These notes are a tool I use for reflecting, remembering (because I can't), networking and public accountability. Read more here.
Coming atcha from Michael’s caff after a week that flew by faster than Tom Cruise on a biplane wing. The caff’s brimming with bunting and local pride because Crystal Palace are in the final tonight (it’s never final though is it, the constantly happening football).
Work
Hot news: we’ve kicked off official blogging from my teams to show our working in public. Check out our first 2 posts: A pivotal year for digital transformation at the BFI and What we’re doing to transform the digital service for our cinemas.
Hotter news: it was incredible to be part of honouring Tom Cruise with a BFI Fellowship, which entailed 3 moments with the man himself: Tom In Conversation, Tom on the IMAX roof, Tom’s award dinner.
I didn’t get to say hi – we set ourselves a ‘family hold back’ rule so Tom could enjoy his evening and guests. Which also means I didn’t get to tell him my son is named after Risky Business (we called him Joel, not “Risky Business”, to be clear) and thus earn my spot on Tom’s cake list. But I did find myself very close to him at points, and got to hear him speak twice in intimate rooms – albeit not intimate in content.
He doesn’t give much away. It’s all business and cinema-centric intensity (the man is a relentless devotee to making, watching and celebrating movies) but he was genuine, warm, and able to laugh at himself including at his own relentlessness. Ultimately, just a bloke whose work is his whole life without much else to talk about (and yeah some stuff to avoid talking about). But the work! Oh the work!
Since team Tom rolled on to Cannes, there’s been some regret about our squandering the opportunity to use his interview video to drive traffic to BFI Player instead of (or before) YouTube. I’m frustrated because I asked for exactly that to happen months ago. So I’ve been reflecting on the challenge of follow-through here, when responsibilities are federated and differing opinions can quickly cause an idea to dissipate. Another victory for Conway’s Law but, like Tom and his movie-making, I’ll never give up.
Lukewarm news: still working on the shop cyber incident and recovery. We had a very good BFI Player steering group – proving itself a very useful counter-Conway manouvre. A lot of focus lately on risk logs. And my quarterly operational planning and insights meeting with colleagues in finance and business operations.
Overall, I’m feeling behind and overwhelmed having lost April and half of May to cyber.
Work-ish
I’m doing a podcast interview on Monday with Ash. I’m a bit anxious about it. I’m anxious about everything but specifically for this: will I be boring, unmasked as a fraud, or overshare? The danger of speaking to a fellow traveller is slipping into cathartic therapy mode and overly foregrounding the negatives. Wish me luck!
Not work
We gave Joel a blissful day by taking him to see the Napoleonic Association encamped in full role-play at Fort Amherst.
He’s become obsessed with this era of history, and loved seeing it recreated and chatting to like-minded people so much I’ve booked to take him to this epic battle recreation at the actual Waterloo Battlefield at the end of June.
Dylan had some exciting news I can’t talk about yet.
Links
- Principles for Service Organisations
- Digital Readiness self-assessment
- Mapping digital project types in the arts and culture sector
- Building an OKR community
- Women in Digital: Emma Gawen from which I snipped this excellent few paragraphs.
- WCAG in plain English
- User Inyerface – a worst-practice UI experiment
- Where Great Product Roadmap Ideas Come From
- Most Backlog Management Is Just Organised Procrastination
- MPs highlight gaps in Whitehall’s cyber resilience
- Don’t take grants for granted – case study from FF Studio’s work with Sports England
- Quite like this format for logging stuff to remember from Peter Kappus
Niche interest:
- ACE hands £800,000 contract to ‘radical transformation’ consultants
- Croydon unveils bold new vision to unlock growth across the borough (again!)
- Is Mubi Really Worth $1 Billion? Inside Efe Cakarel’s Plan
- Letterboxd to launch TVOD video store
Culture
In order of best to worst, I recently consumed:
🎬 Final Destination: Bloodlines. An immensely fun fairground ride with guaranteed screams and laughs, and you’ll see danger everywhere on the way home.
🎬 The Inventor: Out for Blood in Silicon Valley. Excellent jaw-dropper on Elizabeth Holmes and Theranos. Interesting on the blurred lines between visionary belief, delusion and lies.
🎧 Swindled podcast recommended by Jem. Two brilliant episodes on the Titan sub implosion, and Valujet crash, due to their reckless egocentric corporate leaders. Been thinking about both a lot since listening, highly recommend.
⚽ MOTD: FA Cup Final. In spite of my general lack of interest in the constantly happening football, even I enjoyed this ousting of Man City and epic rise from the local team.
🕹️ Blue Prince. Perplexing and relaxing.
🎧 Girls! by Coach Party is a belter.
📺 New Taskmaster. I’m on team Baynton.
🎧 View from My Window by Hiroshi Yoshimura
🎬 Rain Man. Revisited this the night before Tom’s In Conversation which was handy cos he mentioned it a lot. Meanders a bit (workshopped by two actors) and you wouldn’t make it/cast it like that now, but still touching and Tom nails his char’s journey.
📺 Eurovision Song Contest 2025. What the hell just nearly happened? So tense.
🎬 Cleaner. A curious straight-to-Sky action flick with Daisy Ridley where she mostly hangs about on a window cleaning rig doing nothing, but it’s somehow very watchable.
🎧 We Live in a Society by Flume and JPEGMAFIA
📺 Untold: The Liver King. Fun bit of weirdness but only has one very obvious revelation. Stuff about content creators makes me wistful for simpler, healthier times.
📺 Saving Private Ryan to show the kids. War sequences still harrowing but otherwise awfully mawkish.
🎬 Jack Reacher. Plugged a gap in my Tomography but not going to trouble my Tom Ten.
Seeing Magnolia tonight at the BFI – think I only saw it once when it came out so should be good to revisit.
The end. See you for the next one of these in a week, a fortnight or a month.
