Dan’s Weeknotes s03e08
I’m Gonna Be (500 Miles)
It’s difficult when I fall out of the #weeknotes rhythm. I had a good, restful week off for school holidays with my kids but then couldn’t make time to get these written last week. So, they are late but I’m clearing the deck.
I half-assed the intro to my last entry (see episode 7), so I’ll try again. I am in a strange place in my life. I think it is due to a combination of factors. A big contributor is my age¹, then there are some circumstances in and around work, then there are my personal circumstances, and finally there is the state of the world.
Time was I felt I could achieve anything if I put my mind to it. The trajectory was up. That probably lasted from the age of 25 until about now. The state of the world bit means everything is so hectic, often frightening, and it is really hard to find any peace or clarity. I feel like my agency is shrinking. I feel like something has come to an end, and that the most important thing I can do (as somebody who is a parent) is help to make sure my children are as well prepared for life as they can be.
I hope I’m not a particularly selfish person, but maybe what has come to an end is my own age of self.
There, that’s a bit more whole-assed.
The week was a bit fragmented because I had my roof fixed and I took a day off on Wednesday to hang out with my mum. Nevertheless, I had a week of data, search, service design, and trying to be good.
Sketch the week
5 things that happened
Note: more than 5 things happened
One. Service Design Team happened. I had a few meetings, the most noteworthy being the one with Stuart and Anne from FutureGov and Claire and Sian from our change team to shape how we will work on ‘provisioning’. We covered method, team composition, hopes and fears, and all in all I thought it was very constructive, open and efficient, and everybody contributed.
This meeting featured the double diamond² which I am aware of but I think it will be interesting to see how we can put it into practice over 8 weeks³ for something that is an internal service about IT hardware and software.
Two. Friday was Aidan (delivery manager)’s last day. I’m happy for him that he’s made a move up and away to a new organisation. Aidan is friendly, has really good emotional intelligence, and he really cared about our work. Aidan stayed with the data and search team because he believed in what we do and that was a motivator for him. That kind of attitude rubs off on other people. I will miss working with him.
Three. I met with Mark (CTO and in charge of cyber security) to discuss how the data analysts in my team could work with the security team and be of help. We also spoke about various elements of data architecture and my views of where data will sit across our organisations. This is the kind of meeting that is reassuring for me, because I feel credible. I don’t just make this stuff up — it’s the result of a fair amount of personal effort, delivery and synthesis.
One of my favourite things about Mark is that he is humble and curious, which are professional qualities I really respect.
Four. Elsewhere in humble colleagues that I respect, I met David (Deputy Director) to talk about business cases and plans for improving internal search. Paul (delivery manager) was there too⁴. It’s really good to have Paul in the team so that I’m not alone in trying to get through necessary internal process.
Paul re-drafted the principles in the data strategy which is now the Information and Data Strategy (see episode 6) so it needs to combine information, information management, and data into one. I admit that I thought this would be impossible but the revised principles looked great. Generally I think that I’m doing better than before, with a handful of colleagues now who I can totally trust to get on with things with minimal direction from me⁵.
Five. On Friday I left the office in the mid-afternoon to fly to Aberdeen for Open Data Camp. It was really good. I bashed out a blog post at the airport on Sunday, which was satisfying and helped me to decompress a bit. I should blog with a time limit more often.
I’m still processing what happened over the weekend. I met countless people from the internet in real life for the first time (Jamie and Ben, for example). It was a privilege to spend time around people who are really passionate and skilled. I formulated some thoughts and picked up several threads. I was struck by important things I’d never thought of before, in particular at the diversity and inclusion session run by Elspeth and Pauline. If you are a straight white man at an event and there is a session on diversity and inclusion then please go to it, and try to listen.
I left having a sense of what needed to be done, and maybe a part that I could play in that.
I’m not going to list all of the folks and conversations, but I appreciated spending time with Esko in particular. A wonderful person.
For regrets, I wish I’d taken a leaf out of the Dudfield book and made a bit more of Aberdeen beyond too many pints of McKewan’s. There were so many sessions that I would have liked to attend, (I missed Jonathan talking about Wardley Maps for example). I had a buttery and it thought it was salty as all hell. I had that impostor syndrome. I wish I wasn’t so desperately bad at starting conversations, and I wish I’d been a bit more focused and articulate at times.
I expect I’ll be working through much of what I soaked up over the coming weeks.
Reflections
- Thinking back to conversations with Sam (see Sam’s season 5 episode 1), I really identify with ‘being glue’. Bringing the folks together, slipping through barriers and making something stronger instead. I am doing this a fair bit, and not just in my own place of work.
#CultureDan
Listening: Trevino — ‘Casino’. This set by Richy Ahmed that has a rather good Cure bootleg in the middle. This song ‘Lullaby’ by Ben Caplan which is quite incredible.
Reading: I read a book in a couple of days. It was ‘Silence: In the Age of Noise’ by Erling Kagge. I enjoyed it so much that I recommended it to a few people and posted my copy to Ryan. Then I started reading Graham Greene’s ‘The Confidential Agent’ and had that nagging feeling I’ve read it before.
Also: I haven’t had an actual television for 15 years. While I was on holiday I watched a great deal of Guy Fieri’s Diners, Drive-Ins and Dives. He’s so enthusiastic about everything, it’s kind of soothing.
¹ I am 41
² That Wikipedia page could do with some more material
³ Project management fans will note that we had six weeks to ‘do something good’ on October 12 (see episode 6) but hey time is a construct
⁴ This reads like Paul isn’t very humble and I don’t respect him. That isn’t true but he does hold opposing views to me on guitar effects pedals so it serves him right
⁵ Shout out to Liz (data analyst), Alison (architect), and Bridget (architect)
