Dave

Bringing a knackered laptop back to life with CloudReady

As part of the fun and games that is homeschooling, my daughter started off begging and borrowing computer time from me and her mum. It wasn’t ideal so I casted around for a better solution, so she could have her own bit of kit.

I had a fairly ancient, tiny Windows 10 laptop – the sort of thing that might have been called a netbook 10 years ago – which I hadn’t used in ages because it needed to install an update to the operating system. I couldn’t perform the upgrade though because there wasn’t the space to download it on the tiny amount of storage on the laptop! I tried fiddling with SD cards and things, but no joy.

But I came across a thing called CloudReady, which is a product of a company called Neverware. Put simply, it turns pretty much any laptop into a Chromebook – a very simple computer than runs a web browser, and pretty much nothing else.

Getting it set up involved downloading an installer and putting it on a blank USB memory stick, which slightly – but only slightly – fiddly. Installing it on the laptop went like a dream, took about 20 minutes max and there weren’t any problems.

The end result isn’t exactly the same as an official Chromebook, but it’s pretty close. It runs the open source project Chromium rather than ‘Google Chrome’ – but that doesn’t seem to matter too much. She has been able to do the usual things to personalise it, with her own choice of desktop wallpaper and so on, and loves always having a machine available for her work, that belongs to her.

So, if you’re struggling with old tech at home, and if everything you need is accessible on the web, then take a look at CloudReady. Likewise, if you are organising the reuse of old laptops for people that really need them, then CloudReady provides a great, free way, to turn them into usable, easy to maintain computers.

Photo by Andrew Neel on Unsplash

Digital dreaming in a virtual yurt

Last Wednesday, my chum Nick Hill and I ran a rather silly virtual event – the ‘digital dream yurt’. It’s an informal get together where people involve in digital and change in public service can get together on a Zoom call and share ideas and experiences around a particular topic with the inside of a yurt as their virtual background.

Annie Heath shared this screenshot of the yurt on Twitter

It’s a mixture of silliness as well as useful content, and the irreverence adds something I think that is often missing from more – dare I say it? – professionally run webinars. In a way, it harks back to the early days of govcamps and unconferences – random people getting together to find common ground, and to provide fresh perspectives, and to disappear down the occasional rabbit hole.

On this one, we focused on managing the often large portfolios of work that digital teams have on their plates. Richard Clarke, from my team in Croydon, was on the call and produced this amazing sketch of the discussions.

The wonderful sketchnote produced by the lovely Rich Clarke

We are doing it again on Wednesday 4th November, and you can find out more about that and sign up here. Over 40 people already have, so word is spreading.

Links of note 27/1/20

I find this stuff, so you don’t have to etc etc

Keep, Fix, Enhance, Swap, Replace: Five options for public service reform – Eddie Copeland

Of course, everyone knows that in the real world, options are limited by time, money and statutory responsibilities. Less obviously, the solutions we choose to implement may be constrained by our perception of what level of change is, in principle, possible.

What does good product governance look like? – Kylie Havelock

As a product community we share many of the same stakeholders and user groups, at both a national and local level. This means that teams often fall under multiple governance mechanisms, presenting new risks; the inefficiencies linked to double or triple reporting, and the risk that different boards disagree on each other’s decisions.

Our (dxw’s) guides on delivery – Richard Norris

It’s the role of our delivery leads to help the team find the right working pattern for the project. To balance the need for flexibility against the need for consistency, we’ve crafted a handful of guides to use for the various meetings (or ‘ceremonies’) and updates that we use on a project.

Why mission patch stickers matter (and how to get a Croydon Digital one!) – Annie Heath

A tribute to the humble laptop sticker, used by CDS and digital teams everywhere to celebrate good work and communicate values.

Delivering digital service: this much I have learned – Matt Edgar

…over the years our industry has got much, much better at delivering digital services. I’ve been privileged to work with high-performing teams that have both the trust and the tooling to do their best work…Sadly the good practice isn’t evenly distributed, and I sometimes find myself feeling the same frustration rising as it did that day almost 20 years ago…In this post, I’m trying to draw together the threads of good practice as I see them.

You can find everything I have ever bookmarked ever on Pinboard. I also tweet out these bookmarks as I create them.

Links of note 13/1/20

As mentioned in this post, I have started to find some time to read a bit more, and to bookmark useful stuff. Here’s what I have found in recent days (if I am honest, less than I would have expected – although maybe the time of year is to blame for that).

The coming storm – Paul Clarke

I’ve seen enough of this now to know the cycle. You all know the cycle. Government business is being done badly. Everyone’s fed up. Influential voices outside the incumbent delivery team grow and grow. Eventually they get a go at it. Rinse. And repeat.

Chrome OS has stalled out – Android Police

Nearly ten years ago, Google shipped an unassuming, totally unbranded laptop to a large group of journalists and tech enthusiasts as part of a 60,000 unit pilot program. That laptop was the CR-48, and it was designed to showcase a project Google had been working on internally for well over a year. It was called Chrome OS.

How to explain to CEOs why fixing the plumbing matters  – Eddie Copeland

Where we’re working to fix the plumbing, we should be doing so specifically to enhance capabilities that improve boroughs’ ability to tackle real-world problems. We can only determine if we’re doing that well by proactively working with colleagues to deliver some real-world outcomes.

Ethical technology? – Catherine Howe

So much of our lives are subject to the unconscious biases and technological evangelism’s of the people who create the virtual worlds and services we spend so much of our time in and our current fascination with ethics is a desire to create a controlling framework around the tools and systems which are now controlling our lives.

You can find everything I have ever bookmarked ever on Pinboard. I also tweet out these bookmarks as I create them.

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