Weeknote 2024.35

A very long week overall, and a quite short week in the office.

Saturday

A stroll from Gants Hill via Valentines Park to Wanstead, then on to the Imperial War Museum to visit the Blavatnik Art, Film and Photography Galleries. The pictures are very impressive and incredibly moving.

Sunday

Deep cleaning, took all day, almost got one room done.

Monday

Off to the Gartner Summit, just down the road from me at Excel. I’m not going to give away any of their IP here, however useful presentations and discussions. I’ve got pages and pages of notes which I’m distilling into actions for now, soon and later. (My less-specific version of Gartner’s next Monday, within 90 days and in the next 12 months.)

Tuesday

Day Two at the Gartner Summit. As part of the introduction to the day, Sir Lenny Henry shared some stories and motivational thoughts, and afterwards I got a few moments to say how much I’d enjoyed his performance as King Hedley at Stratford East.

It’s too late for my autumn executive update as I had to complete the papers before attending the conference, however picked up some excellent ideas for next time around.

Unable to find a useful presentation in a couple of morning slots, I walked down to the DigiGov conference, also in Excel and met a few of my colleagues, some other familiar faces, and made some useful new contacts. One of the exhibitors had exactly what I needed and had no idea how to find, so am following up with them.

Feeling rather weary after two days of intensive learning, thinking and networking, one more day to go.

Wednesday

Day Three at the Gartner Summit. The introduction today was with Hannah Fry talking on The Trouble with Automation. Absolutely amazing. Unpicking our sometimes-unwarranted trust in AI. It’s the only session I’d been in where the whole audience (or at least all those I could see) were paying full attention.

Another stroll down to the DigiGov conference mid-morning, this time to catch-up with former colleagues, always good to say hello and compare notes. I had planned to go out for dinner with some other delegates, however the dull headache from yesterday was more insistent today, so I headed home.

Thursday

Three days of learning and networking was great; however, it was good to head into the office today and be me rather than an extrovert conference person.

An excellent technical board first thing, where we cover everything all our technical teams are working on and need to keep in sync with. And then onto my leadership team meeting where we had a think about what would be useful to share with our new heads of service on their first day. Completed the fifth of the seven reports I’m working on.

Friday

Highlight of the day was our first AI board. We’ve had lots of meetings and many discussions about AI; however, this was our first attempt to bring them together, covering ethics, change adoption and delivering more for less. We got some definite get-it-done actions and some broader things to think about.

Track of the week

Kyoto (Glitch Gum Remix) by Phoebe Bridgers and Glitch Gum, recommended by my eldest Hannah Gorst https://open.spotify.com/track/0cYsiOzerJ7PvTyQdwASXl?si=dd24f9ac4f414be2

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