been playing around with the idea of writing this post for a while, well I guess on and off for about a year! What started as a wish to understand more has, if I’m really honest, progressed into a minor irritation at the lack of clarity and then just before Christmas I had a phone conversation with Mike Baldwin where I found myself attempting to both define and defend/promote service design as a discipline. Mike was asking great questions; now I’m a little biased and think that Mike is a) one of the good guys b) intelligent and interesting and c) questioning and not ready to just accept an opinion without some substance to back it up. Mike is interested in health and value, he is also interested in research, evidence and rigour and several of our conversations have focused on health care and improving services, drawing heavily for me on my Dad’s experience of cancer, you can read more about that here!

Anyway, when I talk to Mike I realise I’m not the only person who is sceptical and looking for proof when it comes to service design. In fact maybe Mike is, like me, a service design agnostic! I’m not going to recount all of the conversation or questions that Mike and I were batting around but the starting point was pretty much as follows:

> What is service design?
> How strategic is service design?
> What functions is service design optimising? Is it a focus on efficiency, effectiveness, economic imperatives or something else?

For now I’m just going to focus on my attempts to answer the first question. Luckily for me I’d recently attended ServDes conference (you can read more of my thoughts on that here) and so probably felt as well equipped as I’d done in a long time to attempt to define service design as I’d been exposed to many different views and approaches to it. I’d also debated, discussed and extrapolated in the pub the very essence of what a service designer is, the consensus conclusion being there’s no such thing as a service designer! Those conversations had also exposed me to many of the subtleties behind the belief that defining the discipline limits its development – more of that below.

Perhaps most importantly though I had a secret weapon! I had in my possession a brand new shiny copy of This is Service Design Thinking which is available to buy now from the publishers and which I’ll blog about soon – it’s ace, go buy it. TiSDT was launched at ServDes and consequently a copy was given to each attendee at ServDes as a gift I’d already skim read most of it and devoured the opening chapter from Marc Stickdorn (Marc is one of the two editors – along with Jakob Schneider) and so I was confident he’d have the answer.

TiSDT definition chapter opens as follows:

If you would ask ten people what service design is, you would end up with eleven different answers – at least.

Service design is an interdisciplinary approach that combines different methods and tools from various disciplines. It is a new way of thinking as opposed to a new stand-alone academic discipline. Service design is an evolving approach, this is particularly apparent in the fact that, as yet, there is no common definition or clearly articulated language of service design.  [Stickdorn, 2010, 29]

Marc goes on to explain their decision not to just define service design; this is based on an acknowledgement of the need for a common language alongside the concern that by imposing a definition the discipline is in some way being constrained or limited. TiSDT offers a number of different views of what service design is with definitions from a number of institutes, industry bodies, academics and design agencies. What is then provided as a really useful starting point are five principles of service design thinking. Service design thinking is: user centred, co-creative, sequencing, evidencing and holistic.

To set my stall out I think TiSDT is great, I love my copy, I think it has a wealth of information and ideas within it and has already helped me to have confidence to introduce service design to people and defend it when questioned. It introduces a number of fields of activity that implement a range of service design thinking, these include product design, graphic design, interaction design, social design, strategic management, operations management and design ethnography. Each of these fields have a chapter where they are briefly introduced and their relationship to services specified. For me this is really useful stuff. I do however struggle with the notion that defining the discipline would somehow limit it. TiSDT includes a quote from Buchanan (2001) that implies defining design would potentially lead to lethargy or death of the topic in hand and Marc offers the same concern “A single definition of service design might constrain this evolving approach”.

