The Unconference 4

Hello there. Didn’t write any weeknotes last week, which feels a bit naughty. To tell the truth, I had a stinking hangover on Saturday thanks to product managers in the public sector (and, in particular, Tom at NHS England) and I had to spend the day spring-cleaning the garden. There really wasn’t much impetus to sit down and note the week.

But we’re nearly at the end of another week, and it’s worth noting things down before I disappear into the weekend.

In homage to Neil Williams and his caff, I’m sat in my local nursing a pint of Guinness (not 0%, so not true neillyneil) and writing these weeknotes. All the regulars are here: the Scottish couple whose blind dog has an underbite; the bloke who stands at the bar alone; the four ladies with massive cocktails who’ve been here since 5pm, based on their slurred words!

I came here because I’m feeling like my high street is worth supporting. You see, working on a data platform for the planning system means you think a lot about local places, how they’re made up and who lives in them.

Since moving here, I’ve always been curious about my high street. It seems busy (probably thanks to being so close to Crystal Palace football club) and there’s very few branded shops. There’s lots of independent places but also lots of empty places. So those businesses are worth supporting – and we’re lucky to have an independent pub.

That means there’s also lots of opportunity for branded shops and chains to move into those vacant places, to make money out of all the people moving to the area. But that’s the sort of thing that Business Improvement Districts and neighbourhood planning can help with, making sure that local places don’t lose that local feel.

‘Cause that’s something you could lose if you only think about the data: the points, the polygons, the labels, the references. You could lose the feel, the colour of a place in all the cleaned, sanitised data. (That’s why the energy, liveness and loudness in Spotify’s data for tracks has always been so cool.)

Anyway, that’s way more preamble than I usually write. What have I actually been doing?

  • Sorted out my task tracking, so I can make sure I’m working on the right things
  • Joined a few community calls to hear psd pitch the vision for the platform, and what we’re trying to do
  • Validated how we can actually measure some performance metrics we’d like to track
  • Met Ann properly!
  • Had way too much fun screaming singing Sabotage by Beastie Boys at karaoke
  • Ran the fourth Product for the People unconference with Jukesie and Debbie (blog post soon!)
  • Worked on some team design with Emma, our operations owner
  • Met new people joining our team
  • Looked at how we might get better, quicker insights on how our product works for users (or doesn’t)
  • Thought about key performance indicators for the platform (I’ve done away with the idea of a platform-level OKR, it’s pants)
  • Chatted to Rainer Kattel about governance for digital public works
  • Caught up with the GOV.‌UK Design System crew and heard Charlotte and Calvin talk about WCAG 2.2 at Design Systems London #9
  • Pulled together a startup-style pitch deck with psd
  • Met with the community managers for our weekly not-retro (for keeping aligned and highlighting improvements)
  • Did a community session with DLUHC product & delivery people on our OKRs
  • Sadly said goodbye to the excellent Paul Smith who I’m gutted I won’t get to work more closely with!

Tomorrow I’ve got a few one-to-ones and then I’ll be thinking about our product development model. Plus trying to shape a proper kick-off because we missed the quarterly checkpoint but it’s still a valuable exercise.

I’ve not really thought about much outside of work. But my long run last week was great! I ran 30km along the Vanguard Way and back, feeling much better than I did the previous week, and bagging myself a personal best (40 minutes faster than my previous time!).

I got my gaming PC fixed and I’m looking forward to playing Stalker co-op.

Dunno what else to write. I need to keep better notes as they occur. Jenny Tough’s book Solo has some great notes on failure as a stepping stone to success, and how to do hard things but enjoy it.

And, on that note, I need to go home and rest so I can do a double run tomorrow.

Hwyl fawr.

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· Weeknotes

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