After a gloriously sunny weekend I’d recouped my energy and it lasted me through (all) the rainy days during the week. I’m sticking with this new format for now, but tweaking the headings a bit to see if they can make me reflect better.
What did I hear this week?
I had lunch with David in the sunshine at my favourite cafe, discussing all sorts of things, including his ideas for a short training session on retros, and thinking about how we approach our database layer.
Followed by coffee in the sunshine* with Roo, ahead of the DevOps discovery workshop on culture and ways of working. This was a chance to catch up and think about our overall approach, and hear some reflections on what it feels like working with HackIT as a new supplier.
And at the end of the week I caught up with Louise Cato for a rapid, wide ranging chat about weeknotes, running, delivery, culture, leadership and so much more in between. It was great to see her – and to hear that she’s coming along to #bureaucracyhack.
Where did my energy go this week?
Matthew and I delivered our agile training course to a new (4th cohort) this week. The slides are here if you want to look at/use them. I’m currently collating the material into one shared drive that we can make open to anyone who wants to use it.
It’s 3 very early starts and delivering useful training is always tiring – but it was so worth it.
The participants end with a show and tell: what they’ve done, what they’ve learnt and what they’ll do next:
Some of my nervous energy went on worrying about both boys taking exams this week, one had a week of finals, and one has A-levels. Stressful for them both, and I was aware all week that it was on my mind.
What did I deliver this week?
I finally made time to finish or progress some things that have been on ‘the list’ for a while.
I wrote a brief for next week’s London Office of Technology and Innovation digital apprenticeship event that we’re hosting, and planned out how we’ll run it in more detail.
I worked on a paper for our senior leadership team about the future of mobile telephony at Hackney – and how we might do things differently.
Our printer tender went out – this has been a lot of work by the contracts team and our procurement colleagues, so it’s really nice to see that it’s gone live.
I finished off some slides for a lightening talk at Monday’s FutureGov event which they’re running in Hackney – Matthew gave me valuable help and advice, including asking twitter to help with the title:
What have I thought about this week?
I’ve been thinking about the importance of inclusive and diverse teams – and how it benefits everybody to have diversity of voice, opinion and experience.
We’ve got an event running next week which Nic and the team are doing a fab job of organising. We’re hosting a recruitment evening for people interested in coming to work with us.
I saw this from Snook, aimed at the design sector initially – I liked the bit about asking all candidates for feedback on the process and learning from it: http://inclusivedesignrecruitment.co.uk/5/
I’ve also been thinking about innovation – and the differing views on what’s needed to be innovative, deliver innovation, build a culture of innovation. This via Rachel Murphy, was a great video about about situational awareness being key:
What have I read this week?
I really liked this via Jennifer Pahlka:
and not so much reading but watching from afar** I was so pleased to see the success of the @oneteamgov wellbeing camp in Leeds.
*there’s a theme here, things in the sunshine. Including a swim on Monday morning. Summer is definitely my season.
**slightly jealously, I couldn’t go because of the agile training, but colleagues went so I loved vicariously through them and twitter.
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