**Disclaimer** At this stage I had a really useful conversation with @fergusbisset – thanks Ferg. He nudged me in the direction of reading Buchanan’s paper for myself and also warned me about opening a can of worms that had seemingly settled down. I understand from him, from some of the people I spoke with at ServDes and from Buchanan’s writing that many hours have been spent on these discussions already, therefore continue this post with a little trepidation. I’m not wanting to rake over old ground but I have yet to find the answer I’m after and have not been involved with the discussions to date, so bear with me

To me Buchanan makes a far more balanced argument than the use of the quote in the book implies. In fact he follows his statement with the following:

However, I believe that definitions are critical for advancing inquiry, and we must face that responsibility regularly in design, even if we discard a definition from time to time and introduce new ones. [Buchanan, 2001, 8]

Buchanan addresses the purpose and use of definitions, classifying them as descriptive or formal. Descriptive definitions, as pointed out by Buchanan, are incredibly useful for acknowledging the influences on a discipline – TiSDT is great at doing this, throughout the book many descriptive definitions are offered and many insights can be gained from that. As I said earlier this is incredibly useful, especially for someone without formal design training or knowledge.

Descriptive definitions also tend to carry emotional weight, they are great for describing what something is or isn’t (stating the obvious I know), but I think for those of us who are more comfortable with an academic or research approach or who are seeking a more formal definition or who simply wish to present a pragmatic, rationed argument as to why they should invest money in something, a formal definition is required. Buchanan offers the following formal definition of design:

Design is the human power of conceiving, planning, and making products that serve human beings in the accomplishment of their individual and collective purposes. [Buchanan, 2001, 9]

Buchanan situates his definition within Aristotelian causes. Human power is the agency of action, conceiving, planning and making the final cause – the end goal that design is focused on, products (in the broadest sense) are the outcomes, the formal cause and accomplishment of individual or collective purpose is the material cause, as human needs, activities and aspirations provide the subject matter. If this definition is adopted the scope of application is pretty much universal and as wide ranging as it gets – I’m absolutely convinced that this could be adapted and used as a formal definition for service design, without limiting it’s potential.

But why do I care? I think by failing to offer a formal definition, rather than limit the development of the discipline by applying unnecessary constraints and restricting creativity, my concern is that there is a risk that the discipline is being limited by its inability to communicate it’s value and worth in a way that different audiences can understand.

Where does all of this leave me, and I imagine Mike? Well we’re not designers but we are interested in the potential of service design. We have an interest in science – physical and social, economics, psychology, health and social care, research and rigour, evaluation and value. We are both also interested in ethics and how these are addressed. It was no coincidence to me that many of the concerns and questions that Mike was raising in our conversation were ones I’ve questioned myself many times before:  how do we know if service design is ethical and/or safe? how can we identify a good service design practitioner? is service design essentially just marketing? is service design essentially just ethnography? is it about aesthetics or something more? what is the relationship between service designer, client and end user? what evidence are policy makers using to decide on the role that service design can/should play? is there clear evidence that it works? how does service design represent uncertainty? what is value and how do we know if service design will bring good value for our organisations?

As I said at the start of this post, I feel that there is a value in looking at the design of services. I feel more confident now to try and articulate that value – in no small part with thanks to ServDes, TiSDT and conversations and questions with and from many people especially @fergusbisset @segelstrom @designthinkers @grahamhill @adamstjohn @rufflemuffin @mrstickdorn @iterations and of course @mikey3982. I would however still like to see a formal definition that I can readily wheel out when someone asks, even if in time it becomes outdated or unhelpful. For now I have the beautiful This is Service Design Thinking that not only contains a wealth of information but also dazzles anyone who looks at it by it’s layout and design….thereby convincing them of the value in and of itself; maybe that’s it, maybe @jakoblies work on TiSDT and the resulting beautiful aesthetically appealing design is actually all that is required, I guess time will tell, they certainly help

I’m sure that I’ll come back to these thoughts as I continue to try and incorporate elements of design and thinking around designing services into my own professional work, so I’d really welcome your thoughts, reflections and any definitions that you find particularly useful. Thank you for taking the time to read this epic post.

This week – my story

Today I’ve been hearing about the power of stories and thinking about the validation of hearing your story told, or telling someone’s story, especially if it is likely to have a positive impact on someone’s life.

So I’m going to quickly tell my story for this week and like all good stories there’s a twist (well request) at the end!

