Weeknotes S02 E20 — What kind of day has it been?
There are all kinds of reasons for re-starting blogging from what I can tell. Some get inspired after an event or reflecting on success. Others have constraints around the work they do suddenly lifted. Some get inspired by the writing of others. That last one is certainly true for me.
I’ve been wrestling with my lack of writing for a bit. We’ve had some family events this year that have dampened my enthusiasm and brought my focus back home. But a chat at a recent Innovation Igloo event on blogging made me realise that there is a tension between what I’m comfortable writing about with respect to work and what feels like going too far, either in personal or commercial terms, which has been a big factor.
That hasn’t stopped me writing for work; LocalGovCamp this year has given me two opportunities to write up workshops we’ve run, both with a commitment to share what we learned more widely. The second one is having the beauty treatment by our marketing folk currently, but the first on our session around citizen accounts is out to read. It suffers from a lack of West Wing references though….
So to rectify, and shamelessly stealing the title of numerous Aaron Sorkin TV episodes, let’s explore what kind of week it’s been….
Developing my Core
For a good number of months, my Product Owner teammate and I were subsumed by large projects while still trying to steer the ship for our Core team work. Since my project ended I’ve been taking up the reigns on the Core team a bit more myself to give her some space, and before the next large project kicks off.
Initially it felt overwhelming; trying to juggle the various priorities that shape the work, and there are never enough resources to achieve all the things you want to. Last week that came to a head and I had to take some time out to write out what resource we had, what all the priorities were and make decisions about what had to be done first. After hiding under my desk for a while I realised there was no baying mob at the door with pitchforks, and actually it’s OK to give clear directions to the team to help them. It was great to see this culminate in a large minor release (does that make sense?) that had felt like passing a kidney stone at times.
I’ve also realised that getting more involved has help me move from being a passenger in the process to owning it more; understanding exactly what is in the backlog, what the issues are and taking decisions on which gets tackled first. And enjoying it more.
Great meet-up, lousy meal
This week also saw the Product Team get together in Bristol for a day of strategic planning and prioritising. This also included our Lead Developer from Spain who I’d not met in person before — a real treat! And he turned out to be the only one that took any notice of the idea to wear xmas gear.
We’d done a stack of prep work since our last two-day session back in July to hone down work into strategic and tactical streams, so we worked through sizing and prioritising the tactical work to come up with a prioritised list to start working on in the new year.
While I love working remotely, the benefit of face-to-face sessions like these can’t be underplayed; conversations over a drink can lead to new innovations or changes to working practice (our new deployment planning approach for one), but also people you have only met on screen become real and more rounded, so a greater understanding of them is fostered.
And while a drink out as a group was terrific (and I discovered the best beer I’d tasted in a while outside of Germany), the meal we had afterwards at a Lebanese restaurant saw one of our party in and out of the toilets all evening and another out of play the next day!
Feeding back
I got to meet the lovely folk at Public this week to talk about Local Digital projects and collaboration. Public are doing an evaluation of the impact on the Local Digital fund, and they made reference in a feedback session about the challenges identified with collaboration. We’d run a workshop on this collaboration at a past LocalGovCamp, the next steps of which had come to nothing, so I thought it could be a good opportunity to prod that fire again to see if something could be made to happen.
In the end it was more a discussion around my thoughts and experiences of running a Local Digital project in a council and as a supplier working with councils to deliver a funded project. The continuity of projects was a key topic — how the outputs are taken forward and made sustainable — and also how the impact can be properly evaluated.
We’re going to continue the conversations so maybe we can really hack into this collaboration issue together.
Our local
This week we had our first shareholders meeting for our local pub, The Martyrs Inn, which is owned by the community.
Six months in and things are rolling along nicely. Not making a huge profit just yet, and not helped by the cancellation of the Martyrs Festival which its opening had been planned around. Nevertheless it’s become the heart of our village and a great place to meet up. Last night was an open fire, sounds of laughter and a sea of dogs on the floor. As Cheers suggested “sometimes you wanna go where everybody know your name”, and while we’re not quite there knowing everybody we do know the staff and enough people to chat with.
Quick thoughts
- We ran a Lunch and Learn session this week where the combined efforts of Teams and Eventbrite conspired to bring us down. Kudos to the large number of people that made it in (and our apologies)
- Turning up to Bristol in my nice new coat my efforts to dress to impress were thwarted by our far more stylish trainer. Damn that green coat!
- How is it trains can be colder when you’re sat on them than when you’re outside?
- Great to be back working on a website for a friend that I had to put to one side in September. I think my next target has to be our pub website (no https?!?! I can’t bear it…)
- If Jeremy Gould can have 13 years between blog posts I think I’m OK with a 5 month break
