I joined Astun two and a half years ago and being a bit of a data geek (having led MapAction's Data Circle for a number of years pre-children), one of the things that attracted me to the position was Astun's track record in metadata and their solutions with the Environment Agency / Defra and the Scottish Government . What with the Geospatial Commission's excellent progress with Data Discoverability since their inception, this has become much more prominent of late.  We figured a webinar would be the best forum to showcase our learnings presented by our resident metadata expert, Jo Cook. "Attaining Metadata Nirvana with GeoNetwork and GEMINI 2.3" was our first ever webinar and we were chuffed that over fifty people from nearly forty organisations attended and remained engaged throughout. (It's amazing what the organiser control panel in GoToWebinar shows you!) The agenda covered: Guidance for editing a metadata record (GEMINI 2.3) What UK GEMINI 2.3 ...

I was chatting to a personal acquaintance recently about work and we got on to the subject of home working. The organisation she worked for was going through a period of change and they were planning on moving some of their office staff to home working on a permanent basis. She was after my views on how we manage to make that work effectively at Astun. This blog, which is very much a manager's perspective, is what I told her! Before we get on to to the two key themes of this blog - the Technical and Cultural - a quick bit about Astun first! 1. Astun's circumstances We employ around 21 people, of which 6 or so work from an office in Epsom, and the rest work from home on a permanent basis. From my home in Bristol, I line manage 13 of those people, 3 of which are office based, the rest primarily work in the UK, as far north as Tyneside & Lancaster and as far south as Southampton. I have one member of the team who is based in Seville in Spain. Team Astun! 2....