Weeknote S3 E11 3 May 2024 – A Ripping Yarn

What was happening this week??

• I kicked off the week with a lovely catchup with Steph Wright of the Scottish AI Alliance to talk about some plans for more collaboration – really looking forward to this!?
• A really enjoyable coaching skills session with Ann Rowe and Caroline Christie FCIPD . It’s been nice doing this as a group from across SCVO and getting a chance to reflect on our practice together.?
• A long day on Wednesday as I went off to our village halls conference in Dunkeld. A tiring day with a lot of train travel but a great event.?
• Some excellent LinkedIn training and then some spreadsheet-wrangling on Thursday as I pulled together numbers for a joint funding bid.?
• Pulling together a pre-read for a meeting with David next week, and using a bit of annual leave to catch a tide from Fisherrow.?

What went well??

I was pleased to hear that I’ve had a talk proposal accepted for SDinGov later on the year (on the topic of data puddles).?

The Village Halls conference was really great with a lot of energy and connections being made. I only played a very small part – jointly facilitating a workshop on hall booking systems. The session had an interesting format – I ran through a rapid customer journey mapping process, and we had an overview of the Hallmaster Ltd system from Bernard Hammick . It was interesting to see how many halls had the same shared challenges, and how some of these are really easy to address with software (payments) and some are not (hall users who don’t clean up!)?

Hopping on a Teams call from the waiting room at Waverley station actually went quite smoothly. It was one of those times where I had to be on a physical journey but didn’t want to shift a catchup.?

Our digital evolution team catchup on Thursday was a good chance to reflect on what has been moving ahead well, and help each other get round some blockers.?

It was nice to hear that folk have enjoyed reading my weeknotes ???

What wasn’t so good??

I generated some unintentional jeopardy and comedy in my customer journey mapping. I was scrawling audience input onto flipcharts, then tearing them off for Bernard to stick onto the wall. Any experienced facilitator will tell you that you need just the right angle to rip them off smoothly. I got there, but with some very dodgy ripping on the first three! The final four went perfectly, but the anticipation in the audience was pretty funny. Rrrrrip!?

It was a bit of a scramble pulling together numbers on Thursday, and involved getting my head round some complicated pro rating and lining up financial and calendar years. I was glad to get some input from expert colleagues.?

What have I noticed??

It felt like I saw the value of experience and expertise a lot this week – our top-flight events team working hard to make an in-person event run really smoothly, and Finance colleagues helping me sort out the numbers on Thursday.?

I was also thinking about the value of having a bit of a routine or structure for some work (like Weeknotes, for example). Having a starting point often helps me jump into them, even when time is tight.?

There’ll be other deeper thoughts about how we can move the dial on a service pattern for IT infrastructure, but that needs to go into a pre-read that I haven’t written yet!?

What have I been reading?

• ???For work, Emily Webber’s Posts from Awesome folks is a fantastic recurring resource.?
• ??I’m getting into The Collapsing Wave by Doug Johnstone, the sequel to The Space Between Us.?
• ???And there’s always something boat-related, this week it is the brand new East Coast of Scotland Sailing Directions by Andy Carnduff?