Skimbit has changed a lot since I past posted. We are now a team of four, working in new offices in Shoreditch, London. We are working hard on our new visual design, on speed optimisation, on usability enhancements, and great new features. We have launched a really snazzy monetisation platform that is – we think – a world-first method for monetising user-generated content in a non-obtrusive way. You won’t even realise it is happening! We are really proud. We get to earn money and still be ethical, objective and non-salesy.

So, when I read that Visit London (a tourism board for London) was putting on an outdoor office, I thought my team utterly deserved a day in the park.

Four of us managed to extricate ourselves from our office, hopped on the tube, and travelled to the other (greener) side of London, to St James’s Park.

And there, to our joy and bemusement, was a fully designed and functional office – complete with paperclips, folders, desk lamps (not plugged into anything, of course!) and desk trinkets! We sat on office chairs, pulled out our laptops, and worked with glorious views of Buckingham Palace, the duck pond, and lush green trees all around us. It was a trifle difficult to read our screens in the bright sunlight, but we didn’t utter a complaint – if only every day could be so inspiring and liberating.

Unfortunately, nothing good lasts forever, or in our case, lasts more than an hour. Typically London clouds swept over our sunny sky, we started to shiver a little, but we obstinately stayed at our desks.

We started to feel a trickle of rain, and undeterred, we opened the Visit London umbrellas and huddled underneath as we continued working.

The rain started to get harder…. we persisted stubbornly for as long as we could, but it soon became a mute point. We had to pack our laptops away. But we really believed the rain would pass, so we stayed under our umbrellas for a while, and sure enough, the rain cleared, and the sun re-emerged!

With a quick wipe-down of the tables, we could continue our work in the now sparklingly beautiful afternoon.

It was again a shortlived pleasure. The rain clouds came back, and this time we were conquered. We returned to our indoors office, but with a smile on our faces. What a glorious experience to be out in such inventive playful surroundings!