John Krug - tech writer, cycling

The top of the retirement slope

17 Jan 2017

It’s time to begin semi-retirement. On 31st January I leave the Digital Innovation team at Lancaster University Library, my place of work for almost 15 years. I’ll miss my colleagues, I hope some will miss me.

It’ll be a long process as I’m not ‘retiring’ but changing how and where I work and maybe doing less of it. But, retirement is the direction.

The road ahead - Pico Veleta, Sierra Granada The road ahead - Pico Veleta, Sierra Granada

My partner and I are moving to Andalucía, near Granada, in February. We have, for a long time, intended to retire early there. Sue feels much healthier in the sun and warmth, and I’m not complaining about cycling in it. The cost of living is more conducive to making our pension last. The time has come a year sooner than we were anticipating or wanted. Brexit, ffs 😱. We are going to try get officially established in our future home before/in case negotiations start requiring the exchange of sacrificial pawns, Europeans wanting to live outside their country of birth. We can only be optimistic that won’t happen and that we can continue to be European citizens.

By April 2017 we’ll have started settling in there, and I’ll be available for consultancy work. Given the ubiquity of cloud and communications tools, remote working is more than feasible for those parties innovative enough to embrace it. I can travel if an assignment demands it. Much of my recent work has used these sorts of tools and involved travel so this model of working is not strange to me. I have a long history in library management systems from Ex Libris, Aleph and Alma, and a particular interest in data, reporting and analytics.

What would I like to be involved with?

A non-exclusive list, maybe to include working on something open source, maybe something else …

  • Being a mentor. Is there an early career systems librarian or two who would like a mentor? I’ve never tried this before, it’s an experiment, and we’ll be learning from each other. Maybe it won’t work out. The emphasis will be on the career and systems side as I’m not a qualified librarian. Of course, I won’t charge for this. (Update - 11/04/2018: This is on hold at the moment. I simply don’t have the time. It may be revisited. Apologies to those who got in contact about this.)

  • Alma and Aleph Library Analytics training and projects. Do you need some reporting/analytics doing? Perhaps you don’t have the skills locally at your institution yet? I can do the work and maintain the result. Much better, I can provide customized training, workshops and support to help you get to the position you want to be in for the future. This might be particularly relevant to new Alma customers. I can help with anything from basic reporting, dashboards and data extraction via APIs right through to integrating analytics into your workflows.

  • General library data wrangling. If it needs ….

    • extracting
    • processing
    • transforming
    • migrating
    • loading
    • exploring
    • interpreting
    • visualizing
    • presenting
    • securing

    I can probably help, whether a one-off task or integrating the processes into your workflow.

Experience and qualifications

How am I qualified for this? I have no current CV, it’s been a long time since one has been necessary. But, briefly:

  • M.Sc in Software Systems at Sheffield, way back when 4GLs and SSADM were things.

  • 3 years research in parallel image processing at the NTSC. Does anyone remember CSP, the Transputer and Occam?

  • 1 year at Barclays de Zoete Wedd in the City of London (sorry) working on FX derivative systems. I was there on ‘Black Wednesday’, when the pound was forced out of the ERM. It wasn’t my fault.

  • 9 years IT infrastructure consultancy in retail (IBM Professional Services working for ASDA), utilities (North West Water, as was) and the city, the FSA this time. The last six years being one of the directors of a consultancy company. Though not an ‘internet’ company, we got taken out by the collapse of the dot-com bubble, and internal company politics, in early 2002. There’s a lesson about rising tides and boats there, and the falling tide corollary.

  • Fifteen wonderful years at Lancaster University Library. Mainly infrastructure, programming, Unix/Linux, SQL, Aleph and Alma, their integration and reporting/analytics, some Primo and lots of other bits, pieces and projects. Some recent things of note:

    • Being an early adopter for Alma, the third institution, I believe, to go live in the world.

    • As its first coordinator and with the help of the rest of the volunteers I got the IGeLU/ELUNA Analytics SIWG started.

    • Committee member with the EPUG-UKI user group.

    • Organized EPUG-UKI Analytics days in 2014 and 2015 for presentations, workshops and sharing experience.

    • Developing a prototype backend for a RDM analytics/reporting system, funded by JISC.

    • Completing an ILM Level 5 Award in Leadership and Management.

    • Managing to end up with a great manager. Thanks Masud.

Get in touch to chat about any of this. Contact details are here.