Weeknotes S02 E18 — Stop and think
It’s been a heady week of news nationally; the GOV.UK Strategy rethink spawning numerous twitter responses from the digital community, Apple launching its strap-on face furniture that could raise the stakes for how VR/AR is used and empty wallets in the process, plus political shenanigans aplenty in the UK and US that will keep me fed with podcasts for a while.
While I’m still a bit unsure about the GOV.UK changes (as presented) I’ve been struck by responses by respected voices like Neil Williams and Matt Jukes. Honestly, after 10 years who could say that it’s NOT time for a reappraisal about the best way forward, particularly when you read Paul Maltby on Government as a Platform 2.0 on the advances in LLM and what this could mean.
We’ve also initiated a ‘stop and think’ moment on one of our products in the last couple of weeks prompted by practical issues bringing things to a head. In a way it’s been like letting out a breath long held; if we were honest the signs were there but it took a fresh voice saying it. Luckily, there are mature heads in charge and whereas these may have headed for the sand in previous organisations, I’m sort of proud that we’re open to having the conversation and taking in views from all sides.
New blood
Dropping back into my default ‘stupidly excited’ mode for a moment, it’s been a real breath of fresh air working with a new colleague in the development team.
Sometimes when a colleague leaves you get a sense of lost opportunities, and expectations dashed. What I realised very early on in my career is those things that can be seen as risks can also be seen as opportunities; “change X may not happen now, but have you thought about change Z?”
And so it is with this new arrival. As Product Owners we scheduled an early meeting with him and prepped/shared a discussion list of bullet points that turned into a tale of woe. 30 mins later we were discussing practical change, new priorities and a joint development/product roadmap of where we want to be.
LocalGovCamp London
Hot off the heels of LocalGovCamp Scotland the Placecube crew were back (in force) in London for the last of the regional events. It was great to see the lovely people I work with in person, plus being able to to honour one of those ‘we should have a drink at some point’ chats the night before thanks to an overlapping customer visit in the vicinity.
Also great to see other great sponsors and suppliers; meeting up with the Govmetric crew always feels like being home. And it was brilliant to meet the BookingLab team in person (or ‘4Chad’ as I think I’m going to call them given the obligatory beard wearing) and plot potential future projects.
The venue couldn’t have been more brilliant at AWS HQ, with the AWS team not only being great hosts but active participants in the sessions.
However, I had a special surprise in store for me as we were setting up….
Luckily this crime against fashion found a home eventually.
I needed to sit out the opening of the event and early speakers to be at morning standup meetings, and it sounds like I missed out on a great keynote by Martyn Evans. However, I did get to hear our keynote by Gavin Beckett which (and I know I’m biased here) I thought was bloody great.
We ran the last of our workshops on council/supplier relationships, which as ever prompted fascinating insights and provided another set of lovely data we’re hoping to publish soon — I know some of our supplier friends are interested in this so I hope it does become a useful bit of user research rather than a pitch for business.
The timing of our workshop meant I could properly participate in the unconference sessions too:
- Wayne from AWS — Open Source Revs and Bens: this highlighted some work AWS have been doing in this area, but how the ongoing maintenance of these projects always becomes an issue and the distrust of open source products. We’ve got some good examples with LocalGov Drupal having made the transition, and Greenwich’s work to build a localgov community around community directories
- Richard Morton — Accessibility Compliance: it was great to meet Richard in person after following his great output on Twitter, and I fear I became a bit of a fanboi in grabbing him straight after his pitch to have a chat. Great to have access to someone at the heart of how central gov approaches accessibility, so insights from this discussion were really valuable. Also found out about accessibility personas, so will see how we can incorporate these into our approach to accessibility
- Alex Shiell — Standardisation vs Localisation: a fantastic, high calibre debate exploring what prevents local authorities from adopting common approaches to digital services. As Alex observed, it took almost 15 mins before someone mentioned bins. At one point I tried to capture the barriers all in words beginning with P (politics, personalities, priorities, poor service design, place-based focus) but lots more emerged.
- Luke Piper — Radical Transparency: as a hopeless work-in-the-open devotee I was interested in Luke’s thoughts on better transparency in transactional services through notifications (something we’re working on for the Low Code Digital Waste project) but I found myself leaning in more to the idea of transparency leading to organisational shifts in direction.
I’d forgotten how much these events and discussions inspire me, and I hope the large proportion of attendees new to unconferencing got the same out of it as me.
The after events drinks were a great opportunity to play ‘bother someone you think is awesome’ and test my (and their) memory. I find I leap to the assumption that because I read what you publish online, you must know me as well, in a sort of reverse Ravenous Bugblatter Beast of Traal feat of logic.
Also, much love to Glen Ocskó for reasons anyone that spoke to him would understand.
Quick Thoughts
- A big gap in weeknoting as a result of a lovely holiday in France, where I got the chance to see the Bayeux Tapestry and realise it was an 8th Century comic
- Our whole Product Team heading en mass for Agile on the Beach in July, which should be fantastic.
- I was pleased with my 8-bit artistic effort to decorate our stand at LocalGov Camp, despite suggestions that you couldn’t see what it said
- The realities of how awful some experiences women have with men came home to me this week after a conversation. Sometimes it only hits you fully when it’s someone you know, but it’s made me reflect on this a lot
Spot of the Week
“You say clothes, I say kitty litter”
