A full on week this week, it was London Tech Week, and we were hosting several fringe events. Huge thanks to the teams who delivered these — awesome work!
What did I do to challenge myself this week?
I spoke in public to possibly the biggest group of people so far. And on home turf in front of people I know (which somehow makes it harder). It went well – I got across what I wanted to say, relaxed enough to go off script and anecdotal, and had brilliant conversations with people afterwards as a result.
I also noticed this useful thread from some ace people with advice and reflections on public speaking:
What did I deliver something on this week?
We held the first LOTI (London Office of Technology and Innovation) event post the LOTI launch event on Monday . This was a workshop with other London boroughs from LOTI to discuss how we might extend digital apprentices amongst LOTI members to 100 by 2020. Hackney’s got an ambitious and successful apprenticeship programme, which HackIT’s digital apprenticeships are a part of, and it was great to be able to share our story of successes and challenges. Micah, Nana, Erdem and Darrell started us off by talking about how they’ve made their apprenticeships a success, and Mal focussed on a line managers’ perspective.
The team ran a recruitment event on Wednesday evening with over 50 people who came along to meet us, and find out more about working at HackIT. Then on Thursday Matthew ran a supplier event, which was a really good conversation with SMEs who haven’t worked with us, or maybe once so far. It was useful to hear feedback on working with us, have a chat about service standard assessments and why we value them (and why suppliers should too).
And on Friday I was lucky enough to be a lead assessor on our prototype (alpha) phase project for Hackney Spacebank. The team had prepared really well, and it was brilliant to have two great external assessors, Guilia and Kate, involved to give us challenge and learn from their experience. They were both really impressed by what they heard and saw – and I know that meant a lot to the team. This is the second assessment in the past couple of weeks – we’ll publish them on the HackIT website later this month.
What did I learn this week?
I learnt loads from other speakers on Monday’s Futuregov event including Vim and Matt, Richard McLean wrote this ace blog post on work – why it doesn’t have to be (and shouldn’t be) crazy. There’s loads of good ideas in here, some of which I’d like to try, things I’m guilty of**, and some things that I’m already doing, and which I know are effective.
And lastly it was fab to see a new blog post from Dan, thoughtful and considered (as always). Data is fundamental to the services we create, and so often the ‘computer magic’ bit can’t be done easily because the data just isn’t good enough.
*I also have the foil flattening and object creating habit, but not on this scale.
**Yet another bright idea, when we (I) am already fully committed.
Madebycatemclaur.in 