Let’s get the whinging out of the way first: this week I’ve been tired and my shoulder has been hurting. This has meant I have done less exercise and eaten more. In turn, this has made me feel worse. Also, it’s been cold.
With that over and done with, let’s talk about what I’ve been up to. On the work front, it’s the current four client projects I’m working on: MIT’s DCC, CSUDH‘s Toro Impact community, ORE, and some user research for Participate. I’d like some more projects to work on, but also I’m taking the first three weeks of April off, so ¯\_(ツ)_/¯
I’ve been doing some MSc work this week in preparation for my End of Module Assessment. I’m hoping to get it done before we move house next month, because I don’t want that hanging over me while packing and unpacking boxes.
I published several things on Thought Shrapnel for which I’ve been using generative AI to illustrate the posts. I’ve had complaints, so perhaps I won’t do that any more.
WAO sponsored Matt Jukes’ Internet of Public Service Jobs newsletter this week. Never having had a conventional approach to business development, we simply linked to an free email course providing an introduction to organisational strategy and architecture called How to Unf*ck Your Organisation. It seems to have worked, though, as quite a few people have signed up already.
Next week is a four-day work week due to Good Friday. I’m hoping to get back to lifting weights at the gym. I’m also going to start posting a bit more to both my personal and the new co-op Bluesky accounts.
Image: taken by me on Friday near a school in my home town.
At twenty the will rules; at thirty the intellect; at forty the judgment.
Baltasar Gracián
The above ‘photograph’ isn’t real. It’s an AI-generated image that I created this morning, one of six that I’ve generated with Midjourney as part of a collection entitled Mist and Mythos: Constructed Landscapes. I used GPT-4 to create the fictional place names and descriptions.
I’m not feeling well today, which I guess is why I generated the above. I’ll soon begetting back to walking and camping, this was a somewhat-creative way of looking forward to that. I’ve marked all of these as fictional generated, for the avoidance of doubt.
My MSc work is at the stage where I’m summarising academic articles and pulling out relevant quotations. I was going to do some more this weekend but… I didn’t.
Next week, it’s a reasonably-normal week. I think I’m going to move around my time off to take off both Easter weeks that our kids have off school. I’m heading to the University of St Andrews open day with my son during the first week of the holidays, and there’s a chance we’ll be moving house during the second week.
I’ve just been catching-up with someone who WAO has collaborated with before. The word ‘manifesting’ came up in a kind-of-jokey way about the work we want to do together. I’m not a believer in magical thinking, but it did get me thinking about being open and direct about the kind of work that you want to do.
Last year, in a post entitled Practical utopias and rewilding work, we shared the following graphic which shows the kind of areas we’re interested in working.
Just because there’s fewer jobs and consulting opportunities around doesn’t mean there’s less work that needs doing in the world. Look around you: the climate is a disaster, information is in silos, hiring is broken, hierarchical governance is a nightmare, and work is far from being ‘sustainable’.
I want to work on these issues in ways where I get to use what I’m learning through my MSc in Systems Thinking. To be honest, I’m a bit jaded with former clients setting hard boundaries around our work when it depends on other areas of their organisation or sector. Working systemically allows us to take a step back and think bigger-picture.
👋 If you’re reading this and want to have a chat or discuss things further, get in touch! I’m here: [email protected]
