Flexible Working

Life has been manic since the Ada Lovelace Day post, mainly because of a looming work deadline. We are developing a new system for reading travel documents and are hitting the downside of having a far flung workforce ( if, indeed, four people constitute a workforce!). A tiny team divided between London, Nottingham and Northumberland for the most part we are developing software and being in different places isn't an issue. When hardware comes into the equation life gets a bit more complicated! We now all have the new unit ( in spite of my cleaner refusing to sign for the parcel on Wednesday and delaying delivery by another day! ) and so should be able to progress and hopefully meet our deadline next week.



Computing magazine reports today on new legislation to extend the right to flexible working. I have worked from home since my son, now 14, was two years old. For me it was probably the only way I could have worked at this time. My daughter, then four, had major surgery when she was born and had been in and out of hospital since then. Being able to work from home meant that I could continue to work whilst she continued to have frequent spells off school. She is now a fit and healthy sixteen year old but I still appreciate the flexibility that working from home gives. In theory I work 20 hours a week but have worked considerably more over the last few weeks.



Next week will bring a concerted effort to meet a tight deadline but live in hope that I will be able to take advantage of my flexible working to regain those extra hours in the not too distant future!

Ada Lovelace Day

Today is Ada Lovelace Day and more than 1500 people have pledged to write a blog post about an inspirational woman in computing.

As such I'd like to write my first post about a woman that I learned about when writing my article "The $100 Role Model" for the BCS's ITNow magazine. Mary Lou Jepson was the amazing woman behind the One Laptop Per Child project aimed at taking the internet age to children who would normally have no chance to experience such things. Having been diagnosed with a brain tumour she battled against the disease and carried on to be the lead innovator for the OLPC project which resulted in the XO laptop.
In 2008 she was named by Time Magazine in its list of the 100 most influential people in the world - a truly inspirational woman.