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Past, present and future: Difference between revisions
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Unlike [[This is Spinal Tap|the ’Tap]] this will not be some bold new direction: There is no interfering Yoko and the lead guitarist has not departed because of creative differences: he's just got a bit older and more partial to country & western. The cricket bat? An affectation. | Unlike [[This is Spinal Tap|the ’Tap]] this will not be some bold new direction: There is no interfering Yoko and the lead guitarist has not departed because of creative differences: he's just got a bit older and more partial to country & western. The cricket bat? An affectation. | ||
Instead the JC is going to double down on his current direction | Instead the JC is going to double down on his current direction since, after a decade pulling and pushing at it, he is fairly confident he now knows what it is. | ||
In essence the plan is to | In essence, the plan is to “turn it up to 11” and see what happens. Tally ho. | ||
===How it started=== | ===How it started=== | ||
The JC has been running in one form or another now for nearly fifteen years. It started out as one | The JC has been running in one form or another now for nearly fifteen years. It started out as one fellow trying to nut out the close out mechanics of the {{isdama}} and then put it somewhere where he wouldn’t lose it. The bits he couldn’t nut out, he decided to make fun of. | ||
It has all grown a bit since then but that is still the basic idea. | |||
Being easily distracted and essentially | The fabulous open source [https://www.mediawiki.org/wiki/MediaWiki MediaWiki platform] — the same one [[Wikipedia]] runs on — turned out to be a really good way of maintaining and building knowhow. Creating, linking and cross-referencing material in a holistic and [[non-linear]] way is simple on MediaWiki. | ||
Being an easily distracted and essentially [[Sloth|lazy]] sod — which I maintain is a paragon virtue — this way of working suits me perfectly. You can quickly create articles, save them down, and fix them them later. You can edit while you are on the train, walking the dog, or being driven up the wall by [[middle manager]]s on interminable weekly regulatory change [[stakeholder]] check-point [[all-hands conference call|conference calls]]. It is perfect for those who are frequently interrupted and chronically wanting of an attention span. Anything you start now you can save down and come back to later. | |||
This is content creation by a kind of alluvial process: small, inconsequential additions silt up over time. It doesn’t need a grand plan. It’s forever provisional. Iterative. That suits the erratic, impulsive nature of modern practice. It certainly suits me. | This is content creation by a kind of alluvial process: small, inconsequential additions silt up over time. It doesn’t need a grand plan. It’s forever provisional. Iterative. That suits the erratic, impulsive nature of modern practice. It certainly suits me. | ||
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The focus has always been analysing, explaining, simplifying, demystifying and ''contextualising'' — the commercial context the most important of all since that is the aspect most often lost on newcomers (and, frankly, old hands) in these highly specialised products. | The focus has always been analysing, explaining, simplifying, demystifying and ''contextualising'' — the commercial context the most important of all since that is the aspect most often lost on newcomers (and, frankly, old hands) in these highly specialised products. | ||
The tone is idiosyncratic and unashamedly non-corporate | The tone is idiosyncratic and unashamedly non-corporate. It will stay that way. From the start, creating the JC had to be not just easy, but ''fun'': there was no way I could have stuck at it if it was a drag. It turned out to be quite the outlet for the frustrated writer. | ||
And, Lord only knows, there is much that is absurd about our modern corporate life and the people who populate the landscape of the financial markets, which asks for satire, and precious few who are inclined to make fun of it, so the JC found a niche. | |||
All of this | All of this with a day-job. Mind you, the JC has largely been how I have managed to ''do'' a day job since I started it — lawyers gravely undervalue [[knowledge management]], even though it should be the most important thing they do. Nevertheless I owe a debt of gratitude to a sequence of employers over the last decade and a half for letting me carry on with it. They know who they are. | ||
===Where it’s at=== | ===Where it’s at=== | ||