The fool on the hill
Reflections on lockdown
The world is feeling very strange. Yesterday, there were more people on Clapham Common on a lovely Saturday afternoon than I can remember seeing in 10 years. Earlier, I had been putting together a trello board with the tasks our team designing our new, socially distanced, office space will undertake to test out our prototype solution in Hackney Town Hall. Should I be angry, demotivated or say to hell with it and join my fellow south londoners? This is bonkers. Am I mad or are they?
Achievements
Writing week notes weekly is…
Reflections on two more weeks during the lockdown
The flow of work has changed markedly in the last two weeks. Calls to our support desk each day are about a quarter of the number we received during the busiest period at the beginning of lock down. Systems are performing well and are stable. Colleagues are benefitting from being able to access systems outside our network and where systems are still deployed in the old fashioned way, the Infrastructure team has worked wonders to get the systems running as well as they can run. …
Dazed and confused
Reflections on another extraordinary week
The last week or so has felt like one of those inbox exercises when you have to decide how to approach a dozen things that appear to need doing in half an hour. What is urgent, what is important and what can be put to one side? In what order should you do things? The difference is that the exercise continues from 8am in the morning until 6 pm in the evening, every day. …
No particular place to go
Reflections on an extraordinary week
Sometimes I think we are guilty of hyperbole in HackIT. This week has been truly extraordinary and the team’s response likewise.
Achievements
There is not enough room to talk about all of the achievements this week. Others have already done so. In short they include:
My challenges
Last week I failed to meet two out of my three challenges. I still haven’t tweeted about what I am reading (I have spent too much time binge-watching nordic noir box sets) and didn’t produce a week note either. Ironically, given my TV watching proclivities, I was not at all grumpy this week. This is also surprising as I hurt my back and was in quite a lot of pain most of the time. …
Highlights of the past week
Many and varied conversations about digital connectivity
I have spent a lot of time over the past week talking to people about our digital connectivity programme. I have met with:
My challenges for January/February
Last week I outlined my 3 personal challenges for January/February and explained that I would be feeding back on how I get on. They are:
This is my second weeknote, produced one week after the first, so that is challenge 1 met so far. I have also bought “Accelerate” a book about building high performing tech organisations, recommended to me by @madebycatem, which arrived yesterday, so some progress on that too.
There is much more to…
New year, new weeknote
So here we are again with a new year stretching expectantly before us full of promise. A chance to change things up but also to double down on what has gone well over the previous year.
My challenges for the next month
Each month I am going to set myself 3 personal challenges. I will record these in my first weeknote of each month and feedback on progress. …
More thoughts about buildings and food
1 December 2019
Highlights of the last week
I spent a lot of time over the last week talking to experts about the new GLA template leasehold agreement governing telephone mast installations on roof tops. This was hard going, involved delving into detail and isn’t the sort of thing I get up in the morning looking forward to. However, it was worth the effort. We now understand that there is a lot about the agreement that we like and we think it should be straightforward to deal with the areas where we have questions…
Raising the Platform, new series, episode 8
Living in fear of courgette quiche
18 November 2019
Highlights of the week
This week has been a bit of a pot pourri, as is often the case. I was very pleased to hear on Monday that Registered Social Landlords in Hackney who support people with mental health and learning disabilities want to join with us to sign up to a wayleave that will deliver affordable, full fibre connectivity to homes. …
Head of Platform, London Borough of Hackney. @henryintheopen. Walker, poker player, dad. Struggling to keep up most of the time. Views all my own.