Weeknotes #342 — Out of breath

At some point this week I remarked to a colleague that I feel ‘out of breath’ with the number of things going on at work. It’s been difficult to keep up with everything. This week I was only in the office for three days but journeyed into London four times, going in on Tuesday evening for a colleague’s retirement drinks. The Tube strike meant that I made a return to the 40-minute walks between Euston Station and my office, having paused them during the summer when it got too warm to be comfortable.

I also had fun using an e-bike for the first time. A quarter turn of the crank and it shot off like a rocket! They’re a bit too expensive to use regularly, and aren’t as healthy as walking, but it’s good to know that they are an option if I need to get somewhere fast.

This was a week in which I:

• Welcomed a new joiner to my team. It was quite a day to start, with the Tube strikes in full swing and not having made her way to the office at rush hour before. It’s already been great to have her on board. We also welcomed back a team member who had been away on a long holiday. I’m looking forward to the whole team humming along with our increased capacity.
• Took part in a workshop on how we might embrace Digital Literacy and Digital Dexterity across our organisation. We ended up leading with the material that I had previously created, and I think it has started to land with the other people involved. I’m not sure if what we’ll end up doing will be exactly what I came up with, but it looks promising.
• Had our Information Risk Steering Group meeting. As well as discussing the key topics, we agreed how we will change the format and frequency of the meetings going forward.
• Had an in-person meeting with the audio/visual vendor that we plan to use to fit out the client meeting room suite at our office that we share with our sister company. It feels good to be working with people that seem to understand what we’re trying to do and ask good questions.
• Had an introductory meeting with the second potential vendor who may help us to find a more permanent office in a new city where we are in the process of establishing a presence. We followed this up with a discussion about both vendors and what our next steps to engage with them will be.
• Took part in a meeting to review our annual risk control self-assessment, with our Head of Non-Financial Risk. We have a very mature process, and our colleague who collates and submits our return does an excellent job on behalf of the team.
• Met with a colleague in our Legal team to discuss correspondence we had received about licensing television and film content. We agreed our position and how to proceed, after which I got back in contact with the licensing body. ChatGPT in ‘thinking’ mode was very useful in quickly revealing the relevant documents that allowed us to understand our position and decide what we needed to do. I think this is a core strength of the tool: replacing the time that you would usually take in crafting web searches and gathering information on a topic.
• Listened to a strategy update from our regional CEO, who has recently agreed to take on an additional interim role. It feels like we have some interesting and exciting times ahead.
• Had a conversation with my boss and our COO about how they would like me to get more involved in managing programmes and projects across the organisation, not just those in our department. The variety of things I get to work on is part of the magic of working where I do. I’m not sure how I’ll make it happen given how busy I am already, but we’ll work it out.
• Met with colleagues to discuss a planned IT security change and what our approach needs to be in order to minimise impact on both our end users and our internal technology staff.
• Ran our weekly all-team meeting as one of my colleagues was off sick.
• Took a couple of my colleagues through the process to capture usage statistics of our corporate password manager. We are redoubling our efforts to drive adoption, so this data will help us to see how successful we are.
• Requested a quote for a new table for our large divisible meeting space. We now have agreement on the finish and want to try and get it manufactured, delivered and installed by the end of the year.
• Met with our sales representative at our technology research and advisory firm to discuss our account and other products that they offer besides the ones that we already purchase.
• Joined the monthly Diversity, Equity and Inclusion forum. I’ve got some strong views about some of the definitions we use, which I’ll keep pushing on.
• Met with representatives from a very well-known big-tech firm for a walkthrough of their approach to ‘AI Security’. I’m not sure these types of sessions are that useful without a thorough exploration beforehand of what would be most useful to the audience.
• Joined our development team for their retrospective and sprint planning session.
• Caught up with an old friend, who runs one of our Group Technology functions. I was excited to hear that I’ll be meeting up with her on a business trip in a couple of months’ time.
• Loved seeing our colleague in Beijing give a presentation at our weekly Learning Hour meeting. He admitted he was nervous, but did an excellent job of educating us on the main holidays in the Chinese calendar. Part of the reason the meeting exists is to allow colleagues to practice giving presentations to a relatively safe audience, and it’s so satisfying to see this in action.
• Had a filling put in. Modern dentistry, and my dentist, are both marvellous. Even though I wish I didn’t need to have it, I love her work.

Media

Podcasts

• Paul Ford and Rich Ziade’s discussion with Matt Seitz about the impact of AI was fascinating. They made great points about how big companies (probably) overhired in the pandemic and then conveniently blamed their subsequent retrenchments on AI:

Paul Ford: And then, but they were like, “Wow, we’re seeing so many efficiencies.” Because you got to tell the market how this layoff isn’t because you were an idiot who over-hired, but is actually because of, like, fundamental changes that you’re on top of.

• I also loved Matt Seitz’s quote that “Vibe coding is like giving an 8-year-old a credit card.”

Articles

• Geoffrey Huntley ”ran Claude in a loop for three months, and it created a genz programming language called cursed”. via Simon Willison.
• I’m not sure I agree with the bleakness of what’s presented in ‘The death of the corporate job’ but it did make me get my highlighter out. “Nobody believes in the corporate role anymore, even while performing it perfectly. The belief is gone but the performance continues.”
• Interesting results from a UK government study that says that “Neurodiverse employees may be benefiting far more from chatbots than their neurotypical colleagues.”

Video

• Finished the last episode of What It Feels Like for a Girl on BBC iPlayer. What a brilliant series. The intensity of the first few episodes gives way to something much more profound and had me in tears by the end.
• I’m so excited to learn that there’s a new John Candy biopic, I Like Me, coming out in October. Planes, Trains & Automobiles (1987) is still my favourite film, in no small part to his loveable comedic genius.

• Watched The Ballad of Wallis Island. Tim Key (aka ‘Sidekick Simon’ from Alan Partridge) completely makes the film. It’s a fun, gentle comedy with great characters.

Audio

• Discovered the YouTube channel Top 2000 a gogo and have been diving into their back catalogue of interviews and acoustic recordings. For example, this interview with Fish about Marillion’s Kayleigh is superb:

Web

• “An LLM is designed to generate statistically likely responses to the question ‘What would an answer to this query sound like?’ This is not the same thing as answering the question.”
• Gina Trapani has a new blog. Instant subscribe.

Books

• I’m really enjoying Jon Savage’s The Secret Public: How LGBTQ Resistance Shaped Popular Culture (1955–1979).

Next week: France.