I write these notes to reflect, remember (because I don't), compare scars with fellow digital pros, and for public accountability. Read more here.
Alternative titles for this post include “the fortnight my wife’s debut feature got released in the States” or “the fortnight my old boss Mandelson got his comeuppance” but these are my weeknotes, attention on me everyone.
Work/life/balance
Look at this beauty:
This was seven hours of stabby inky time, and after another two-hour sitting in late Feb it will end up like this (but less backlit):
I’ve always loved toy robots. They’re all I ever wanted from the Argos catalogue as a kid. We have actual robots now with their own social media but the 80s scifi utopian vision was more fun. Plus, I’m a task robot myself, and tenacious like a Terminator that WILL NOT STOP until your services are all digitally transformed. Albeit an introverted one, with a fritzed graphics card and limited memory.
I flipping love my new tattoo. Shoutout to my artist Jimi at Seven Dials Tattoo.
Work’s been a lot again. A LOT. Good days, bad days, awful days, awesome days. Too many days down in the weeds of a small corrective tweak that’s taking disproportionate effort, emotion and time. Other days deep in strategic future planning with brilliant, brilliant colleagues. A bit like that.
Some specific stuff I’ve been up to:
- Approaching digital bigwigs to join the BFI Board of Governors
- Working with the CEO on some early stage ideas
- Sharing headlines from our recent trifecta of exec team planning days, first with the wider BFI leadership, then with the whole organisation
- Chairing the project board for our ticketing system re-procurement
- Getting closer to Sight and Sound, which I’m looking after while Jason is away
- Introducing and enjoying my directorate all-hands show and tell (Digital Donut Time)
- Getting Dave to demo skillstats to my team, cos it has potential to be useful here
- Having a planning day of my own with my digital leadership deputies
I’ve once again found myself reaching for the McKinsey 3 Horizons model as a framing device for thinking about what needs doing now while laying down tracks for the future. Tanya Cordrey introduced me to this one years ago and it’s really stuck. So I’ve been using it this past fortnight to capture and share what I think we need to be focusing on this year.
The multidisciplinary teams, meanwhile, are knocking H1 work out of the park. We’re close to launching 3 new user-facing products onto the www and making headway internally on loads of fronts. Punching above our weight all the time, it’s exhausting and hard, but good. Dead proud of all my teams.
More to do on H2 and H3 though.
Now watch this:
The wife’s twisty dark thriller 7 KEYS dropped in North America last week. UK folks can watch the full length trailer (above) and listen to the excellent dark and moody original soundtrack (Spotify, Apple, YouTube Music). Friends in the USA and Canada can now stream the full movie on loads of platforms, all listed here. A UK release is tba.
🔎 Found, interesting 🧐
- Five ways of thinking about Moltbook
- Changing The Theatrical Experience Forever
- In public: Notes on working in the open
- Mothership – feminist-skewed gaming blog
- Lean Thinking in Modern Software Delivery
- The Ground We Travel – a series on Transformation – Part One – Introducing the Chrysalis Work and Part two – Building the Protective Shell
- Testing a new GOV.UK publishing application: Content Block Manager – this was on the backlog way back in 2013, glad it made it to the top!
- Why Keeping Up with Change Feels Harder Than Ever
- X-GOV.UK increasingly useful repository of patterns and guides
- Service Design Is Only Half Right
- The Dead Language of Corporate Life – “say words, mean things”
Cultural highlights
🎬 Apollo 13 ⭐⭐⭐⭐⭐ 30th anniversary screening at BFI IMAX
🎬 The Rip ⭐⭐⭐⭐ Great fun, great cast.
🎬 The Perfect Neighbour ⭐⭐⭐⭐ Bodycam footage earns its keep in this shout-at-the-telly doc that says lots about Trump’s America.
🎬 Companion ⭐⭐⭐⭐
🎬 Sentimental Value ⭐⭐⭐
📺 Take That ⭐⭐⭐⭐ Nothing new, but still engaging
📺 Him & Her S1 ⭐⭐⭐⭐⭐
📺 Harry Hill Show (YouTube) ⭐⭐⭐ Scrappy but kind of brilliant. The banner image on this post is Harry’s new AI chatbot, Susan.
🎤 Daniel Kitson: Work in Progress ⭐⭐⭐⭐⭐
🎤 Rosie Jones, Ivo Graham, Charlie Baker, Chantel Nash and Kerry Godliman at son 2’s school’s annual comedy fundraiser (Kerry is a mum at the school) ⭐⭐⭐⭐
🎧 Mandy, Indiana – Sicko! EP and URGH album ⭐⭐⭐⭐⭐
🎧 Freddie Hubbard – Red Clay ⭐⭐⭐⭐⭐
🎧 Wild Things: Siegfried and Roy ⭐⭐⭐
🎧 Mary-Anne Hobbs: Dubstep Warz@20 ⭐⭐⭐⭐
📖 The Wall, John Lanchester ⭐⭐⭐⭐
Distractions
- Crossplay by NYT. Asynchronous Scrabble. I swear everyone’s cheating with gen-AI.
- Felt like I was in a long dark tunnel [TikTok]
See you next time :)
