3 things I’ve enjoyed this week
Simple weeknotes, written without a template, but using a structure to guide them.
This week I’ve been based in Somerset. I’ve seen the dark arrive early, tasted the rain on my tongue and felt the wind in my hair. It’s nearly time to light the fire.
Its been a cosy and enjoyable week. Here’s my best 3 things.
1. Taking submissions from Catalyst writers
In September I started a mini-project to broaden the diversity of people writing for Catalyst Resources. We needed more voices but also people who could write well and were expert enough to offer good advice.
Catalyst Resources are more like informative web pages than blogs.
Last month we published 2 new authors. This week I’ve had 3 new drafts come in from a UX designer, an autistic web-developer and a storyteller turned content designer. Whats been most fun is seeing the knowledge and insight they bring, aswell as their skills at writing and organising information on a page.
I’ve also begun approaching authors for January and February. We would still like to broaden our pool’s diversity so if you’re interested pitch us an idea.
2. Diving into tags, categories and metadata
It may not sound like fun but I’ve really enjoyed exploring Service Recipes’ categories and tag functionality. I’ve enjoyed it because the platform has a sophisticated functionality but isnt yet using it to anything like its potential. This means we can do good things with it (soon!).
Service Recipes is a platform showcasing examples of charities using digital well, in the form of ‘recipes’ that can be reused or copied by others. Each recipe can be categorised in different ways. Here’s what I say about it on our project management site.
One of our goals should be to ensure that the categories metadata tagging system helps users either:
1. find what they want e.g. recipe about a thing they have thought of already
2. discover what they need but didn’t realise it before they saw it.
This means:
- making sure we have metadata that is relevant and useful to users
- making sure we are attaching the right metadata to each recipe (currently inconsistent)
- displaying or utilising that metadata in a way that helps users with both tasks 1 and 2 (we should probably be iterative in choice of metadata to display)
I’ve some tests planned for the end of the month.
3. Writing for GV
For 10 years I’ve been writing funding bids for Grapevine, a great and award-winning charity in Coventry. They do amazing things with social movements, system change and more traditional but disruptive services for people with a disability.
This week I started my first bid for them in six months. We need to raise grant funding for their TeenVine Next Steps projects which helps isolated autistic young people struggling to get a diagnosis and experiencing mental health problems to find their identity, build their confidence and re-engage with community and education.
Even after 18 years of bid writing, starting a new bid is still a little nervy (blank page and all that). But I’ve a process that works and we’ve got our first bid well underway (with 2 more planned this month).
Big hat-tip to Clare Wightman and Grapevine for employing me for over 10 years now. I wouldn’t be where I am without their faith and reliability.
See you next week!
