mercredi 17 septembre 2003

Itsy-bitsy pieces. A fine developer on the horizon Well, in the absence of further gripping news from the factory, and because a sudden change in the three-day pattern of the Condition made me decide to steer clear of Apple Expo this afternoon, I'm going to meet an exhausted Rainer. In Odessa Street, where better? Junction of our Métro lines... Perhaps he'll be the witness to my eating of the page where I proved wrong in predicting the release of Mac OS X Panther at the expo. Rainer may well correct me, but I have the impression that nothing really new is on show. Even the G5 Macs have been known about for a while now. The most interesting thing I've seen on the Net so far is an interview with Apple's Ken Bereskin for Your Mac Life (direct link to 17 MB QuickTime video). Far less interesting at that site is a caption competition including one of those photos suggesting that Americans quite erroneously imagine that most French lavatories are the "Turkish" squat-holes you still find in some of the older cafés. Other minor news of the day is that I've done most of the long-planned changes to the blogroll ... and that the Apprentice Dragon, far from slapping me for telling people on four continents more about her legs, put up a good show of being delighted by the attention. 7:11:33 PM  link   your views? [] Deep trouble down at 'the factory' "Selling off the silver?" "Well, that's what most people here seem to be saying," a fellow AFP hack told me from the factory this morning. AFP's Board of Governors is considering a proposal to sell off the news agency's Paris headquarters building -- with the idea that AFP remains in the premises and would buy it back in 12 to 18 years' time. Why? Because AFP, whose board consists of French government representatives, the country's media barons and a couple of people elected by the journalists and other employees, desperately needs the cash. For a four-year development plan, as the current big boss, Bertrand Eveno, presents it. Today's 'Libération' (Fr) tells a part of the story. If I were there, among the other union leaders (though my role now is less prominent than of yore) meeting to decide on the precise response, I'd be expressing strong opposition to such a deal. Update: They did. Along with a "large majority" of the staff at HQ, who have ceased work. A union buddy in the thick of it tells me he hasn't seen such an impressive general meeting on the main news floor of the building in a "long, long while." Time after time, this season of the year has seen the presentation successive "plans to save AFP", which have been thrown out after tough action, sometimes strikes, by the journalists. Yes, the factory is in trouble. It has been for a while. We people who work there are, on the whole, deeply committed to both its survival and its development as one of the world's top three news agencies. The same can't be said of all the members of the board. AFP will survive this crisis as it has many others since it was founded anew after World War II (the official AFP potted history), but the long-term solution has to be a far more imaginative one than staking everything on the concrete assets, leaving us with very little set in stone. I've long reckoned (and argued in many a meeting with management) that the French need to look across the Channel for models as to how it might better be done. 2:04:38 PM  link   your views? []

nick b. 2007 do share, don't steal, please credit under artistic licence terms; contributing friends (pix, other work) retain their rights.