Before I had the good fortune to spend four nights away on holiday, I had a three-day working week.
This was a short week in which I:
- Caught up with a colleague to get their feedback on their interview with the person I have found for the vacancy in my team.
- Had two ‘pre-interviews’ with alternative candidates. It’s unusual that the first person you interview is the one you want to join your team, so it was good to speak to another couple of people before making a decision.
- Met to discuss feedback from one of our regulators. We’ve agreed a follow-up approach with our Internal Audit team.
- Met with our sister company to present our plans for the technology for the meeting rooms that we share. We covered the technology and design for each room, the operating model, and the costs. We’d had the meeting planned for a very long time and it was great to finally agree a way forward. Off the back of this meeting, we kicked off a process to request quotes from vendors for the supply and installation of the meeting room equipment.
- Had the weekly meeting with our audio/visual consultants on our project for the shared meeting rooms. We also had separate meetings with the project manager from our sister company to cover off a few items that we needed to align on.
- Took a walk around the construction taking place in the shared spaces on two floors of our building. It was strange to be in familiar places that had been completely repurposed, such as a meeting room that had been set up as the construction team’s office.
- Reviewed the setup of our divisible meeting room to assess how we might test the functionality and performance of multiple table cameras.
- Spent some more time with a colleague working through a data analysis in Excel.
- Alongside a handful of colleagues from my department, had a ‘meet and greet’ session with our new regional CEO. It was good to learn a bit more about him.
- Had our regular project meeting for the setup of a brand new office in a new location.
- Reviewed an early draft of a business case for monitoring and managing signals for new client leads.
- Met with a global accounting and advisory firm that we are working with to give them an overview of our function and to answer some questions on our technology setup.
- Updated some slides I put together a couple of years ago on the topic of Digital Literacy and Digital Dexterity, aligning them to broader goals that have been communicated in our organisation this year.
- Enjoyed our weekly Learning Hour, this time with a guest speaker who gave us an overview of FinOps and our approach to it within our company.
- Had a conversation with an analyst from Gartner about how companies are tackling the proliferation of meeting recording, particularly using AI bots. The feedback was that we’re a couple of steps ahead of current thinking. I need to chew this over and write more about it.
- Felt like I spent too much time in forums and meetings that had a poor return on investment of my attention. I’m going to be even more selective about these in the coming weeks.
- Felt sorry for my friends who were riding the insane challenge of London-Edinburgh-London. Storm Floris blew in and paused the ride, eventually cancelling it a few hours later. I know that so much preparation had gone into the ride. They still managed to cover over 900km each, so it’s still a great achievement. 2029, anyone?
Media
Podcasts
- Interesting to hear an interview with Dale Vince, a one-time homeless eco warrior who has become a renewable energy millionaire. I had never heard of him before.
Articles
- I love the concept of a ‘macroscope’, zooming out to see the bigger picture. “The man who cleans the urinals at an airport and says he’s ensuring 40 million people per year have a pleasant and safe trip, clearly is using a macroscope effectively.”
- “Didn’t Take Long To Reveal The UK’s Online Safety Act Is Exactly The Privacy-Crushing Failure Everyone Warned About”.
- Molly White has written a great introduction to using RSS feeds to have news from writers you like come to you. I’ve been using Feedbin since Google Reader was sent to the grave and have been very happy with it.
- People who write newsletters on Substack should leave Substack. There are so many more newsletters I would pay for if they weren’t hosted there.
- An Airbnb host tried to falsely claim damages from a guest by manipulating photos of furniture to make it look damaged. I can’t imagine even thinking of doing that to someone.
Audio
- I’ve invested in some more Wilder Maker, buying a vinyl and digital copy of their first album Year Of Endless Light as well as pre-ordering the vinyl version of their upcoming album The Streets Like Beds Still Warm from Juno. (Shipping on the new album from Bandcamp was crazy expensive, so it was slightly cheaper to buy a digital copy on Bandcamp and the record from a UK store.)
- Started watching the epic new Billy Joel documentary. I’m a total sucker for an in-depth examination of anyone from the pop canon, and this is excellent.
Web
- A friend recommended Muri as the best example of alcohol-free wine that he has tried. I don’t think I’ve had a good alcohol-free red wine, ever. If it wasn’t so expensive I would give it a go.
Next week: Another three-day working week after my short trip away.
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