River Driftwood

This has been a big day!

And a rather peculiar kind of day really. The only word I can find to describe how I feel is "floaty", the result of too many hours at the computer and not enough hours in bed, combined with the news last night that we actually won the award we were up for at the big HSJ bash. I didn't go in the end (despite your encouragement to do so) because it's really not my kind of thing ... but I do feel like I missed out on quite a party. It was a very big bash indeed, involving over a thousand people on the night with Michael Portillo as the host and apparently very funny, and Andrew Lansley, the Health Secretary, making the announcement. When my business partner called to tell me the news I didn't actually feel particularly excited. I think I had already decided that we deserved to win, and that we probably would win, but that it really didn't matter whether we actually did or not. Getting a prize doesn't make the software any better than it already is!

Because I feel so tired I feel a little detached from it all really, but the award for best Data and Information Management System in the Health Sector (where countless millions, indeed many billions of pounds have been poured into IT projects in recent years) is quite some recognition of what can be achieved by a small, talented and dedicated team of people. It all kicked off from a small Department of Health grant and has been successful mainly because we designed it from the bottom up, by talking to the users, finding out what tools they needed in order to carry out their job, and building these into an innovative web-based interface - and going through many iterations to get it right. It's taken us eight years to get to this point and the main application is now massively complex. I've pretty much designed and written the whole thing myself, which is one reason why we've been able to achieve so much - because decision-making is so easy (I've often joked that all the many long meetings required for such a project took place in my own head while running on the moor). Thankfully, though, I now have a team of people who can carry on moving the application forward with less and less involvement from me - which is really just as well since I am rapidly forgetting how it all works!

The best thing about this award is that it might help secure some funding for key enhancements that we've wanted to do for some while. As a small company it has not been easy for us in the current economic climate. The application is a system for managing the communicable disease aspect of public health across an entire country. It's not been on the top of too many shopping lists in these times of austerity. And we're still having to fight the battle that we are so small. It's that "nobody ever got fired for going with IBM" syndrome, where the budget holders prefer to play safe and not stick their necks out any further than absolutely necessary. I take this award as a victory for the little guys of this world!

Almost incidentally it feels, this is my 200th blip. Everyone says it and I am no different. These milestones come around so quickly! It was yet another very grey and misty day so I decided for a change to pop down to the river rather than the moor, before catching the train into the office. This is a first for me in that it was taken using a tripod. I actually felt like a 'proper' photographer this morning! Many thanks to those people who recommended the Gorillapod. What an amazing device! It's small and light enough to fit in my pocket yet seems to provide a perfectly solid base for the camera on any kind of terrain. It's brilliant. And I was rather pleased with this first result.

I've been a terrible community member recently. I hope those of you who stop by and comment regularly understand why it's not been easy of late to return the compliment. I should now be able to be a little more active ... and I really look forward to that!