These notes are a tool I use for reflecting, remembering (to counter my SDAM), networking within my profession, and public accountability. Read more here.
Hello sexpot.
A killer use case for AI
A thought occurred to me. Given CoPilot (and the like) can now see all of a company’s interpersonal beef and back channel bullshit in aggregate, AI coaches could use that to orchestrate a fully harmonious company culture – fixing all the miscommunication, misalignment and misunderstanding through anonymised feedback, insights to fine-tune goal clarity and comms, remedies for dysfunctional processes that trip everyone up, and so on.
Is that a future I want? I think so, tbh, because those are the exact aspects of work I like the least and that cause the most stress.
But it’s also obviously dystopian as fuck, would quickly just become new table stakes rather than a competitive advantage, and all the worst (most fun?) bad-mouthing and back-channeling would just move off grid.
Anyway I Googled it. It’s a thing. People are writing articles on what agentic AI means for Organisational Network Analysis (ONA) and at least one company is already peddling it.
The tech is ready to do this today – the humans less so.
10 years, 0% ABV
I’m reached year 10 of being sans alcool (bar a couple of accidental sips here and there when bar staff did me wrong).
I stopped aged 39 because I’d had enough. In every sense. Fed up of the calories, broken sleep, loose lips, daily effort of willpower against an inherently moreish substance; and I felt like I’d had my share.
I didn’t require a Higher Power. Just some real talk about what booze is and a joyful rebellion against the marketing and social normalisation of consuming a solvent for fun (or for sophistication, celebration, commiseration, courage, relaxation, this snake oil does it all!)
I’ve written a Haudoo book called How to Stop Drinking.
It’ll only be useful if you already want to. But if you do, even a tiny bit, it might help.
Fitzrovia Light Industries being genuinely light on actual industry, it’s not been designed and printed yet …but it’s coming, it’s short, and I hope you’ll buy one.
Meanwhile, buy a bunch of the others, they’re great. Maybe write one as well?
Notes on a book
I read a real book about designing orgs for digital success, and shared my notes on it here.
Interesting conference
I went to Interesting 2026. My second time at one of these. Or maybe third? (🤷 SDAM)
I took my cynical 18 year old, and even he agreed it was interesting.
I was especially interested in: sea monkeys and their connection to the far right; the secret 154bpm time sequence in Radiohead’s Videotape; Brecht; and how Stack’s The Mortar revives the origin of magazines as digests from multiple sources.
It was nice to see familiar faces including Will, Steph, Emily, Jamie and Lindsey (while also finding the GDS mass reunion vibes challenging as an introvert).
Google that Radiohead rabbit-hole, I’ll see you back here in a few days.
Digital people getting coffee via public transport
☕ Frequenting cafes is my happy place. Especially for breakfast. Especially alone, but also sometimes to meet a friend or make a new one. This month: Caffe Tropea, BAFTA (with new friend Emma Perry), Cafe de Provence (with Russell D), Green Cactus and The Electric.
Russell’s theory of jobs
Russell has a great theory of jobs, equivalent to the good/fast/cheap theory of projects.
Jobs can be any two of the following, but never all three: easy, well paid, interesting.
If it’s interesting and well paid, that’s because it will also be borderline impossible. If it’s well paid and easy, that salary is compensating for a dull domain. If it’s easy and interesting, you’ll do it for less and they know it.
Dear diary
Worth noting (because noticing is half the battle) I’m really happy at the moment.
Things are good at work and at home. Nothing’s actively bad.
It’s not easy to feel happy, is it? Jimmy Carr of all people showed up in my feed on this topic: “Happiness is your quality of life minus envy”.
Aka your gratitude. I’m feeling grateful.
Work progress
Woah we’re all the way down here and I haven’t said a thing about the day job.
The Big 6 consultancy work I’m leading on is going great guns. 🤞 I’m hopeful it’ll point us in a really exciting direction for best use of capital, so we can emerge from a financial challenge with a more coherent, streamlined, sustainable, and more widely accessible cultural offering by our 100th birthday while continuing things we hold dear. We’re entering the final week, with lots to do to wrap that up with enough clarity for us to take it into planning and execution.
