Some things never change
10 February 2012
After nearly 14 months away from the tiller of waterscape, I'm very pleased to be back again. Pleased, but a little daunted at the considerable changes that have taken place in the last year. It's a whole new world when it comes to British Waterways and British Waterways' websites - but some things, rather comfortingly, remain the same.Â
When I first went on maternity leave back in December 2010, I'd been involved in lots of discussion about the 'New Waterways Charity' and of course the need for a new website to go with it. Now, instead of 'NWC', we're all talking about 'CRT' and the new website is, well, pretty much there.
I say this with the blasé nonchalance of someone who hasn't been sweating blood over it for the last year. My nails aren't bitten to the quick. My eyes don't have that haunted look. I clearly (cleverly?) avoided much of the gruelling work involved in speccing out - and then creating - such a vast website. Odette and Priscilla have done a grand job!
But among the new changes that I'm trying to get my head around as quickly as possible, there are some 'aims' which strike an entirely familiar note. Some 'aims' which we've actually been aiming for since I first started working here in 2004.
Better maps, for example, have been a near constant. Pages for waterside businesses which the business owners can update themselves were high on my agenda around 2005/6. I'm sure it wont be too long before someone raises the efficiency of the site search...
When I first saw the point about the maps on my first day back, my heart sank a little. I'd hoped that, after 8 years of trying really hard, we might have cracked maps by now. But then I re-considered.
Actually I think we'll always be striving for better maps, a better bounce rate, a better load time, better images, better user-generated content...  and all the other things I've forgotten which make a website useful and viable, maybe even 'good' in 2012. That's the beauty of the constantly evolving World Wide Web!
But one of the things that definitely has changed is the view from my office window. Instead of Clarendon Road (to the front) and Watford Junction Station (to the rear) I now have the River Aire/ Aire & Calder Navigation. And as much as I enjoyed spying on the people in the office block across the road from my 'old' desk, I'm extremely happy to now have in my sights the thing which I spend each and every day writing about. Canals and rivers!
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