Daily note for 29 October 2023

LocalGovCamp was lovely last Wednesday but exhausting. I did very well not to drink much at all the night before which definitely helped. But… so many people to talk to, so much going on. I attended way more sessions than I have done previously and I think that was a good move. Sometimes the opportunity to sit (a bit more) quietly and listen is a way to recharge the social batteries. Anyway, it was great seeing people and as always the energy of the local gov crowd, despite all the challenges, is always an inspiration. Credit to Mr Hill for his organising skills, and the sponsors for their support.

Neilly Neil is blogging again, hurrah!

The next innovation igloo is about blogging, don’t forget.

Full Stack Service Design is a model to help people break services down into the parts that make them and understand how all of these parts impact the user experience.”

Imaginary Problems Are the Root of Bad Software.

Abort Retry Fat is a brilliant newsletter about the history of various bits of IT. This one on Lotus, from 1–2–3 to Notes, is a belter.

How to run a daily stand-up – very useful from Alan Wright (as always).

Daily note for 23rd October 2023

I’ve had a quiet couple of weeks here on the blog. Also no newsletters in that time and limited engagement in places like LinkedIn and Bluesky. A dip definitely driven by my mood and stuff going on in life, but also because I’ve had a lot of work on and achieved some good things.

LocalGovCamp on Wednesday this week, in Bristol. First time I have stayed away from home in over a year and ngl I am a bit antsy. It will be nice to catch up with people but also – I suspect – exhausting.

I have been putting together a kind of minimum viable project documentation thing in Google Spreadsheets. There are so many projects on the go in local authorities in particular that require a certain amount of documentation, no matter how old school it might feel. Often though it just doesn’t get done, and that’s largely because there’s often a gap between project document templates, which tend to be large and overblown, and just keeping a list in a notebook, which sometimes turns out to be inadequate.

Of course documentation is never the reason that work fails, but sometimes it can provide a bit of a foundation, and having reasonably nice to use and look at, lightweight documents make it all a bit easier. Of course, I would recommended people make their own copies of this thing and adapt the hell out of it to meet their needs. It’s unlikely they are the same as mine.

In a message to a chum, just now, on blogging: “I think it’s just a case of finding a rhythm that works. I find posting little snippets – or aggregations of snippets – works well for me at the moment. As soon as I try to write 500 words on one topic I seize up”

We ran an Innovation Igloo on Friday last week, on service directories, and it was well attended and people seemed to enjoy it. They now seem to be a regular fortnightly affair on a Friday lunchtime. The next one is on Friday 3rd November at 1pm, and it is about blogging and working in the open.

Service directories are a really interesting example of what is on the face of it a very simple technology answer to a policy problem, but one that with a little imagination could be scaled up and out to help design a new operating model for a whole bunch of local public service delivery – and most importantly, prevention. I need to write it up really. Anyway, well worth checking out the Open Referral standard for directories and the research Jukesie is doing on engagement with said standard.

The humans of digital transformation – a talk for Digital Government North, and reprised for the GDS Speaker Series – lovely stuff from Matt Edgar.

Nice reflective week notes from Alex.

Daily note for 10 October 2023

Props to Doug for pointing out this free course called Mastering Systems Thinking. Am giving it a go!

Stockport Council published Towards a digital solution to reduce delays in transferring patients to social care.

Hurrah for Adele Gilpin and the West Northants digital folk for working in the open on their new blog!

Dan Hon writes in his newsletter about the imminent enshittification of Substack. This is not news I want to hear. I replied on LinkedIn:

I guess as well as Quora the other comparison is with Medium, which started out offering an amazing user experience for writers and an ok one for readers, but now seems to want people to log in just to read content.

The problem at the moment is that the experience for writers on every email platform I have tried recently has been so awful, it’s pushing people towards Substack, despite the fact that there are these warning signs for readers.

I’ve been coping with the slow death of Twitter by making more use of my blog, and maybe I ought to start archiving newsletters on there too, just to keep an open web version always available.

So expect to see a slew of posts on here soon, copied and pasted from my newsletters 😀

AI isn’t a drill, and your users don’t want holes

The Tyranny of the Marginal User – this is excellent:

What’s wrong with such a metric? A product that many users want to use is a good product, right? Sort of. Since most software products charge a flat per-user fee (often zero, because ads), and economic incentives operate on the margin, a company with a billion-user product doesn’t actually care about its billion existing users. It cares about the marginal user – the billion-plus-first user – and it focuses all its energy on making sure that marginal user doesn’t stop using the app. Yes, if you neglect the existing users’ experience for long enough they will leave, but in practice apps are sticky and by the time your loyal users leave everyone on the team will have long been promoted.

Daily note for 28 September 2023

A new Wilco album! Ace.

I newslettered: “Mark [Thompson]’s rallying call around this stuff – that digital age operating models that make use of what computers are good at, and what the private sector is good at, in order to free up public servants to do what they are good at – feels increasingly like an idea whose time is now. At the very least, it should be part of the conversation. We should not take localism to mean doing things in exponentially ineffective and inefficient ways for the sake of it. There has to be a point where local configuration of nationally adopted standards kicks in at the delivery level as well as at the policy level.”

Weeknotes rules by Giles Turnbull – helpful because they “set expectations about what good weeknote behaviour should look like”.

Team manual and team charter – my two favourite workshops to run with new teams or teams with new members – I love Alan Wright’s blog, so full of insight and useful, practical advice.

Stacks of really, really useful stuff in this guide to digital transformation in HE from Jisc. Lots that can be applied to other sectors.

Daily note for 31 August 2023

I sent out a newsletter this morning.

These daily notes are going well, I think, in that I am keeping up with them and it’s really helpful to keep a record of the good stuff I am coming across. But am definitely just posting links, and not really saying much else. I’ll try and fix that – unless, of course, people like the links, and don’t like my wittering.

Design for audiences or topics and tasks? – good stuff from the team in Bristol and always good to see the blogs I host being active!