The past couple of weeks have given us properly grotty weather. Wind and rain with a few days of freezing temperatures thrown in. This was another busy week where I’ve been feeling that the year has caught up with me. I’m ready for a rest.
This was a week in which I:
- Went down to the construction floor in our office for an induction, so that I can go down there and visit when I need to. I’ve been given a hard hat, gloves, a gilet and a pair of steel-capped boots that feel about seven sizes too large.
- Had our weekly meeting with our audio-visual design vendor. We have a few more small issues to deal with, but nothing that is pushing the project off track.
- Met with colleagues to discuss our approach to digital content sharing in our shared meeting room spaces. By default, we don’t provide connections for people to plug into. Using a random USB-C or HDMI cable isn’t good practice as you don’t really know what’s on the other end, or what the equipment in the room will do. It’s better that an attendee joins the meeting from another device and shares content from there, giving them control over what’s shown and minimising the risk of everyone else in the room or on the call seeing pop-up notifications and content they didn’t want to share. Despite all of this, we know we’ll need to keep a couple of cables squirrelled away somewhere that our support staff can grab if they need to.
- Had the weekly meeting with our sister company on the progress of the construction works.
- Met with three of my colleagues from our Technology management team to review a core part of our infrastructure and discuss where we should take it in the future. It felt good to get in a room together for a small workshop like this as we hadn’t done it in a while. We’re going to need a few more of these sessions over the coming weeks.
- Reviewed the latest materials for our document management project and gave feedback to the team.
- Attended an ExCo meeting at the last minute in place of my boss, and surprisingly found myself with quite a bit to add to the conversation.
- Received a presentation from another technology team within our division of the company on their journey with AI so far.
- Gave a Learning Hour presentation on my visit to this year’s Gartner IT Symposium/Xpo in Barcelona.
- Picked up a tin of spare paint for our Prayer and Reflection Room from the construction company working in the building. There’s a bit of touching up required following some additional works we’ve done in that room, so it’s great to have the original paint to make it good.
- Had a useful career-focused meeting with my boss, an external consultant, and colleagues from both our People & Culture and Learning & Development teams. I’ll get a report in a week or so and have some specific things to follow up with.
- Attended the latest South African Politics and Macroeconomics webinar hosted by our company. The material is always pitched at exactly the right level and I invariably come away much better educated about what’s going on.
- Joined the latest Teams Fireside Chat, this time with Ilya Bukshteyn, Corporate Vice President of Teams Calling, Devices and Premium Experiences at Microsoft. I gave some feedback on the Facilitator agent, which I’ve found to be incredibly noisy and annoying in every Teams meeting where someone has added it. The agent seems to be quite central to where Microsoft are taking the Teams meeting experience. I honestly don’t need to be babysat through a meeting, it just needs to be chaired well. If we’re having a good discussion, I don’t want to tune out of that to read through all of the content that the agent has added to the chat. Chairing a meeting is a skill to be learned and practised; Facilitator will get in the way of people doing that.
- Watched an internal webinar on understanding disability in the workplace, organised by our Technology Diversity, Equity and Inclusion forum. The interaction from the attendees was excellent.
- Joined a Digital Showcase meeting where colleagues discussed their approach to coordinating AI-related initiatives across our division of the company.
- Had a wonderful night out with my friends from the WB-40 podcast Signal group for our now traditional year-end dinner. We had drinks at The Three Kings in Clerkenwell followed by dinner at Camino in Farringdon. The conversation is always splendid and I got to meet some new people as Lisa Riemers brought along her Intranet friends for a geeky mashup. (Her year-end post about what she did in 2025 is lovely.)
- Went out for dinner with friends in Berkhamsted. It was lovely to catch up with everyone who could make it, and we missed those that couldn’t. I’ve never been that impressed by The Fat Buddha; the food is super expensive for what it is, and not particularly tasty.
- Bought our Christmas tree, for the first time without the boys coming with us to get it. We went for one that was less bushy than usual, which seems a lot taller now we’ve got it home.
- Put up our outdoor Christmas lights, ready for the street’s synchronised Sunday afternoon switch-on.
- Went out with my youngest son, his friends and another of the dads, for a short training ride as they prep for a cycling holiday at Easter. My son had never used clipless pedals on a bike before and took to using them really well. I hope the weather clears up so that they can get out a bit more over the next couple of months.
- Started to get a cold over the weekend, keeping me from exercising on Sunday for the first time in a while. I’m hoping it’s just a minor thing and goes away as quickly as it showed up.
- Was so happy to see Lando Norris secure the F1 driver’s world championship title. It’s always good to see someone reach this peak for the first time. I’m already looking forward to the new season in three months’ time.
Media
Articles
- Ending my Spotify subscription has long been on my to-do list. The only thing stopping me is that one of my family members relies on our family plan for their music. Brian Merchant has put together an article on why quitting Spotify is a good thing, and why Qobuz is probably the best streaming platform to move to.
- HBO have made a complete mess of ‘remastering’ Mad Men.
Video
- Continued enjoying Platonic. It borders on ridiculous but stays funny and surprising enough to keep us watching.
- Watched a few more episodes of The Beatles Anthology. I’d forgotten how much I love those early songs from the very early part of their career.
- Finished watching the first part of Stranger Things season 5. This is one that all three of us at home have watched as a family. I’m looking forward to all four of us watching the final episodes together over Christmas when our eldest son is back.
Web
- The Washing Machine Project are bringing mechanical washing machines to the 50% of the global population that hand washes clothes. This burden is largely on the shoulders of women and girls. Their flat-packable machine saves up to 50% of the water and 75% of the time compared to hand washing. (Via Naomi Smith on the Quiet Riot podcast.)
- I do wonder whether the time we will save in the future by using AI will be more than used up by the time we will spend verifying and validating sources.
Books
- Continued with Jenny Odell’s How To Do Nothing: Resisting The Attention Economy. I have noticed myself trying to be more in the moment, looking at the things around me. I haven’t ditched the podcasts coming at me through my headphones yet though.
Next week: A Christmas party, two reunions with old friends, and our eldest son returns.
Happy Xmas. I do enjoy your posts and often find your links really interesting – forwarding them to friends. The Spotify one for example. So thank you.
Happy Christmas to you too Nick. Thanks for reading 😊