This week I am the Director of research in practice for adults – we’re a partnership organisation, a charity, local authorities are members in our network for a (very) small annual fee and we support them to use evidence (which we class as research, service user views, practitioner wisdom) in their practice to improve outcomes for people who need support. You can learn more about ripfa on our new blog or our website. This is of course my professional role – my job, not my life – we’ll come back to that.

This week I am also a granddaughter to my fantastically impressive grandparents, who live independently still, getting up in the morning, cooking their own meals and keeping each other company, at the grand old age of 90 and 92. They live next door to my parents and get far more support than they probably realise from them, but it enables them to stay independent, saves the taxpayer a fortune and means that they are a very central part of our family life.

This week I am also a daughter to my parents, Bobby and Sylv. Today while I was at #box10 my mum was at the Stroke Clinic (following a TIA she had just over two years ago) – they’ve signed her off now, fit as a fiddle, so that was great news to come home to. I’m really hopeful things will be as easy on Thursday when my dad gets the results of the PET Scan he had last week to see if his cancer has returned.

This week I am also a friend to my mate Anna and her three year old daughter, Liv. This time last year instead of baking ginger cake for #box10 I was baking wedding cake for Anna and her husband Dan. Sunday would have been their first wedding anniversary, except Dan died in February, so instead on Saturday night Anna, her sister Tracy, Dan’s mum Mary, Anna’s friend Katy and myself will be walking 15k around Swindon to raise funds for Prospect Hospice who cared for Dan in his final weeks.

So this week, as most weeks, my life is a mix of work, family and friends – all competing demands on my time and energy, all things I care very deeply about. I’m guessing it’s the same for lots of the people I come across, I don’t really separate out my work-other life, it’s all intertwined, if I’m honest its probably all the better for it. So this is me, a difficult and emotional week, but also an inspiring and uplifting week.

Here comes the twist though – I could really do with your help. I need just over £100 to reach the target we set ourselves to raise £500 in memory of Dan for the hospice who supported him. I was thinking at #box10 today what a fantastic difference they made to Dan’s life, he fought that tumour for years, with a dignity and stubbornness that defied the odds. His is both a heroic and a tragic story, but one that was eased considerably by the wonderful individuals at Prospect and the care and support they provided for him, his family and us his friends. Please, please, please donate a pound if you can afford to – if my blog stats are half way reliable, if half of you did that this week I’d smash the target. I’d really, really appreciate it. Thank you.

http://uk.virginmoneygiving.com/team/TeamDanDan or

http://www.justgiving.com/team-dandan

Dan and Libby- May 2009

Thank you for your support. Big thanks to @markbigsw @dalekdoctor @fergusbisset@amcunningham @rufflemuffin @irishandrew @soundgirl64 (x2) @alpew @sarknight @juniorc0@jeanetteleech @hen4 @segelstrom @tomarse99, @juniorc0 @jeanetteleech @redjotter @katiekatetweets @rich_w @niccombe @laurenivory …you too could join this esteemed list of fabulously generous people

I’m out of my box! #box10

I have an awful habit of needing to blog almost immediately after an event – sort of stops me putting it onto the to do list (never likely to see the light of day again), forgetting things that in the cold light of day mellow and feel less significant and on this occasion it also has the benefit of not letting me fall asleep after my pint with @chibbie @markhawker @alissproject and @couragemary …having just made my train I have no intention of snoozing off and waking up in Penzance!

So this post will contain my raw, unconsidered and unreflected thoughts – I promise I’ll return and blog more in the next couple days, but for now here goes.

Today I had the privilege of attending Out of the Box a @patientopinion conference looking at how patients, service users and carers are using the web to change their lives and their services; you can see more about what was covered in the timetable below.

This is not my first conference hosted by Patient Opinion, I had a great time at #mps09 my public services conference last year – it won’t be my last either, as I’m looking forward to the NESTA and Patient Opinion event next week A Better Old Age: how the web will be part of caring for older people. However after that I am going to make myself think long and hard before signing up to another conference, not because they’re not brilliant – they are, but I feel like I should do as my mum would expect and let someone else have a go! This is my first reflection point really, and one I know that I’m not alone with – I feel like I’ve got enough information and now it’s my challenge to go away and instigate some changes off the back of it…as much as I love being there, and I always learn lots, I’m sure other people would have learnt more from attending today.

