Reflecting on Media Technology - Gardening Leave and Discovery! (part 8)

After around 18 months at Pilat Media, my feet began to itch quite severely work-wise, I don't know if it was as a result of things happening very slowly at the BBC, or the Deja Vu I was experiencing as part of a team of outside contractors working in a very uneven (in terms of size) relationship (I'd had a touch of the politics when I'd been at Basys who struggled with introduction of a multi-lingual news system at World Service radio) - for some reason Horticulture was calling me and In September 2007 I  started a full time course at Capel Manor, Gunnersbury (Could I get further from technology Media?) the course was a full time BTEC and it was an eye opener to lots of things I wasn't doing - a chance to stop and smell the flowers.
The course had challenges for me mainly being remembering the names of plants, trees and parts of the same but actually doing things and getting to grips with cultivators, hard landscaping and the other people on the course (all younger than me) was a great tonic.
I suppose in my mind was either having a small business or being part of one but the timing corresponded with an economic downturn and nothing jumped out of the bushes at me so after an approach and successful interviews from Discovery I joined the company in June 2009 as a Distribution Manager (Operations) conveniently Discovery in Chiswick  was only a longish hop and jump (about 4 miles I reckon?)  from my).

Discovery at Chiswick Park

home in Ealing so it was difficult to resist the lure of a steady job (I could steal but I could not rob )

Going back to full time office work after 2 years was a hell of a shock - The Blackberry was now the instrument of torture and working for a US company with it's hardball attitude made a change from pottering around in the Gunnersbury Park environs but the team I worked with was a good one and they definitely had money to spend on ensuring maximum availability of our services using the best in technology.

Cranes were used to get this baby up on the roof.

During my time at Discovery a number of initiatives came to fruition and it was a change to see work being in-sourced as a reaction to what had been  happening in most of the broadcast world of late.
We added an NMS ( Skyline were the supplier of the Dataminer  Network Monitoring System) and increased the number of off air decoders as new channels and territories were added.
During my time at Discovery work was building work was done on our neighbours house and this obsured the satellite reception for the Sky/Freesat services so we had a new mini dish fitted to our chimney, so far very good reception.