A very busy but fun week. Two of my colleagues flew in from Johannesburg to join our management team offsite meeting from Tuesday to Thursday. I’d put a lot of effort into planning these few days, and the week had finally arrived. Most of our management team have all been working together for seven or eight years and it feels like we’re a family, so it’s lovely when we can all be in the same place. Unfortunately, one of our local team members fell ill at the start of the week, so only joined one of our sessions remotely.
Going into London for a full five days was exhausting. By Friday night I was ready to drop.
This was a week in which I:
- Interviewed two candidates for the vacancy in my team. One of the interviews was in person, which felt a little like a step back in time. But after having met two candidates online last year that seemed to be blatantly using generative AI to answer our questions, being in the same room has its benefits.
- Had a couple of meetings on our document management project, clarifying the work done to date and agreeing on an approach for the next couple of weeks.
- Spent day one of our offsite meeting with Hoopla!, working on our collaboration and storytelling skills using improvisation techniques. The workshop was pitched as ‘yoga for your soft skills’ and this felt right; by the end of the day we’d all had a good workout, sharing many laughs and insights along the way. The phrase “wise wise wise…” is now with us for good. Thoroughly recommended.
- Had a fun night out at Electric Shuffle in London Bridge. It was just what we needed to unwind after an intense day of improv. The technology that runs the shuffleboard tables was very impressive, as was the range of games available to play.
- Got through the agenda for our offsite, covering a team check-in, the latest reading of our corporate strategy and presentations and discussions led by each of the function heads.
- Had a wonderful dinner to celebrate the success of last year’s major programmes with the extended team. The evening was perfect, with excellent food and a perfect ambience.
- Stayed up late on Tuesday night, watching the second inauguration of Donald Trump with horror. I’m not going to forget the tech leaders that stood there behind the new president as he announced that the federal government will recognise only two genders and the USA will look to expand its territory. Musk’s Nazi salute later that day was the disgusting icing on an abhorrent cake.
- Got out on my bike for Saturday morning’s club ride, my first outdoor ride of the year. The weather has been bad, with clear skies being accompanied by freezing temperatures. I’m too scared to go out when there’s a risk of ice. I was signed up for Sunday’s postponed Westerley Winter Warmer, but pulled out when I saw the weather forecast of heavy rain from the halfway point and a ‘feels like’ temperature of -6°C.
- Helped my son to dismantle his desk and replace it with a simple, inexpensive desk from Ikea. His friend has upgraded his gaming PC and has lent his old one to my son, but he didn’t have enough room to properly set it up.
- Had a lovely dinner out with close friends on Friday night at Tabure in Berkhamsted.
- Enjoyed a family lunch out in town on Sunday.
Media
Podcasts
- The Strong Songs analysis of Annie Lennox’s Walking On Broken Glass is superb. I’ve heard this song so many times on the radio, but this highlights so many details that I’ve never heard before. It makes you realise that something that seems simple is anything but.
Articles
- The Guardian: West Midlands teacher was ‘forced into hiding’ after doctored video alleged she made racist slur. Digital fakes don’t need to be very good in order to have a massively detrimental impact on your life. Although the victim in this case has been awarded damages, I’m not sure it can offset everything being turned upside down for her.
- Ben Werdmuller asks “In the face of rising fascism, what kind of person are you? What kind of person do you want to be?”
- Ian Dunt on How to resist the tech overlords.
- Jason Riddle, one of the January 6th rioters, rejected Trump’s pardon.
- Siri seems to be worse than ever, comically so.
- Ton Zijlstra articulates how difficult it is to buy ebooks outside of the big tech ecosystem. I couldn’t agree more. I’ve bought DRM-free ePub books from various publishers over the years but they probably make up about 1% of all of the ebooks I’ve purchased.
Audio
- Bought three second-hand Joe Jackson CDs from World of Books: Look Sharp!, Joe Jackson’s Jumpin’ Jive and Volume 4. World of Books is a great, and perhaps lesser-known, alternative to Discogs, eBay and Music Magpie.
- Picked up a copy of Rocky V: Music from and Inspired by the Motion Picture 1 from eBay. This is not a great album, but this was one of the first three CDs that I ever bought2 and I wanted to hear it again. I recently noticed that my original copy has gone missing and I only had poor 128kbps mp3 rips of some of the tracks in my library. The highlight of the album is Joey B Ellis’s Go For It, which was effectively the theme tune for the film. 13-year old me loved this.
Video
- Hearing Joey B Ellis again led me down a rabbit hole that culminated in watching Philly Boy: A Movie About MC Breeze (2002). It always feels strange to me to watch a historical documentary where the events being recounted are closer to when they made the film than they are to now. It’s not a great movie, and the quality of the YouTube upload is poor, but it was an intriguing bit of ephemera from the Philadelphia hip-hop scene. One of the talking heads was Funk Wizard Snow, the CEO/Editor of now defunct website phillyhiphop.com, who intrigued me as he had a copy of a FrontPage 2000 guidebook behind him. I couldn’t help looking up the archived pages from the website on the Wayback Machine.
- Watched The Breakthrough on Netflix, a four-part Swedish drama of a double murder that went unsolved for 16 years. The acting is good, but with the series being so short it felt like we didn’t really get to know the characters. I found myself putting that aside and coming back to the realisation that they were reconstructing things that actually happened.
Books
- Pressed pause on The McCartney Legacy Volume 2: 1974–80. I’m loving it, but it’s a big beast and I’m finding that there are too many other books that I feel that I need to get to right now…
- …which includes Fascism by Ian Dunt and Dorian Lynskey, a book that arose from their Origin Story podcast. I’m way behind on their main feed but noticed that their latest episode addressed Trump’s inauguration and Musk’s Nazi salute, and included an audiobook excerpt from this book. After having a debate with a friend this week on whether certain actions are fascist, this is the book I need.
Next week: Taking what we did on our offsite and getting on with the work.
- The title of this album is weird, because the MC Hammer tracks were neither from the film, nor inspired by it — they are remixes of tracks that appeared on one of his earlier albums. But maybe that’s just being pedantic. ↩
- Alongside George Michael’s Listen Without Prejudice: Volume One and a CD single of Do The Bartman. Eclectic. ↩
Webmentions
[…] ‘normal’ week of the year, where I wasn’t having to prioritise some near-term objectives. Our offsite meeting was behind us, so it was time to get on with the work. I struggled to find my mojo this […]