Weeknote 37/2022
This week has definitely seen a change in seasons where I live in the north of England. Out with the warm mornings in which I’d happily go for a run; in with the colder air and sluggish starts to the day. It’s also had an effect on my sleeping patterns and migraines.
There’s been plenty of work to do this week, particularly of the kind that involve meetings. Although it’s all been quite pleasant toil, I was pleased when Friday came around and I could take it a bit easier. A meeting at Newcastle University was postponed, and I ended up sitting in a coffee shop working on a blog post related to a book I’ve been reading recently.
I began the week with a WAO half-day, which we do every month. This particular one involved me spending quite a lot of time with John working on an update to our ‘State of the Union’ spreadsheet which aims to give a financial snapshot of our co-op at any given time. I’ll not bore you with the details, but the general gist is that (a) it was set up in a time when we tended to do one-off projects, rather than repeat work with clients, and (b) it wasn’t set up to show how much would be in our ‘pot’ after the 25% for confirmed contracts with clients was taken off.
The stimulus for working on the spreadsheet was a desire to meet up as a co-op face-to-face in January. Perhaps in Amsterdam. We haven’t booked anything yet, though.
The rest of the week was spent with Laura and Anne figuring out the details of taking over the entirety of the Open Working strand for some work with the National Governing Bodies (NGBs) under the umbrella of Sport England. We need to re-scope the work as a result, so I also hung out with Outlandish for a bit as they’re running one of the data strands for the NGBs.
In addition to that we did some work on the Participate-funded Keep Badges Weird project, including running a Badge Wiki barn-raising session with community members. I also enjoyed a wide-ranging chat as part of the Open Recognition working group of the Open Skills Network.
Other than that, I did some user research with John for some work we’re doing with Happy Porch and Common Knowledge for the Wellbeing Economy Alliance new digital platform. I met with people from LocalGov Drupal and the University of Strathclyde about various things. And I started a new social network related to fitness/exercise (my profile).
Here, I published:
Over at Thought Shrapnel I published:
- Forbes on federation
- A philosophical approach to performative language
- Technological Liturgies
- Organisational design: the floor is lava
- Three components of the public sphere
- What is ransom capitalism?
- Professional try-hards
- Every complex problem has a solution which is simple, direct, plausible — and wrong
- WFH from anywhere
We found out this week that our daughter was successful in getting into Newcastle United’s Emerging Talent Centre (ETC). There will be 70 ETCs around the country by the end of next season, with around 4,000 girls taking part over the age ranges. I’m delighted she’s got in to this form of academy, as it means she can also play for her new club team as well.
Next week, I’m working across five different projects as well as recording an episode of Season 5 of The Tao of WAO podcast with Laura. In my head, I was going to spend each Friday night camping in September, but it hasn’t worked out that way. I’ve been more tired than usual, even though I’ve been doing the same amount of exercise as usual. Must be the change in seasons.
Photo of St Mary’s Lighthouse, Whitley Bay taken during a run I went on while my daughter was training with her football team.