My second observation is around participation. Patient Opinion run their conferences on a gift economy – the underlying costs are covered by them, but essentially the speakers give the gift of their words, delegates give the gift of refreshments and baking, others of us try to share the goings on with a wider audience through ramblings like this, or tweets on the day. There is something about the gift economy, actually there’s a lot to it, but for me it’s the subtle difference between attending something and just passively absorbing versus attending, contributing and feeling a bit of buy in to the success of the day. There’s definitely something in the gift economy approach…and it’s not just cake!

Another thing that has hit me on both occasions I’ve attended Patient Opinion events now is how warm and friendly their staff are. There is something about being welcomed, genuinely welcomed by people who *genuinely*care (or do a good show of pretending they care), I don’t think I’ve ever seen people lurking in corners doing that awkward I-don’t-know-anyone at conference pose, I’m not sure if it’s carefully planned, genuine personalities or just luck of the atmosphere but a friendlier conference you’d struggle to find.

I’ve also been reflecting on the challenge at any of these events of trying to reach your audience, wherever they are at – physically and intellectually! So people might be in the building participating or they might be virtually participating; all of these people might know nothing or might be experts in your topic. The format of today’s event – plenary, workshops, soapbox and speed-dating marketplace meant that there was something for everyone. I was a particular fan of the soapbox sessions although it did mean there wasn’t too much chance for informal chat over coffee – but there was lots of time at lunch so that was ok. I was obviously there so can’t comment on how well it worked virtually but this is something I’d love to explore in terms of how we can make the most of attendance for non-attendees, something I was interested in before even arriving this morning!

So content, what about the content. I don’t want to mention particular speakers or highlights in terms of presentations in this post, with the exception of Ann McPherson who spoke in the first plenary. In my opinion Ann was fabulous, her very candid sharing of her experience left me wanting to know more. She is obviously very passionate and personally and professionally tied to what she does, she is the Director of Health Experiences Research Group; and has also had breast cancer and is living with pancreatic cancer. Ann was always going to light my fire as she talked research methods and analysis, not just anecdote; she also made a call for realistic, normal stories and patient experiences – not just the tragic or the heroic. You can see more of the work Ann was talking about, and the resulting stories on www.healthtalkonline.org and www.youthhealthtalk.org

Throughout the rest of the day there were three things that emerged for me – three recurrent themes and questions.

1. Story…stories are everywhere; we all know that they’re a good idea, we know they’re the secret to winning hearts and minds and that without them we can kiss goodbye to any real behavior change. Let’s take that as a given. What I desperately wanted to know, and the nut I failed to crack today but hope to muse over further in the next few months, was how do we use stories and, most importantly, how do we know they’re effective in making changes? This is really a question of how do we apply them to instigate change, not why should we use them, or whether they are valid. Speaking with James from Patient Opinion at lunchtime he has a good argument, and some great examples, for how their work is making change – but it needs to be genuinely embedded throughout services and I believe that we’re in danger of seeking out a magic fairy story wand here and hoping if we wave it the change will follow once people understand why it is important. I need more reassurance and I need evidence, preferably including cost-benefits work, to be able to really defend the use of stories as a tool for change. I’m not sure I made this point clear enough when discussing it earlier and I’m not sure I’ve made it clearly enough here but this will definitely be something I return to once everything has settled in my mind a little more.

2) Who are we there for? The conference sought to look at the experience of patients and carers and also included perspectives from staff and people who provide support and are interested in doing that better. These are all very different groups of people – although of course they’re not mutually exclusive. I was quite struck today at the different approaches required for each of these groups, something that has not necessarily hit home as obviously for me on previous occasions.

3) So what? No really, so what? Patient Opinion have done a brilliant job in pulling this off, big shout out to Jonty who did a lot of the work, we’ve all had a nice day…but what will change? This is really a question – definitely not something I have a crystal clear answer to just yet. The day ended with each of us writing a promise to ourselves that will land back on our doormats in a month or so and hold us to account. There are conversations happening about moving this on; to some extent I was a little frustrated at myself today – I am the converted here, I buy it, I really do – preaching to the converted isn’t going to get us anywhere, so if anyone else is interested in joining a conversation about what we do about this then please shout. I will make sure I move this on…somehow!

