Are you a Robin or a Blue Tit?
Rebecca Plater is a Desktop Support Computing Engineer for the Norwich Biosciences Institutes Partnership (the organisation that provides a range of services to the John Innes Centre, Earlham Institute, Quadram Institute and The Sainsbury Laboratory). In this blog, she considers what it takes for an IT support team to be successful and how she supports the world-leading science taking place at the Norwich Research Park.
Rebecca originally shared her ideas as a presentation for the NBI Accessible Science Talks hosted at the John Innes Centre on 8 October 2024. After this event, we caught up with Rebecca to ask her about her role, the team, the skills she uses and why we should all be more Blue Tit.
“Some of you may remember when milk was delivered every day in glass milk bottles sealed with attractive metal caps, to your front doorstep. The milk float would silently traverse the early morning to deliver fresh milk, and other fresh produce, to millions of homes in the UK.
“Turn back the clock a few more years, to the beginning of the 20th century, and the daily deliveries from local dairy farms were left on doorsteps unsealed. Birds, including Blue Tits and Robins, discovered the bottles and would perch on the rim, stealing the cream that settled on the top.
“After the First World War, dairies began to seal the bottles with an aluminium foil lid to keep the milk fresher. This posed a problem for the birds, who were suddenly cut off from this high-energy food source.
“However, by the 1950s the entire Blue Tit population had learnt how to pierce the bottle tops to reach the cream, whereas only a few Robins had mastered this skill. I’ll explain why later, but first I want to share a little bit about my role in the Computing Department at the Norwich Biosciences Institutes Partnership (NBIP).
“I’m one of six Desktop Support Engineers (DTS Engineers) that support about 1,500 people and 2,500 computers, laptops and other devices across the four institutes on site here at the Norwich Research Park.”
Simple problems with simple solutions
“A normal day at work might involve installing more memory, upgrading a computer to a modern boot mode, getting a computer to work with an instrument, cloning a computer drive, setting up a MacBook or connecting a port to a switch to make it active.
“There will also often be people walking into the Helpdesk office with questions such as, “How do I change my password?” and “Can you get my phone connected to the wireless here?”. The team and I can answer these questions.
“For much of my work, there are a series of logical steps or a troubleshooting process for fault-finding, including checking basic things first and, by a process of elimination, arriving at a solution. Indeed, many IT problems can in fact be solved by the classic technique of ‘turn it off and back on again’!
“Recently, one particularly mischievous computer was refusing to connect to the network. After an embarrassingly long amount of time, I turned the monitor around to check the ethernet cable was pushed in securely to the socket. This computer had two network sockets with one end of the cable in the first socket, and the other end in the second. It was plugged in … to itself. Problem solved.
“Of course, sometimes the fix is a little more complicated. And since the world of computers is constantly evolving, there are times when we encounter new error messages and problems. This is where being part of a team that learns and shares information makes a really big difference to the service we provide.”
Three ways we work together
“Earlier this year I was troubleshooting for a colleague who was stuck at the log-in window for their email. Entering and even resetting their log-in details just kept sending the user round and round in a frustrating loop.
“Unable to find an obvious problem, I asked my colleague Jordan what else I could try. He told me he’d seen the same issue a week previously and all I needed to do was delete a specific folder. This is an example of how we share knowledge within the team on a reactive basis.
“On another occasion, several people on-site contacted us for help with some PDF/design software, all struggling with the same issue. We troubleshooted the problem as a team, investigating different possibilities until one of us found a reliable solution. Then, we proactively shared that knowledge so that all DTS Engineers could fix it now and in the future.
“Another way we work together is when we enlist help from another team within Computing. For example, an upgrade to Windows kept failing. I asked the Infrastructure Team for help and my colleague David looked at the logs, found the fault, fixed it, and let me know what to do if it happened again.
“In all these cases instead of us each having to figure out a solution individually, people shared what they had discovered. Knottier problems, which could have taken a lot of time and frustration to resolve individually, are fixed quickly because we benefit from each other’s knowledge and creativity.
“So, back to the Robins and the Blue Tits.”
From fledglings to flocks
“Once their chicks have fledged the nest, Blue Tits join with others to form flocks of up to ten birds. These flocks stay together for a couple of months before reforming into new flocks. This means that only one Blue Tit needs to figure out how to pierce the milk bottle tops for the rest of that bird’s flock to copy the behaviour and learn. This knowledge quickly spread across the whole population. Working together helped all the individuals learn faster, increasing their chances of survival and evolving.
“By contrast, Robins fiercely guard their territory, with fixed boundaries that are not to be crossed. They live and work as individuals. Knowledge of, and access to, food sources is strictly controlled and guarded. This meant that only a few Robins ever discovered how to pierce the foil lids, and that knowledge was never passed on.”
Two takeaways
“So, lesson one: don’t overcomplicate things. Check the basics first. And always, always turn any device off and on again before you call your computing support, as that is often the first thing we will try!
“And lesson two: share what you have learned. It doesn’t always have to be big ideas and big changes. The examples I have given have all been fairly minor, but the cumulative time they have saved is huge.
“If you help your team improve by 1% each day, over a few days, months and years that quickly adds up. So don’t be a Robin – be a Blue Tit. Everyone benefits.”
You can catch up on Rebecca’s presentation (at 1:40:30) and many more via the live stream recording of our NBI Accessible Science Talks, held as part of the Annual Science Meeting 2024 at the John Innes Conference Centre, Norwich Research Park in October 2024.