I’ve found myself reminiscing an awful lot lately about the earlier phases of my career. I mean a LOT ~ even for a person of my advanced years.

The seat of the pants, make it up as you went along, tiny teams days when the web was open, social media was fun, nobody really understood what you were talking about and the expectations were minimal.

I had fun building blog networks, organising ‘fringe’ events, arranging citizen science activities, cos-playing at a start-up, amplifying conferences, launching web apps, making friends at BarCamps and writing about it all on this here blog.

Then GDS happened…and for me ONS happened…and things got serious. It was still a bit seat of your pants as we were writing the playbook in the midst of the big game…at full stadiums…and the pressure was palpable…but it was still kind of fun.

Albeit a kind of ‘fun’ that let me a burned out, overweight, diabetic, shut-in by the end of it.

Look at this ‘day in the life‘ post I wrote 10 years ago today. A pretty average day at the height of my ONS days – the Beta had just been released and I’d just experienced a five hour Service Assessment. A day like that would have me curled up in a corner sucking my thumb these days…heck I suspect a week of it would!

It is a stark reminder though that I peaked professionally a decade ago! Everything I have done since has been influenced by what happened on that project (for good and ill) and any achievements since then have been overshadowed by what we did back then.

I mean even career progression wise – I was a Grade 6 then and I continue to be an interim Grade 6 today – shows a distinct lack of upwards motion!

…and the playbook that emerged from that early GDS ecosystem is today treated as dogma and the same old battles around agile, design, user research, openness and even the use of the word ‘digital’ abound. Sure ‘cyber’ is a bigger player now and nothing escaped unscathed by a brush with ‘AI’ but those Wild West of the Web days are a distant memory and instead the prevailing feeling is more Groundhog Day.

I guess I’m feeling a little uninspired at the moment which is causing the excess of nostalgia…it is clear that AI – for all its flaws and issues – is going to be the thing that shakes up the digital government landscape and while I really believe a shake-up is due I am disinclined to get on the AI bus.

I’m sure I’m shake this period of pining off soon enough but in the meantime I’m enjoying revisiting my ‘glory days’ and thankful once again for the extent I wrote it all down!