I had a really fabulous day. Massive thank you to @patientopinion and @jauntyhall for all their work – I suspect few people really understand what goes into organising something like that, with the possible exception of @laurenivory I also had the opportunity to meet lots of people in real life, some for the first time and really hope that between us we can go out there, back into the real world and change things. Consider this a very unreflective, unconsidered call to arms!

Out of the Box #box10

You know something is up when you get a blog post from me before 9am! Don’t panic, the world isn’t coming to an end, I’m not ill or anything, and I’ll even refrain from getting into some tangential debate about the cost of fresh air or the like…this post is to tell you what I’m up to today and to give advance warning of possible tweet overload; don’t worry I’ll not be offended if you unfollow me!

I’m on a train to Birmingham as I type, heading to Out of the Box a conference hosted by @patientopinion at the Deaf Cultural Centre. There is an excellent programme for today and as usual I’m struggling to know what to attend.

Box10 is exploring ‘how patients, service users and carers are using the web to change their lives and their services’. There are sessions arranged by theme. The themes for today are getting started, stories, connections and community. Within these four themes are sessions on:

• engaging communities
• reflective digital stories
• supporting people with dementia to use computers
• Big Society
• e-campaigning
• hearing more from people with learning disabilities
• using Facebook to address health challenges
• creating social capital
• using video to communicate via the web
• empowerment of isolated and vulnerable members of the community
• social networking for mental health
• opportunities in hyperlocal.

As well as these there are soapbox talks and a speed dating marketplace – two of my favourite things to see at a conference. You can see the full programme here and you can follow the discussion on the #box10 hashtag.

I’m really looking forward to today. I’ve set myself a personal challenge to try and figure out a way of ensuring that my attendance has both an impact for my own work but also is of use (hopefully) to other people who can’t be there in person. I’ve blogged a couple times about events that I was following from afar, most recently We Are Enabled By #WeEbD and #media140 in Glasgow last week. I’m particularly aware of how difficult it can be to genuinely engage with an event that you are not at, so this is in an invite to anyone to get in touch with me if you have your own question you’d like me to try and get an answer to, or an idea or reflection you’d like to share, or better still if you have any ideas for how I can share #thebox10 with you.

I am armed with netbook, camera, flipcam, iphone and blackberry, three chargers and two lots of cake, so I’m hoping I have enough ‘tools’ for the job!!

Social media and peer review

Last night I picked up a few tweets in my stream from people who had gone along to the #media140 event in Glasgow which was organised by the lovely @markofrespect. I find it quite hard to follow an event when not there, even with live blogging and hashtags, I think one of the biggest dangers is that you miss the point, miss sarcasm or context and risk barking up completely the wrong tree.

Photo by dicktay2000

So with that disclaimer out the way I wanted to pick up on two tweets I saw from Steve Berry’s talk. The first tweet that got my notice was a question:

“Why don’t other industries keep a journal of failure, like scientists do, for others to learn from?”

Well I think lots of people do…maybe not all industries, and maybe people aren’t always comfortable talking about failures but they’re one of the best sources of reflection, thoughts and new solutions or knowledge. I’d argue that the vast majority of academic research, in any discipline, is done to find new knowledge and most research reports and dissertations report what happened, good and bad, for people to learn from.

My rambling thoughts on the matter are that on the whole the media, including social media, has a lot to be held responsible for in this regard. There is little encouragement for people to offer what went wrong, even for the sake of learning and the development of new responses, if they are likely to be pulled a part by the media. The recent decision by the new government to publish Serious Case Reviews in full leaves me feeling very anxious as to what is to be gained by the process; I suspect that the reality is likely to lead to yet more trial by media for people working in the already impossibly difficult role of trying to protect vulnerable children and I’m rather doubtful as to what the learning will be for other agencies, partners or workers.

