Eek. It’s the end of February and this is my first Weeknotes. I believe in the power of reflection in professional settings but the harsh reality it is always the first task I drop off my TODO list when things get busy. Actually it is the second - “reading” is first.
What I’ve been doing
Since when?! This week I have been feeling like I’m racing against multiple deadlines. Last week we held a very well attended (over 100 people) workshop introducing civil society organisations not directly working in data and AI to issues relating to changes that are coming. The follow up of notes / slides / newsletter sign up management took a bit longer than I planned (largely due to the ‘interruption’ of half term / taking some leave.
We’ve got a Board meeting next week so another focus has been the papers for them, including getting to a final (pre-Board) draft of next year’s budget and trying to strike the right balance on the update about what we’ve been up to since they last met.
We’ve also got two members of the team leaving this month (keep an eye out for their “leaver’s blogs”) and with that comes some administration (and another learning experience of calculating someone’s final pay / pensions etc).
What I need to take care of
We’ve got a big project kicking off and I need to get on top of the project management for that. That’s actually the focus for the rest of my day. I’m not delivering anything directly but need to ensure time is booked in diaries, milestones and leads are explicit and that we start promoting the opportunity for community campaigns to join a cohort of others to access advice and funding for their work around data and AI (read more here).
I also want to make sure our two leavers leave well. I will miss Jonathan’s input to conversations and the social but also world focussed chats we’ve had. Jonathan and I have a similar career background to this point and have often swapped note about our experiences and adjustments to new working contexts. Jonathan is a huge people person and I know he’ll do great things in his next role.
Maria and I don’t really cross paths in a delivery sense of our work as she is focussed on research and case studies, but Maria is definitely the person I have spent most social time with. As an organisation we’ve been playing around with GatherTown a bit (more on that another time) and Maria and I have been co-working in there pretty much every day (for an hour or so) for the last month. It has (I hope for both of us!) been a lovely time of laughter, chatter and kind of office silliness whilst also still cracking on with work. There is definitely an element of it replicating the old office environment and sharing that time with Maria has been fun.
What I’ve been inspired or challenged or moved by
This video is a few months old now but will remain timeless and impactful I think. My heart of stone wept watching it. Football has the power to reach many with important messages and I hope this achieves that. I applaud Norwich City Football Club for such an impactful effort. (Trigger warning: Mental health, suicide).
What I’ve been reading
I have recently started Dan McQuillan’s “Resisting AI: An anti-facist approach to artificial intelligence” and almost every page so far is making me exclaim and/or shake my head. I’m finding it a little heavy going as it is academic in nature so there’s been smattering of Enid Blyton’s Secret Seven being read in and around it.