Weeknote S3 E37 29 November 2024 – a cornucopia of great conversations

Back to normal after a weekend with a poorly son, Digital Scotland, town hall updates prompting a look at the programme as a whole

What was happening?

Monday: A catchup with Maddie and Alison who were off on their travels this week. A good digital checkup with a small support/counselling charity who needed help with making the most of Google Workspace.

Tuesday: A busy day at Digital Scotland, taking some time out to run DigiShift 86 on building online communities.

Wednesday: Giving a team update at our organisational town hall. Always a challenge to fit everything in!

Thursday: A good catchup with a funder, and off to a Scottish AI event in the evening.

Friday: Wrapping up the week, and into the office for an internal meeting.

What’s been going well?

Lynn Houmdi CMgr MCMI and Serena Snoad were totally brilliant speakers on our DigiShift call – so many insights and good ideas, and loads of great questions.

Digital Scotland was a long day but worthwhile, in particular, hearing modest but brilliant pearls of wisdom from Hugh Wallace . His powerful and reflective points about building ground-breaking services from the ground up in modest sprints paired really well with inspiration from Gemma Cassells on a decade-sized vision from DDI. I also felt lucky to squeeze into a packed session from Ronan Laffan of Version1 – some really sharp thinking about how far digital services can go when you approach them strategically and really shift the dial.

And it was lovely to bump into pals of the weeknote Robert Cawston and Adam C.

In a weird coincidence, there was a high concentration of digital folk from Portobello – I joked that we should set up a new zone called the Silicon Prom.

It was great to share progress on our work with the wider organisation. A slide from that session was also handy when I met with a funder later in the week.

What was more challenging? What am I noticing and wondering about?

It was a bit of a juggle to run a webinar from the margins of Digital Scotland. I was worried the WiFi wouldn’t hold out but it was fine. My top tip for that kind of situation is using a headset, it totally cuts out the background noise. And have a 5G hotspot primed and ready. We also had a plan B ??.

It always feels like a battle to squeeze a proper update into a town hall update slot – you always feel like you’re taking too much time and skimming too quickly. I think it was good though. It was handy to be able to repurpose some of the update material for the next day.

Some of the Digital Scotland sessions were quite vendor-driven. That’s understandable, the public sector needs a marketplace and options but the reflective and discursive sessions were much better. There was a bit of a contrast between unqualified promotion of platforms and tech and the nuance you get from teams that have tried them in practice.

What am I reading?

No book recommendation this week but I urge you to sign up for https://www.ithoughtaboutthatalot.com/

It’s a totally amazing digital advent calendar of reflective, personal essays on a wide range of topics. And, joy of joys, it’s available in book form too!