Weeknotes S01E06 — unembargoed!

Hello! Remember the funding bid from episode 1? We bid for extra funding for a User Researcher/ Delivery Manager to help with our cross-council User Research on Adult Social Care. It won! So did another bid from my team — the work to collaborate on code sharing for publishing platforms.

There were 60 applications, 18 shortlisted and 7 chosen so I am over the moon. It feels like our open collaborative approach has been validated. It feels good to receive support.

Especially so when something else I shared openly on twitter was misunderstood by someone and made for a very deflating experience at work. I‘d love to just totally work in the open : side note — I went for lovely dinner with my old boss last night and she said “so how’s work, is it as brilliant as your twitter suggests or is that just good PR?” (Heads of Comms and cynicism — Ikr unbelievable!)- but you know, sometimes it wouldn’t achieve anything positive. You get that. It IS as I tell it but obviously there are pressures and issues and I did have a rubbish moment this week that I would love to moan about but probably isn’t a good idea. Here’s a cheery pic of me, Vanks and Ali from last night instead :)

I had lots of other good moments, and the main one was also from working openly and collaboratively. I have been asked to give the morning keynote speech at the Local Gov Design conference in Birmingham this month!

I’m looking forward to the challenge of creating the presentation and delivering it. I like that I have a focus for the next couple weeks when there is so much going on. The business partners join my team soon, and all the delivery managers and product managers start. It is going to be brilliant and crazy, so having something I HAVE to go and take quiet time out and do will be very useful for my maintaining mental health I think! I am up for doing it, I like making connections and talking to people, but I haven’t done anything this big before, so I know I will shit it nearer the time. I am imagining just how long I will have that out of body experience where you catch yourself speaking in front of a massive room of people and the end of your sentence just flies away and you have no idea what you were about to say! I have worked out what my “take aways” will be for the audience over the last couple of days so that has felt calming too.

The other thing that we know we need to do more of is Comms to the rest of the organisation about what we are doing. Again, can’t wait for all the product and delivery managers to be in place to help with this — Rosanna started this week and made an impressive start meeting everyone and learning what is going on, and my good friend Rich starts on Monday. :) We worked together at Brighton for ages and his agile knowledge and digital delivery experience is going to make such a difference to the team. Some of the battle weary IT folks will have someone who totally speaks their language.

Also was pleased to see Dave join the weeknoting , I suspect that like me, and like our team weeknote, he might also settle into fortnoting. It just seems more sustainable. He’s a good one our Dave, as many of you have known for many years. Worth a follow.

Is anyone going to localgovcamp in Brum this week? If so do please say hi, I actively endorse and encourage you to :)

Laytoes, po-tay-toes.