The week I turned 4 | weeknotes 16 Feb 2026

I write these notes to reflect, remember (cos I don't), compare scars with digital pros, and for public accountability. Read more here.

🎂 It’s my 4th anniversary at the BFI. 

It was exciting then, it’s exciting now, it hasn’t been consistently exciting all along, but what is? 

Perhaps nothing, as these relatable lines from Darwin’s letters demonstrate: 

“I hate every wave of the ocean” 
“Oh my God how I do hate species and varieties” 
“I am very tired, very stomachy and hate nearly the whole world” 
“I am very poorly today and very stupid and hate everybody and everything”
“I hate myself, I hate clover, and I hate bees” 
“I am languid and bedeviled and hate writing and hate everybody” 

I guess any job worth doing is full of moments like those.

As I start year 5 I remain excited by the BFI’s mission, the impactful work my teams are doing in partnership with others, the trust we’ve earned from colleagues and governors, how brilliant everything the BFI delivers actually is, and the potential to share that far wider.

My “I hate bees” moments tend to come from the tedium of navigating inadequate resourcing, and the frustrations of operating in a context so devoid of the fundamentals it’s hard to know which problem to fix first.

Still. I’ve definitely made a difference in 4 years, we are fixing some problems, and I’m refocusing on my new points of leverage as a more established leader (as opposed to a new broom).

We’re 3 years into our 10 year strategy, so we’re getting ready to kick things up another gear to be a significantly digitally transformed BFI by our 100th birthday. 

That entails stepping up pan-organisation DDaT governance and capability initiatives, and mocking-up the destination for our content, products and platforms to give everyone a more compelling and clear north star to aim towards. 

Speaking of Darwin, and kicking up a gear, my position on AI has evolved. 

“Something big is happening” indeed. 

Tools like Claude Code, Replit and Lovable have come on leaps and bounds. Seedance has got Hollywood spooked (and fighting back harder on copyright).

It’s all becoming more useful, less error-prone, more self-evidently game changing, and more urgent to be using it and figuring out what the future of knowledge work will be.

I’m just as worried about slop and copyright theft, and more worried than I was about mass job displacement (per Matt Schumer’s viral essay), abuses and deepfakes (sexual and political and commercial), and the security, scalability and reliability of vibe-coded web apps.

But I’m also excited by its rapid leaps, and significantly more in favour of embracing and actively exploring how it can help my too-small teams to do more, and be adopted across our organisation in all sorts of advantageously disruptive ways. 

I’ve been playing with it more often myself. Not at the level Tom Loosemore is doing. But I use chat services dozens of times a day now, just got a full fat CoPilot to play with, and had a quick go on Replit to knock out a rough prototype of that north star BFI digital vision. It wasn’t it, but it wasn’t far off either from a single short prompt with no refinement.  

Conversely, when AI replaces my current career I might launch an analogue transformation agency. (Partially inspired by a catch up with Russell, who is un-digitising aspects of his workplace).

Because soon there’ll be nobody left who even remembers how we got work done before email and Saas. A lot of it was better. A lot of it was cheaper, with no cyber security to worry about.

Some organisations blindly using Salesforce, Jira and Monday.com might benefit from more written memos, more walking around, more stuff on walls everyone can see and point at, and simpler ways to keep track of customers. Who’s with me?

Actual time spent since my last note has been mostly, frustratingly, HR casework and “difficult conversations”. Plus routine meetings and keeping on top of active projects. 

There’s work happening on an evaluation of our strategy progress and sharpening up the logic model for the next phase. So I did some head scratching about the stimulus materials for an upcoming workshop. It could prove very instructive.

The BFI Player website is snazzier than ever, with film pages now updated to the new design. 

In non-work news, it’s half term right now. I’ve got 3 days off. I’ve been having a clearout and selling a lot of stuff on Vinted.

(Aside 1) Vinted is to eBay as Letterboxd is to IMDb. Discuss.

(Aside 2) Having a clearout is what my grandad used to call going for a shit.

I’m slimmer and fitter (and eating way more cottage cheese) than I’ve ever been and it’s making me happy.

That said, I tore a muscle doing weighted lunges. I ordered ice spray on Amazon for it but got sent something else. Good job I noticed, eh readers?

I’m prepping son 1 to get his first holiday job. Trying to start him off with some unpaid experience in retail or customer service at Easter, so he can get paid casual work in the summer and during uni. Shout if you know anyone who wants free student labour!

🔎 Found, interesting 🧐

The ‘attention equation’: Winning the right battles for consumer attention and Mind the attention gap: Winning the battle for UK consumer attention 

Why “They” is The Most Dangerous Word at Work via Emily Webber

Learning from LocalGovDrupal – brilliant stuff from the lovely Will Callaghan

Stuck explaining user needs… again?

Cultural highlights 

🎬 The King ⭐⭐⭐⭐⭐ Chalamet rules in this terrific film.
🎬 The Descent ⭐⭐⭐⭐ (on BFI Player) Fun to revisit.
🎬 Swallow ⭐⭐⭐ (on BFI Player) Odd, in a good way.
🎬 Send Help ⭐⭐ Disappointing.

📺 Building The Band ⭐⭐⭐⭐ So Gen-Z. Allison is fun to hate. 
📺 Him & Her S2 ⭐⭐⭐⭐⭐ Sitcom gold.
📺 The Winter Olympics ⭐⭐⭐ Mental stuff. I don’t know what we gain by multiple stills of athletes in motion, but well done to the BBC graphics team anyway.

🎧 superimposed by upsammy & Valentina Magaleti ⭐⭐⭐⭐⭐

Distractions

• Winter arc [TikTok]
• Neal.fun 
• Epstein muffins

That’ll do for this one, thanks so much for reading.