Really late with Weeknote Eleven — for all sorts of reasons. Some personal, some professional and some just plain embarrassing. I’m considering putting these notes on hiatus to be honest — they don’t work as well for me in this role as it is hard to capture what I do. It all feels too ephemeral to really report on.

It was however an odd, roller coaster of a week with some pretty significant downsides. Lets see — I started off by going to work Monday without my phone, my headset for calls or my wallet. Now given I was supposed to be on calls most of the day (I use VOIP or mobile not deskphones) and going out for lunch this put a bit of a damper on the day.

Which obviously put me off my game in ways I didn’t realise as I totally screwed up my travel arrangements for the rest of the week — ending up in London without a hotel and booked on trains to towns I wasn’t even visiting.

My frustrations with bureaucracy and people just not doing things how I think they should be done (I call this Sheldon-itis) boiled up again without really boiling over thankfully but basically Monday and Tuesday weren’t great days for me — and probably not for people around me.

Working with the Flood Warning team in Crewe again on the Wednesday raised my spirits a bit — they are a good bunch, doing important work. Like I’ve said before some historic decisions have created challenges but I like that they are facing up to them.

I got to finish some bits and pieces of writing that were hanging around after all the travel the week before — including finishing a job description and contributing to some strategy briefings. There were some big personnel changes to the programme I mainly work on which led to a lot of conversations, calls and notes flying about. Was I any help? Don’t know really but I had my say.

This week coming up I am going along to the Defra Data Unconference in Birmingham which should be insightful and am also observing the Flood team in their official assessment at GDS. There is also something going on in Bristol on Thursday with various people from the ‘programme’ gathering there so thats a guaranteed day at home 🙂