Tag Archives: Hull

Hull’s open data future

This entry is part 6 of 6 in the series Open data: magic from the inside out?

I recently wrote a series on Open Data. In those posts I mentioned Adam Jennison and the work he has been doing. He’s written up the talk he gave to the Hull Digital Developer Group and added in his hopes for what he thinks could be possible if Hull City Council and the digital talent in the city invest in working together. So, over to Adam.

‘Geek meet and greet’

Underneath the Bridge by Vaidas M
Underneath the Bridge by Vaidas M

I attend the regular geek meets run by Hull Digital as often as I can, not only to be able to geek out without the usual look of disdain but also to see how people on the ‘outside’ are working, how they are managing and what they see as the future..

Did I not mention that I am on what the media portray as the ‘darkside’?  I am a public sector worker.. and worse than that I am a back office public sector worker, I work in ICT supporting front office workers… Yes I know I am lower than a snakes belly etc.. but hear me out for I feel, nay I believe that we can do good and also help local businesses lead the way.

Continue reading Hull’s open data future

Dividend

The first thing I blogged was a introspection on where I am and how life felt a bit inert. By the end I’d reached a conclusion that inertia is a negative way of looking at waiting. But that actually waiting is trusting in God knowing the best route.

And it appears he does.

At our church weekend one of the congregation had issued a call to prayer for people involved in local government/public policy, basically those involved in shaping society. He invited everyone to the 7am Tuesday prayer meeting to encourage and be encouraged. Unfortunately I couldn’t go because I have to be on my train but instead chatted to Phil about how frustrating it was to fall between the two stools of Hull and York.

So, fast forward to this week and I return to the office to find an email waiting for me from the Christian who had been on my interview panel. He’s an incredibly busy guy so getting in touch with me should hardly be a priority especially given that outside the interview I’ve only met him once, when he briefed us as part of our induction…hardly presenting an opportunity to share what excites us about knowing Jesus.

Nevertheless, the email said “I was involved in your interview last year…I recall at the time, that you said that you were a Christian, so I wonder if you might be interested in the “kings breakfast” initiative that we started in January. This is a prayer breakfast for those who work in and around the city; we haven’t had such a thing in Hull for over 12 years, so it was exciting to see 78 people get together to pray in January. We are doing it again in May, and I wondered if you wanted to come along”

In my first placement there was a Christian, I’ve passed the invitation onto her too. In this second placement there’s a lady who wears a crucifix but I’ve not spoken to her, this is a great excuse. And just this week one of my colleagues on the Master’s degree in Birmingham wears a cross, with obvious pride, around his neck.

Of course people wear crosses for all kinds of reasons, not all spiritual (although I’ve yet to see anyone wearing a guillotine round their neck, or an electric chair), so they may be red herrings. Undoubtedly as a Christian I’m sensitive towards seeing Christian paraphenalia (I wear a Global Day of Prayer band around my wrist because random Christian strangers might be encouraged by it) and sensitive to seeing God at work. Sometimes, no doubt, we read too much into things, but on the flip side I’m sure we don’t appreciate just how much the church envelopes us. The Body of Christ is home to God’s hands and feet so it shouldn’t be a great surprise that it’s the vehicle of answering prayer.

There’s riches in patiently chucking prayer heavenward and seeing God-incidences happen. The dividend of patience is in the heightening of faith, in the encouragement of knowing that the small whisper, the faint flicker of insight wasn’t just your imagination. That all those other little God-incidences were of Him and that you can move on from being stuck somewhere stagnantly fretting over what comes next to craning forward to peer expectantly into the (still murky) horizon.

There’s a lot of joy to be had in experiencing the completion of patience with the hint of more to come!