A good, solid week at work. It felt like I got lots done. I had a very busy end to the week, including a lot of socialising and an excellent long bike ride in the spring sunshine.
This was a week in which I:
- Agreed how we will move forward with a temporary setup in our new office — both technology and furniture — to allow our colleagues to get in and start using it. Synced up with all of the main project team members on our plans, including the project manager who was on holiday. I don’t like calling people when they are out of the office, but I figured that these decisions are things that they would want to be aware of before we committed.
- Updated the tender specification documents for the longer-term technology setup of this new office, cross-checking the bill of materials and updating the diagrams of the floor plan.
- Met with colleagues to discuss their need to accelerate part of their business process, given the possibilities and promise shown by generative AI. There are a few different ways for us to approach the problem.
- Held my team meeting with a slightly reduced group. One of the group is on an internal secondment to another department, and we are a few weeks away from having our new software developer start with us.
- Joined our internal Disability Network meeting for the first time, listening in to the forum on my walk to the office.
- Met with the project team running a document management initiative. We had a great conversation, uncovering a big requirement that we hadn’t realised we needed.
- Attended a very useful Gartner webinar on IT Organizational Design.
- Enjoyed a brilliant Learning Hour meeting hosted by one of our colleagues who has deep expertise in the Microsoft desktop stack. He took us through the big components of Intune, showing us how compliance and conditional access policies work, as well as how applications are packaged for deployment.
- Had a slightly frustrating day on Monday, half listening to a big town hall meeting that would have been ten times better in person, half trying to get some work done on the side, and not doing a satisfying job of either. Most of our colleagues are in another location; we’d be upset if we weren’t invited to join the big town hall events remotely, but they are very much geared to prioritise the people in the room.
- Ran our monthly facilities/real estate oversight forum, agreeing in principle to some additional audio-visual maintenance and improvements in our office.
- Joined the monthly M365 Change Community Round Up, hearing about significant updates that are coming down the pike. It’ll be interesting to see where Copilot Cowork lands once it exits the ‘Frontier Program’; will we get it as part of our Copilot licences or will we need to upgrade to Microsoft E7?
- Met up with an old colleague for a coffee, hearing about their journey since they left our company and what they want to do next.
- Had a call with the Programme Manager for Gartner’s CIO Community for the UK and Ireland ahead of the next summit in June. I’ve not been to one of these events before, but I’m looking forward to meeting new peers.
- Thought that I was losing my mind. On Sunday night I made a sandwich for work, but instead of putting it in the fridge, I put it into my work bag. The next morning I discovered my error and had to make a sandwich all over again, cursing myself under my breath. On Monday night I went to make my sandwich for Tuesday, repeating in my head like a mantra that I had to make sure I put it in the fridge. On Tuesday morning I found it in my work bag. At some point this tipped from being an amusing mistake to a mildly terrifying one. Maybe there’s just too much going on in my head.
- Struggled with getting my youngest son some work experience. I tried about a dozen friends from across the City but with hybrid working and complex internal processes it has so far proven impossible.
- Got my bike serviced. With London Wales London only two weeks away, it made sense to make sure that everything was working fine. They fitted a new chain and cassette, and checked over all of the other essentials. I’ve started looking at the long-term weather forecast, but unfortunately we are still just a bit too far out for anything to be certain.
- Enjoyed a lovely long bike ride with a friend from the cycling club. We met up after finishing the Saturday morning club ride and went out for another 130km or so, just to get some miles in. The weather was glorious. I’m glad I’ve found out that my leg warmers are too large, with one of them refusing to stay attached to my thigh, before I pack them for the ride in a couple of weeks’ time.
- Hosted the latest round of Album Club, playing Tears for Fears’s 1985 album Songs From The Big Chair, to almost universal acclaim. It’s an incredible record. I went for the slightly scratchy original vinyl, which sounded more dynamic than the remastered CD.
- Went out with three of the WB-40 Album Club crew to Kae Tempest’s book launch at the Roundhouse in London. Everyone who attended was given a hardback copy of his new book Having Spent Life Seeking, which after an evening of inspiring conversation I am really looking forward to reading. Tempest made reference to the connection between a piece of work, the creator of the work, and the person receiving the work; there is a deep connection with Clare Dederer’s Monsters: A Fan’s Dilemma, which I recently revisited. He also spoke movingly about “the incredible technology” of a novel, which allows you to put yourself in another person’s shoes, feel what they feel, and take that with you back into your everyday life. I have barely started to explore Tempest’s work, but he seems to be an incredible artist.
- Met up with some school friends on Friday night. A couple of them I haven’t seen in 20 years and now we’ve got together twice in the past six months or so. It’s lovely to be back in touch again.
- Had to call a boiler engineer after we lost hot water. It’s happened so many times over the years, and is always stressful for the first person to get in the shower. The engineer managed to be in and out in 15 minutes, replacing a part that had failed.
- Spent a lot of time on Sunday, working with Claude Cowork to think through a problem. It’s so good. I really do think that the people that still think AI is rubbish aren’t paying for access to the ‘deeper thinking’ models and the additional tools. I am sure the companies are losing money on my queries, so who knows how long this period will last? There is also going to be a gap between those who can pay for this stuff and those who can’t, which doesn’t sit well. At least Google searches were open to everyone.
- Started thinking that I need a new approach to my weeknotes. I want to keep posting them — as well as documenting my life, which is useful for me to look back on, it gives me a vehicle for regular writing practice. I’m wondering if the format needs a tweak. I’m never going to have the style and panache of someone like Alice Bartlett, but maybe leaving routine things on the cutting room floor will make them more enjoyable to write, and to read.
Media
Articles
- Benedict Evans’ article in his weekly paid newsletter, called Price with pride, is similar to Paul Forde and Rich Ziade’s conversation on their recent podcast that I highlighted last week. He says that “No one really knows what token capacity, token consumption, token cost, or token pricing will look like in five years.” On top of that, to Forde and Ziade’s point, nobody really knows how they will charge for digital products and services in a world where people can accelerate what they do using those tokens.
- Stories of people being arrested in Dubai for photographing events that they find themselves involved in, such as missile attacks by Iran, continue to astonish me.
Video
- Continued watching Race Across The World. They seem to have fewer teams than usual in this series so I was surprised that they eliminated one of them.
- Beef series two feels completely different to series one. It’s more like The White Lotus this time. We’re enjoying it.
- Watching University Challenge has become a Monday night routine, despite us only getting a handful of answers right each time. I’m looking forward to the final next week, and the presentation of the trophy in a random venue with a random celebrity.
Books
- I’m about halfway through reading Sweating Bullets: Notes about Inventing PowerPoint by Robert Gaskins and I’m really enjoying it.
Next week: A funeral, and requalifying as a first-aider.
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