I completed a mini restructure to get cybersecurity and IT infrastructure remits better delineated and resourced. This small, vital change took months of hands-on directing but we’re there, more or less.
I built a radar tool (it’s just a spreadsheet) itemising all the work my leadership team needs to talk about in our group meetings and in our 1-1s. Optimistic about using it to have more focused conversations and build momentum and follow-through.
Our new governor appointments are about to be announced, and are exciting.
Our new cinemas beta is going public in a week and will knock people’s socks off (and yield lots of constructive feedback so we can iterate!)
Now now
I remembered to update my Now page.
Son 1’s game-making success
Son 1 is a finalist for a second year running in the BAFTA Young Game Designer’s Awards, this time for an ace, wittily weird platformer called Kompis and the Wells of Fontis. You can download and play on a PC from that link.
Thorpe Park heaven
Once in a lifetime experience klaxon.
I got a +1 invite to the wrap party for the new Harry Potter TV series (via the wife’s film producer, not work) and they’d hired out Thorpe Park for the evening.
So I got to hop on as many rides as I liked with no queues, at dusk, with the gaffers and best boys and MUAs. I rode Hyperia twice, Stealth thrice, Saw, The Swarm and The Walking Dead. Could have done more but I wanted (and it was only polite!) to be sociable too.
SXSW London II
Next week I’m hanging out at SXSW London (with one foot firmly in BFI, it’s a busy week). The crossover of tech and film makes this conference notionally a key one for my calendar but we’ll see, it wasn’t good last year and the schedule is (inevitably) dominated by AI talk. But my platinum pass is free this year after complaining last year about queues and chaos, and I’m going to squeeze what value I can from it.
Misc
We took son 2 to another Napoleonic Association recreation, this time at Chiltern Open Air Museum on the hottest day of the heatwave. It was nice.
I hit my goal weight. Luigi the PT put naked before/after pictures of me on his Insta 🫣.
Our garage is gone, and building work has begun for a garden gym.
Links you might like
- 8 different ways to organise your backlog
- The centre is from Mars, the edges are from Venus and this response
- Essential books for product builders—part 1
- Why Defining Teams Is So Hard
- Re-shaping (public sector) user centred design for an AI assisted world
- The logic of conjecture, part 2
- Public sector super apps are system-facing products, not just citizen facing ones
- Quick and dirty decision making framework
- The internet has no benches – this one is thought-provoking
- Rebuilding the car tax service in ten weeks in 2014
- How do you automate with AI in a way that people can actually trust?
- Working in the open ≠ comms
- 3 Conversations Every Leadership Team Should Have Before Their Next Strategic Planning Offsite
- The Digital Service was Never the Point
Sectoral stuff:
- BFI Replay coverage in Kokatu, PC Gamer, Metro and BBC Today (at 2hr54m)
- NT’s research into filmed theatre and UK audiences
- Measurable Impact of Structured Data for Discoverability of the Arts
- Remixing the archive: what we learned from inviting everyone in
Cultural highlights
I loved: 🎬 Obsession at the cinema, 🎬 rewatching Hacksaw Ridge and Downfall, 📺 brill sitcom Mum (by the Him & Her guy), 🎧 Jeff Parker and ETA IVtet Happy Today, 🎧 Gui and Adhi Katha Manjari, 🎧 Keith Jarrett The Koln Concert, 🎧 Ivy Lab Point Five EP.
I liked: 🎧 Boards of Canada Inferno, 📺 current Taskmaster, 🎧 The Field Now You Exist, 🎧 Sidings Craven Faults, 🎧 Seefeel Sol.Hz, 📖 Mr Nobody by Catherine Steadman.
I disliked: 📺 Kylie doc on Netflix (nice lady but guarded and not much to say), 🎬 Alien on Stage, 🎬 rewatching Y Tu Mama Tambien (too 90s), 📺 Eurovision.
And finally
Your prize for reading this far is some fun stuff:
- Leadership delivering the transformation roadmap [TikTok / YouTube]
- Predictable similes
- Eponymous laws
- The 40 most rage-inducing problems in tech via Matt
- Cosine club – electronic music similarity search engine 😍
Thanks for coming, enjoy the rest of your day.