So I guess my reflection, if there is one, is that learning from failure and mistakes is really important but also very difficult. So if anyone has any ideas for how best to do that give me a shout.

The second tweet that got my attention, and if I’m honest raised my blood pressure a little was a statement about peer review! Steve said, again remember I don’t have the context – it could have been ironic – to some extent I’m really hoping it was, anyway he said:

“Social Media is peer reviewed on an almost instanaeous basis”

Eeek. I really, really wish I could agree with this statement but I think it’s overly simplistic and dangerous if people believe it. I have real concerns about the potential influence of social media, the fact that people appear able to build their credentials based on nothing more than repeated use of the retweet feature. Increasingly I see people tweeting other people’s thoughts and views with few, or tenuous links to the original source; I see people who know little about a topic (and I’d include myself in here in some situations) being bandied around twitter as people who know something about it; more and more often I see people billed as ‘experts’ on X, Y or Z but the reality is they may be enthusiasts but there is a big distance between enthusiasm and expertise.

So to some extent, yes, there is an immediate avenue for people to question or debate anything, and the increasing access to social media tools has made it easier than ever; however I think it’s worth acknowledging that it takes a lot to do that in some situations. I suspect that people equate followers with popularity or wisdom (both gross delusional mistakes to make methinks) but the reality is that you’d be foolish to pick a debate with someone unless you knew you were right and/or had nothing to lose.

Peer review works on the basis that people with expertise in an area or profession pass judgement about the credibility of statements, papers or work (at least that’s my understanding of it) – social media is missing (a lot) of rigour, the time and the space, the impartiality and objectivity, and nearly always the anonymity that is sometimes required to peer review effectively.

I’d really love to hear from someone who was at the event, to hear what the context was for the discussion. I’d especially appreciate someone leaving a comment and letting me know if I am currently barking up a very large, scottish tree ps Thanks to those who were there for tweeting it.

Personal Democracy Forum – from afar

So the @FutureGov crew in the shape of @carriebish @dominiccampbell and @laurenivory are over in New York for the Personal Democracy Forum #pdf10. Given the recent streamlining of my twitter stream so that I only follow 109 people, and given how many @futuregov fans there are in my twitterstream, and given everyone’s increased tendency to hit the retweet button, I’ve seen quite a lot of traffic about #pdf10 (and no I’m not complaining – that’s a good thing).

Last night I was observing the conversation and got sucked into a discussion with Carrie, Dom and @AnnePBowers re the language of co-production, co-design, co-operation, co-creation….we tried them all. In a nutshell my argument is that co-production feels to me too mechanical and too top down. I’ve never once suggested to my mates that we co-produce dinner, or co-design a barbecue – they’d just laugh at me and that language alone (besides being vague and a little aloof) to me would just indicate that I needed to take control….a far different co to co-ordinate or co-operate. Anyway I’ll do a fuller blog on language, especially co-production and co-design another time.

For now I wanted to respond to Carrie, who very kindly put together a blog post detailing her first day at #pdf10. There was obviously lots of food for thought coming out of the day but there was one thing in particular I wanted to respond about - Carrie’s thoughts on Eli Pariser‘s talk about personalisation.

(For those of you who are adult social care types this is personalisation in the IT sense, not personalisation as we know it…I’ll comment on that when I do the blogpost on language promised above).

It seems that Eli was talking about how google personalise the data and results that you see when you use their service and just when Carrie was warming up in full agreement, as she expected him to say he wanted to see more of it, he dropped the bombshell, as Carrie puts it “His bonkers argument was that it’s bad that different points of view are filtered out of my web experience and that this ultimately leads to me becoming closed-minded”.

So Carrie doesn’t agree with Eli…I’m not even going to try and paraphrase what she said, it’s here “Then it all went awry.  Eli concluded that this means ‘people get more of what they want’ but it’s bad for citizens as it doesn’t challenge us or tell us what we need to know.  Bleurgh!  So his suggestion is that we should have a less personalised experience so we are forced to see stuff ‘for our own good’.  What a ridiculously totalitarian position”.

