What's life like as an independent consultant? I handed my notice in around 18 months ago, and since then people have been asking me: what's it like? So, in this brief series I hope to give you a sense of what life is like for the consultant.

Tuesday 13th June 2006

Up at the crack of dawn (4 am), relaxed for a while and then at my desk for 5 am. I did some maintenance work on the website and published the article I wrote the previous evening, called Blog literacy: Or, how I cope with the deluge at:

http://terry-freedman.org.uk/artman/publish/article_740.php

I also wrote the article "Managing eLearning and ICT: Personal Skills", which is, in fact, an update of one I had written previously. That was published at 7.24 am at http://www.terry-freedman.org.uk/premium/articles/article_742.php.

I was out of the house by about 7.45, to visit two schools. After one of the meetings, I received an email from one of the people I met with:

"Terry, thanks for sending the summary.  I found the meeting very worthwhile as I now have a structured list of priorities to get my teeth into and I'm clear about how to go about them."

(As you may have inferred from that last part, I followed up my visits with a report, which I wrote and emailed the following day.)



I discovered afterwards that something I deduced from the meeting was, in fact, correct, and that the advice I ended up giving was the same as that the Local Authority had given. It's quite nice when that happens, as it means you're on the right lines. But sometimes you end up disagreeing with local advice. As a consultant, you have to spend a lot of time listening, and evaluating what you're told in the light of your experience.

Before going to bed I wrote an article entitled "Understanding Web 2: a guide for government agencies and other organisations", which was published just after midnight at http://terry-freedman.org.uk/artman/publish/article_739.php

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