My coffee companion today is a colleague. We talked about: the power of meeting in novel places (he invited me to see a dinosaur exhibition in the library of the Royal Geological Society) building entire models from mere fragments of evidence how some discoveries can have a seismic impact on common understanding changing environments my … Continue reading 145th of 100
This week I have learned: the sad news that my "football dad" Roger passed away after many years of ill health. In the 1970s, growing up in Watford, something magical was happening in the town which, to be blunt, lacked any sense of identity plonked as it was on the outskirts of great London. That … Continue reading Weeknote 668: Rog
Today's coffee companion is a Kentish woman. We talked about: being ill growing up without a sense of an "ancestral" home living on a boat moving out of London the delights of procurement working with other agencies yesterday's podcast conversation how last year was a hard year leaving Twitter, and what's replaced it 100Coffees is … Continue reading 144th of 100
Yesterday's coffee companion is a people-focused software person. We talked about: going through the process of realising that the new job simply isn't the right job understanding what parts of an organisation that one can change, and those that are immovable objects German company culture and its inherent conservatism hierarchical organisations striving for certainty and … Continue reading 143rd of 100
Friday's coffee companion is an advocate for mind-mapping. We talked about... the challenging state of contemporary politics if politicians could be replaced by AI if the bizarre ways that voting systems work mean that politicians have been replaced by algorithms already nationalism, separatism and the challenges of discrimination mind-mapping as a way to visualise complex … Continue reading 142nd of 100
This week I have learned... you can make a bunch of assumptions about the environment in which you will present these days. Still, you'll probably underestimate how overly complicated meetings in a hybrid world will be. You can't guarantee anything, no matter what. there's nothing quite like being able to proffer a point of view … Continue reading Weeknote 668: pitched
Yesterday's coffee companion coaches people. We talked about: the complexities of presenting in a hybrid world ADHD and the risk of burnout the challenges of being young and female in the tech world the joy of adult-to-adult organisations living and working in Slavic countries and cultures second generations and the "home" languages they pick up … Continue reading 141st of 100
Yesterday's coffee companion, the first for a while, is an expert on Culture. We talked about: coming down from the adrenaline of pitch work the wasted effort that gets expended during procurement exercises a "hackathon" with the assessment alternative approach to finding the right partners how the big firms would game it anyway agendaless meetings … Continue reading 140th of 100
This week I have learned: Presenting is nerve-wracking. Even more so when you are put into specifically constrained conditions. Pitch presenting is very nerve-wracking. It'd be more accurately described as a viva. I've again been spending a bit of time using ChatGPT as a coding partner. It's interesting how things that you think should surely … Continue reading Weeknote 667: presenting
This week I have learned... eventually they break you, the spreadsheets. They get into your head. You dream about them. Spreadsheeting is not real work. There, I said it. I have a potential new outlet for my cards, and I will dust down and play with a bunch of old ones again. Did I mention … Continue reading Weeknote 666: The weeknote of the beast