Happy New Year. Welcome to 2023 which will mark 50 years of this blogger…and hip hop. Coincidence? You decide.
Honestly the whole Christmas/New Year break was a bit low energy this year. I worked right up to the 23rd in the end and then did a day and half during the Twixmas period as my plans were scuppered by strikes and illness. I’ve not done either of those things for a lot of years and combined with missing all the work Christmas gatherings in the run-in it threw me a bit. Still it was a nice break and I’ve been feeling adequately refreshed this week.
This week at work has been fine – meetings have been sparse so I’ve had time to get some thoughts written down, plan the next few weeks/months and start looking further ahead as I close in on my 100 days here.
I’ve had a bit of a breakthrough with my proposal for our new DDaT wide planning process – it is just a draft/alpha at the moment but it is starting to feel coherent, sensible and just the right mix of empowering teams and providing stakeholder assurance. Fingers crossed other people feel the same.
All my research into roadmaps helped – and thanks to everyone who provided examples and reading material. The collection is looking pretty good at this point. I definitely find myself leaning toward formats that are a bit more verbose and linky – I want to be able to drill into the goals a bit and understand the why but I am aware I might be an edge case. It has been a fun little activity though and I’ll share what we converge on.
I’m also really enjoying the little blogging renaissance that is emerging from the Fediverse migration – I’m collecting links on the topic at webofwords.org and looking forward to some new (or returning) voices to the blogosphere (haha – long time since I used that term!).
I’m looking forward to the Gov Product People unconference next week – and Tom’s leaving do that evening! Then it is Govcamp the week after. Thank god for having a few things lined up to drag me out of my flat during January. I need to try and be more social this year – it is too easy for me to revert to hermit mode.
One of my big stressors since mid December has been the ongoing saga of the electrics in my flat. I’m still without power to half my kitchen and my conservatory – not to mention all the trunking in my bedroom detaching from the ceiling. I finally got someone to agree to do the work – starting next week. Within five minutes of seeing my current set-up they suggested I sue all the previous electricians. God I hope it gets sorted this time as I don’t trust any of the wiring now and my flat is all electric – and as you can imagine I have a LOT of stuff plugged in!
That’ll do – well done for surviving the first week of 2023.
Digital by Default 