What I’ve been doing
I’m writing these weeknotes on a train home from London - I’m both tired but also it seems like a good time to reflect on the last couple of weeks. Also it is worth noting that it is a Saturday. Yes, I have just worked … on a Saturday! What makes me chuckle most about this is that for the ten years I worked in public libraries working on Saturdays (and indeed Sundays) was a fortnightly experience. But gracious my Friday night felt odd.
The reason for working today was a half day student workshop getting their views on monitoring of AI chatbots. I was on safeguarding, parent hosting and logistics. All seemed to go well and people seemed happy (holding my breath a little that I don’t get any calls regarding travel home for them being disrupted). As always we tried to show as much care to the attendees (and their parents enabling their attendance). We had a room for parents to hang out in (if they didn’t want to go for a stroll around London) with snacks - and of course the same for the students.
In addition to sorting the logistics for today I’ve also been spending some time doing video clipping from the hours of recordings of the online PAIRS event and published the first one.
The biggest tick on the ToDo list though was our conference last week. We had some great feedback from attendees and I loved hearing the speakers too. It all went smoothly from a logistics perspective (some comments about the lunch could’ve been better but for a free to attend conference I was comfortable with the quality) so I’m pleased it’s been successfully delivered.
What I need to take care of
Well firstly, finishing these weeknotes. I started them on Saturday and am now finishing them (I hope) on a train back into London today (Tuesday) for a stakeholder version of Tuesday’s workshop. I’ll be notetaking during this session - and bringing the post its. I’m bracing for a lot of post it transcribing on the train home and tomorrow (the turnaround on the write up that Jeni needs to do is very tight).
I also need to finish the PAIRS video clipping. We’re getting close now. There’s a couple where one speaker doesn’t consent so I need to wrangle those a little and work out best how to still platform the rest of the speakers but lots are now on YouTube and by the end of next week at the latest I really hope everything that can be published will be.
Sometime soon I need to start the annual report process. At this point that’s just pulling together everything we’ve done as bullet points, links and photos, into one document. I suspect that isn’t going to start until April though with all the other priorities at the moment.
It’s the end of another quarter this month - and of the financial year - and therefore of the current strategic roadmap. We’ll have a team retrospective accordingly (though we don’t all have coalescing available time in our diaries for almost three weeks now) and then the new roadmap will be published and we’ll be starting our final year of Connected by Data. End of the year also means there’ll be some bits to do for our accountant and a March newsletter to our subscribers is due too.
I can … almost … feel the breathing space …
What I’ve been inspired or challenged or moved by
I haven’t got any links I can share with this update - but our conference was motivating to me. The speakers (including their breadth of perspectives) and the participants who came (stayed) and engaged with all the content. It was a great day.
What I’ve been reading
I’m now reading ‘Sisters of Sword and Shadow’ by Laura Bates. She is the Founder of the Everyday Sexism Project and through her fiction writing challenges misogynistic history - rewriting it with a feminist lens. If you like Arthurian legend fiction (and aren’t offended by strong women) I recommend it.