So let’s place Eli at one end of this continuum and Carrie at the other – he thinks we should see stuff for our own good; Carrie makes an excellent argument that its simply control freakery of the highest order.

I’m really stuck on this….hence the decision to blog about it. It reminds me of my mum who (dependent on her mood admittedly) has a tendency if something too gruesome or sad or shocking comes onto the news to just change channel. If I’m watching with her I’ll challenge that on two levels – 1) because it’s irritating and I’ll no doubt want to hear about it and 2) because I think it’s lulling her into a false sense of security about life! Mean and bad things happen and a lot of the time I feel that we have a sort of moral responsibility to acknowledge these. (Don’t worry I’m well aware that I’m sat firmly in my own cloud cuckoo land here). A different but similar example that also springs to mind was that of Bush’s administration banning the American media from showing photographs of the coffins of service personnel returning from Iraq and Afghanistan. When this was overturned it was broadly seen as a win for transparency.

Now I appreciate that Carrie (and Eli) are talking about the search results returned by google and Carrie’s solution is to just give people their own data and let them decide their own experience. You can’t really disagree with Carrie at all on that regard but I guess I’m making a wider call for us to try and remain balanced and not personalise too far – or at least to be aware that you have personalised and to be explicitly transparent about that – so that you know what you are missing; and I guess that is where Eli has a point. If people aren’t aware that they are getting a limited result then how do they know what else is out there? Am thinking that a balance is what is needed….or maybe I just wanted an excuse to use the see-saw photo!!

Photo by tyger_lyllie

I suspect this links to another blog post that is lurking in the depths of the mind around how balanced our experiences of life in the online world really are – but that is definitely for another day. Thanks Carrie, looking forward to reading about day two.

Happys

You guys have been awesome since the weekend when I was meant to get away to conference and then on holiday. Again I’ve been blown away by the support, friendship and morale shared with me via my friends over on twitter. So instead of moaning I wanted to show you something that is making me very happy this evening:

That is all – due out on Thursday at 8am, please keep all your bits crossed Thanks.

A grounding experience

Photo by Josef.Stuefer

So yesterday, if all had gone according to plan, I’d have flown to Canada for a conference. Right now those that made it (teams from Australia, Canada and Americe) will be getting up and ready for the day, I’ve spent the morning clearing an email backlog and am about to go and find a cafe to sit in and read a report that is with our designers to give them feedback, before turning the work laptop off for two weeks and concentrating on some me time.

Having had my flight cancelled twice already, at the moment I am scheduled on a flight out of London on Thursday morning that would enable my holiday to go ahead with minimal disruption. Although really I’m not overly optimistic that I’ll be going anywhere.

So where does that leave me. Well to be honest I’m a bit lost! I’m usually quite a resilient person but for the last few days I’ve felt the cracks appearing around the edges. Those of you who know me will know that I’ve had a fairly pressured past six months, I’ve been promoted; been trying to keep a very stretched and very short staffed team together; missed out on my holiday last year in a (definitely misguided) decision to try to do what was best for work; been living my life out of a suitcase and trying to function on far too little sleep! So I really, really needed this holiday – my first in 18mths.

The realist in me knows that it looks like the holiday wont happen. Since Saturday I’ve been looked out for by a few close friends who’ve helped to maintain my sanity, to provide me with accommodation, to supply me with company, food and chocolate brownies. I’m amazed at their generosity but am also feeling unsettled about needing to rely too heavily on it. Thank you to @katiekatetweets @fergusbisset and @niccombe.

So what’s to do? At the moment it’s a case of sitting it out and waiting to see whether Thursday’s flight will leave – for me that would be the best case scenario for a number of reasons. Sitting and waiting is really rather hard though, especially when your fate lies in the hands of nature….don’t worry I’m aware that it always does, we’ve just created a society where that truth is well hidden from us most of the time. The other option would be to be proactive and decide to cancel the holiday – this doesn’t even feel like an option I want to consider but it does have the silver lining of at least letting you feel that you are in control. For now at least the first option wins out, I’ll work this afternoon, take tomorrow and Wednesday off to explore London town (anyone who wants to meet up give me a shout) and hope that the situation changes in time for Thursday and I’ve promised myself not to keep checking the NATS website for updates.

