Welcome to another note, sponsored (little do they know) by Michael’s caff near the BRIT School where Joel does his filmmaking class, and where a customer just ordered a slap-up breakfast as a reward for having “already made 500K in stocks and shares and finished work for the day”. Which would be more believable if he didn’t also smell like he’d pooed himself (and not even recently). It’s that kind of place, but it beats waiting in the car.
Work, work, work
My healthier (within the bounds of the Michael’s menu) partial English is my reward for an excellent week of omnitasking at BFI towers. It included…
An update from the team working on a new digital-first service for accessing the BFI’s uniquely varied and wonderful cinema programme. Their recent progress blew my socks off and had me brimming with pride in the team’s exemplary user-centric practice and joyful multidisciplinary culture, and excited for the impact this work is likely to have on user experience, internal efficiency and box office take when it sees light of day. All credit to them, it’s everything I wanted and have been striving to create here, so yay and phew.
A fun half-day with one of our digital advisors, Col Needham, founder and CEO of IMDb, sharing the benefit of his experience with about a dozen people from the BFI’s Digital Services and Products department. He met folks working on the above cinema stuff, plus other impressive digital service transformation work relating to BFI archives, grant schemes, fundraising, and employee experience. We got loads out of Col’s visit, what a guy.
A discussion in the Exec Board about how we might optimise future use of our property estate. No decisions yet but the emerging options are exciting.
A meaty discussion on maturing our processes for capturing new demand for tech and digital work and making collective decisions about it. That old chestnut! Maybe I will blog about this separately sometime.
Intro meets with fab new colleagues Summer and Amalia – meeting-of-minds moments that left me optimistic about our ability to make some things that need to be better, better.
Plus a round of constructive and useful 1-1s, and some e-learning.
It’s not all work, work, work
I tagged along with Joy and friends to ABBA Voyage, curious to witness this technical marvel. I do not especially (as I’ve joked before) thank them for the music, so I opted for a seat away from the dancing queens. Turns out nowhere’s safe, it’s a 90-minute dance party for people who love ABBA almost as much as they love booze. It’s that kind of place, and it didn’t beat waiting in the car.
All week my phone was buzzing with notifications of new BlueSky followers. So happy to see it doubling to 16M users following the US election. It’s the best of the bunch imo and feels like early Twitter. “The vibes are immaculate” to quote The Verge, and the custom feeds beat any algorithms. Here’s a handy directory of starter packs to build your network quickly.
Had a good catch up with Tom Dolan, which we’d been trying to do for a while. Nice.
I watched this year’s supermarket Christmas ads through PressPlay (where I sometimes watch trailers as a research participant and earn Amazon vouchers). The Tesco one properly choked me up.
My mother in law stayed with us this weekend, it was nice to have her here.
🔎 Found, interesting 🧐
Two excellent reads (on Substack, sorry) about how phones are killing hobbies, going out, and even sex: The mainstreaming of loserdom and It’s obviously the phones.
Ben Holliday makes a solid point in analogue because of digital
Why your teams aren’t actually empowered and how to fix it via Emily.
Unibail-Rodamco-Westfield have finally resurfaced with a consultation on Croydon’s town centre, which they’ve held hostage and let rot for 12 years.
The BFI UX crew have adopted an “iterative possibility sprints” approach as defined here (paywall)
Sarah Gold’s 3 ideas to shape the government digital vision
Actual deaths by PowerPoint, via Col Needham.
Cultural consumption
🎬 Wilding. Wonderful. Slips down a treat, this.
🎬 The Remarkable Life of Ibelin. Weepy doc on Netflix about a boy living vicariously through World of Warcraft as his body progressively weakens. Highly recommend, with tissues at the ready.
🎬 The Bank Job. Silly Statham fun.
🎬 Beasts Clawing at Straws. Violent Korean neo-noir crime thriller on BFI Player.
📺 The Perfect Couple. Episode 1, not hooked.
📺 Taskmaster finale. It’s been a cracking season, don’t you think?
🎧 I’ve been revisiting Venetian Snares, and discovered via the algo Park Hye Jin (top picks: I Fucked Up So Many Times, Oh My Babe, I Don’t Care. I like the off-the-cuff vibe)
🕹️ Zelda: Echoes of Wisdom cont.
📖 The Thing Itself cont (it’s really good, this)
Distractions
- Random hi (TikTok)
- Photos 10 and 11 🦔 (Rightmove)
- Domino grove (puzzle game)
Breaking up is never easy, I know, but I have to go. Knowing me, knowing you, aha….
