Week 540

Chris was on holiday this week. Ben continued working on one of our projects for FutureLearn which involves making some changes to the payment process to bring it into line with some regulatory changes that will happen later in the year.

Meanwhile, James and I were on site with the team at the FutureLearn offices in Camden. We’re embedded with a team working on a new product that we’ve agreed not to talk about too much at the moment. We’re enjoying pairing together and with some of the other developers in the team, and it’s great to be working with designers and product people again. It’s a slightly odd feeling for me as I spent several years running the Data Science team at FutureLearn before joining GFR. This engagement brings me back in a different capacity working on different problems and the folks there are as talented and easy-going as I remember them so I’ve settled back in happily. There’s been quite a lot of people on holiday at this time of year, so it doesn’t feel that we’ve quite settled into a “business as usual” rhythm yet, but people have said they’re appreciating having us around and in particular our approach to “fixing broken windows” which is a good feeling.

It’s been a bit of a struggle keeping up with some of the regular tasks we need to do to keep the business running. Having Liz around to help makes a huge difference and between us we’ve managed to pick up the rest. It looks like Ben will be away from the office for a couple of weeks of jury service, but I’m looking forward to sitting down with everyone, and maybe taking a couple of days to work from our office together in June.

Have a great bank holiday weekend!