I thought I’d share a few things that I’ve realised with you all:

• None of this matters! I was musing yesterday about the bigger impact for other people, remembering when Dad was ill and the panic I felt when his consultant went on holiday in case anything happened to him or he didn’t make it back! (Irrational I know) That said, there will be people whose lives are likely to be changed forever in very real ways as a result of this – I know I’m not one of them
• I am way too hard on myself, I’m constantly trying to be reasonable and keep hold of the fact that none of this matters; but it does matter to me (I know, I know I’m contradicting myself) and getting frustrated and irritated by it is ok in small doses
• Never, EVER work yourself so hard that you reach a point where you need a holiday to maintain your sanity – because there are no guarantees in life. I was challenged this weekend about whether I needed a holiday to run away/avoid something or to seek/find something. I think the reality is both, either way I know I should have slowed down or stopped before this.
• So much in life is affected by how much autonomy or control we have over a situation. The problem is that we don’t *really* have much control over lots of things in life and I think the challenge I face is learning to accept things more as they are and not seeking control.

So some parting words of wisdom from the Desiderata:

With all it’s sham, drudgery and broken dreams, it is still a beautiful world. Be cheerful, strive to be happy.

I’m not sure about happy, but accepting will do me

Best made plans

The best laid schemes o’ mice and men Gang aft a-gley; And leave us naught but grief and pain for promised joy

As I type this I should be relaxing on a train winging its way to London to spend the night with friends before jumping on a tube up to Heathrow and checking in for my flight to Canada. I might even have been enjoying the work of Robbie Burns whose quotation is above

Two years ago the organisation I work for, research in practice for adults, joined forces with our sister organisation, research in practice, to host an international conference looking at the use of evidence in improving social work practice. We were joined by teams from all over the globe, who came to Dartington for a couple of days where some brilliant discussions were held, some contacts were made, resources and ideas shared and friendships formed. Two years on and our friends at PART (Practice and Research Together) together with the Child and Youth Mental Health Information Network in Canada have taken on the mantle and are hosting the next conference.

This conference has literally been two years in the planning – or at least in the thinking. A beautiful lakeside venue has been booked, teams are attending from Australia, Canada, England, Finland, Ireland, Scotland, Sweden and the USA, papers have already been written and a publishing deal negotiated. The conference has a great timetable, including opportunities to start moving on establishing some international projects. I have ten days of holiday tacked onto the end of conference – my first in 18 months. So, altogether exciting times.

….and then a volcano in Iceland decided to start erupting.

At this time it looks like the Finns, Irish, Scottish and most of the English teams will not be making it. I am determined to do my best to get there – and not just because I have a holiday afterwards (although that might be fuelling my determination) but because I know how much hard work goes into organising something like this. The Canadian hosts seem remarkably resilient and accepting of the situation, I’m amazed at their attitude, in awe almost….although there have been several mentions of the size of the wine order and the anticipated benefits of a reduced attendance I guess it’s quite simple really, some things in life are genuinely out of our control, a lesson worth remembering.

Photo by borkur.net

Holiday packing

Photo by kennymatic

Volcano dust permitting next week I will be at conference in Canada before ten days on a very long overdue, and desperately needed, holiday. So I have to take some work gear with me (laptop, couple papers, smartish clothes) and clothes for 10 days holiday; I’m deluding myself (am quite good at this) and taking my running gear; might need a winter coat – need to check the weather report before going and I’m very aware that the holiday bit involves quite a lot of train travel so I don’t want too much luggage.

So I thought I’d let twitter and my blog readers help me out…what one thing do I need to take on holiday with me? What do you always take, or always take too many of, that I should leave behind? What am I most likely to forget?

Oh and if you’re going to be helpful, and I know all you lovely people will want to be what is the one thing/place/experience/food/pub that is unmissable in Toronto, Montreal, New York or Niagara? Help plan the itinerary, you know you want to. Thanks.

Photo by mollypop