I worked a 3.75 day week. My nice planned Monday off got somewhat messed up by spending half of it on a coach cos of the flooded railways coming back from Falmouth, but the National Express service was dead good (I’m a convert!) and I got a whole work-related book read on the journey. I took a couple more hours off on Tuesday to take Joel to an appointment – a game changer for his ability to thrive at school.
Work, work, work
We advertised these rather excellent jobs:
- Head of Cyber Sec circa £85K – closes 9 Dec
- Senior Software Developer, BFI Player up to £75K – closes 12 Dec
- Software Developer, BFI Player up to £61K – closes 12 Dec
The team and I have been bombarded by recruiters, which we don’t want. But I do want you to share my Linkedin and BlueSky posts with your network if you’re feeling helpful (or put it in your weekly jobs newsletter, if you’re Jukesie). They’re here, here, here and here.
I had a 1-1 with the boss, team meetings of both my senior team and the Exec, a discussion about a new retail strategy (we plan to make the BFI shop much better, in person and online), some intro meetings with Jeremy (new interaction designer covering Anna’s mat leave) and Phoebe (a stellar hire into our People Team – another fab ally for people-centred work culture, so I’m excited about what she and my gang can achieve together).
With Rishi, from the BFI’s policy directorate’s research team, I met an external consultancy who want to collaborate on a responsible AI standard for the screen industry. Sector stuff is not my area to lead on but I totally see the need and would like us to be on the front foot.
We’re in the last week of a scheduled annual records review, mostly done by others but there were a few decisions for me as well purging my own redundant files and emails, so I spent time deleting and reorganising stuff at the end of the week. Quite satisfying.
One of the perks of my job is picking up free copies of the BFI’s latest DVD and BluRay releases. This week the lovely Ben sorted me out for a cracking trio of beautiful boxes, the standout (for me) being our 4K UHD restoration of Watership Down. It comes with a set of postcards showing original sketches (conserved by the BFI National Archive) which are so achingly wonderful I’ve asked Joy to get them framed for me for Christmas.
Work-adjacent reading
The importance of writing in leadership. This one resonated for me, obviously. I owe much of my career to this one weird trick.
Goal-o-rama by John Cuttlefish. A helpful clarification on different flavours of goals, including “anti-goals or NOKRs” which pleases me for both cerebral and puerile reasons.
Ben Welby on visualising government as a platform.
A warmer why. Thoughts from Lloyd Davis on remote work and finding the “why” to encourage a return to more co-location.
So you’re thinking of becoming a delivery manager. Advice for new or prospective DMs from Ian Ames.
Digital transformation: why it’s hard and how to make it work by Padma Gillen.
It’s not all work, work, work
I squeezed out another CP triangle post. It’s a struggle fitting them in, but I’ll keep going.
We went to a festive lecture at Imperial (part of our ongoing uni scoping for Dylan). It was a talk about gravity and the mysteries of the universe, called The Beauty of Falling, which had potential to be profound and enthralling. The speaker really didn’t get the assignment, alas.
I signed up for Dave’s ding dong.
The decorations are in from the garage. Tomorrow I will put the tree up.
Cultural consumption
📓Re-read Inspired by Marty Cagan on my 5.5 hours coach trip. I took these notes, you can have them.
🎬 A Real Pain. A decent directorial debut, if a bit written. Poignant but how could a concentration camp not be? Jesse and Kieran v watchable but how could they not be?
🎬 All We Imagine As Light. At the cinema. BFI is distributing this Cannes Grand Prix winner which means it’ll be an exclusive for BFI Player subscribers next year. But it’s in cinemas now, and benefits from being distraction-free and is jolly nice to look at.
📺 Loaded: Lads, Mags and Mayhem. A belter of a doc, and James Brown comes off much better than you might think.
🎬 Super/Man: The Christopher Reeves Story. A solid happy/sad doc but hardly revelatory, and Reeves comes off less well than you might think. Impossible to not want to rewatch Superman 1-3 afterwards.
🎧 Sticking with Blanck Mass, I’ve been listening to his eponymous debut album repeatedly. Bloody wonderful.
🎧 x ray eyes by LCD Soundsystem. It’s giving All The Critics Love U in New York vibes.
🎧 Atomic Wave Dance by The Comet is Coming.
Distractions
- The real locations from Watership Down, today
- The strange reason most films end by saying they’re fiction
- Cats in boxes and synchronised cats [TikTok]
Happy advent. I’ve got daily alcohol free beers and Tony’s Chocolonely on the go here. What’s behind your little doors?
2 Comments
I asked Marty Cagan to come and do a talk for product folks in 2018, and we recorded it. Video here: https://vimeo.com/296029509 (the password is ‘inspired’).
Oh wow, thanks Steve! Will give that a watch