You find yourself stranded on a beautiful desert island. Fortunately, the island is equipped with the basics needed to sustain life: food, water, solar power, a computer and a network connection. Consummate professional that you are, you have brought the software packages you need to continue your life and research. What software would you choose and - go on - what luxury item would you take to make life easier?

Today we hear from Liz Allen, Director of Strategic Initiatives, F1000, and Visiting Senior Research Fellow at the Policy Institute at King’s College London.

I feared that I might be the most unqualified person to have been invited to contribute to this blog. Having read previous entries, I checked with Simon (Hettrick) at the Software Sustainability Institute to see whether he seriously wanted a contribution from me, and I received the encouraging reply “it's not really about the software, but about what the software says about you.” So assuming that the Institute isn’t seeking to dumb down its excellent work, and that at least one person wants to know what my choices of software say about me, here goes...

The first thing I would need is the ability to write. I would record my daily trials and tribulations and, while it might not be fashionable, would need access to Microsoft Word. I have tried several writing packages over the years but always come back to Word. In addition to diary-ing, writing letters to my family and friends (to put into bottles), and writing that children’s novel about maladaptive daydreaming and sleeplessness that has been in the planning for the last 25 years, I would spend time trying to conquer Word's foibles such as setting up tabs and using styles consistently through a document (also in the planning for the last 25 years).

The next thing I would desire as a castaway would be some kind of mapping software – not a complicated GIS outfit but something to enable me to draw, design and curate my own maps of the island and places in my memory. I love maps and the wonderful ways that they help make sense of space; to me they are artworks and at the moment I am particularly in love with the maps of the Polish graphic artists Aleksandra and Daniel Mizielinski.

I was somewhat of a late adopter of mobile mapping apps. ‘How could a phone possibly replace the beauty of a map – particularly a 1:25,000 of a mountainous region - with its elegant contours, valleys and river basins (and certainty of a PH after a long walk)’. However, while not coming close to matching the satisfaction of finding a route with an ordnance survey map (and the more satisfying task of folding it back to its original state once a destination has been reached), I now love google maps for its ability to deliver in a spatial crisis, providing a route either to or away from wherever you might find yourself. But on the island, even if I could use a mobile app via satellite, I suspect that the Google car won’t have yet visited, so I would set to task describing and recording all the features of the island –using something simple like Scribble Maps Pro. I would love my mapping software to be able to add the sorts of images, facts and context included in the Mizielinskis’ books. I would also like to try to stay fit while on the island, and as I am no lover of water, I would map out some good terrain for running. Assuming I could send the fruits of my mapping via satellite from liz.allen@desertislandinthemiddleoftheocean.com to ground control somewhere, I would use the Map My Run website to keep track of my efforts

In addition to my love of maps, I have a fascination with all things medical. My interest spans the historical and social context of medicine, through strange diseases, to current breakthroughs in medicine. I had a thwarted medical career: if I had worked a bit harder at school, studied the right subjects, not fallen in love with pingos and populations, and probably been a little bit cleverer, I may now be seeking the medicinal properties of the vegetation on my island instead of mapping them. Nevertheless, the only way is forward, so without attempting to revisit my career choices, before being castaway, I happily got my medical fix by working with scientists and clinicians, visiting lots of medical museums, and gorging on science documentaries. And on my island, I would spend any down time from writing and cartography by playing Theme Hospital for PC. I was first introduced to Theme Hospital in around 1999 and, before my first child came along, I became particularly adept at dealing with conditions such as Bloaty Head (where the patient’s head swells to unfathomable proportions), King Complex (where the patient thinks he/she is Elvis), and Alien DNA (where the patient is transformed into an alien). I would enjoy re-acquainting myself with the knowledge and multi-tasking required to manage a busy district hospital. 

Assuming I had plenty of coconuts and fresh water, I would be pretty busy with all the software thus described. But given that desert islands discs gives you eight choices, I reckon, if I include a computer operating system (not fussy - Windows is fine for me), I have two choices left. My final choices would include BBC Radio iPlayer, so that I could listen to the Today programme and tap into the Life Scientifique, Inside Health and Desert Island Discs on Radio 4 - and anything on Radio 6 Music. My last must-have would be Spotify (Premium) to provide (virtually) endless access to my eclectic music faves. I hope that my family would be kind enough to continue my subscription to Premium (at least until I was rescued) as they know how important it is for me to have access to 70s funk and disco and early 80s electronica to keep my spirits high.

PS. I am allowed a luxury item?

If so, I would take a solar powered measuring device so that I could make all those maps.