Weeknote 18th December 2022

An odd and multifaceted week. Endings are coming closer. Some options for new beginnings too. A lot of other transitions too.

I’ve taken a massive back seat on my final project at DIT, so the team can see how they do without me – and find any gaps they need to fix. No going to standups or planning meetings, and also letting them handle stakeholder metings. The only exception was going to their fortnightly presentation to our senior management team – so I could see how they brought the threads of the work together without me.

It was an interesting exercise. On some aspects it highlighted my own high production values around these things – which is kind of ‘part of the service’. But also there were a few gaps – thankfully we’ve got a week left to tweak the few key bits that are less about personal taste and more around making sure we can get signoff and a clear runway for the team in the new year.

I’ve been trying to follow the “lead by context” ideas used at Netflix, and create slide decks for the teams saying “this is why we thought pursuing [problem x] was a good idea, these are the artefacts you’ll need to understand how the business has tried to solve this problem before, here are some known landmines, and here are the biggest unknowns”.

I’ve also been going through my onedrive and googledrive, finding things that might be useful for our product community’s posterity. Old slide decks and documents that I thought were “best practice” so teams didn’t have to reinvent the wheel the next time they’re creating a vision, or a product strategy, or making the case to fund a beta. Also lots of the training materials from prior community sessions. The greatest hits of nearly four years in an organisation.

I had my last face to face ‘one to one’ meeting with my boss Miranda – and we actually ran out of things to talk about, because there aren’t new things to start.

I variously said goodbye to a bunch of colleagues who were finishing for Christmas on Thursday and Friday. Some lovely and kind things were said/emailed/messaged. Might have needed a few deep breaths before I went onto the next meeting.

Next step – leaving drinks on the 12th January. (Trying to book anywhere this side of Christmas is a nightmare). Loads of people are coming – we’ve had to increase the space in the venue. I’m hugely touched by everyone making the effort.

Elsewhere:

  • Some good conversations about what’s next. One tempting option fell through, but I’m glad they’ve got someone that’s an even better fit – and I won’t be sad about the Large Commute
  • Lovely evening seeing Robin Ince and countless lovely science/comedy/music people and “Nine Lessons for Curious people”. Wonderful to see old friend Ben Moor talking about 20 years of the cumberland lawn frisbee tree golf club
  • Wonderful chat with Victor about opportunities with startups and creating music
  • Picked up Daisy from UEA – five hours of driving was a lot, but it’s fab to have her home.
  • Watched the new ‘Matilda’ – which is very charming
  • Loved settling into the modular system using my Mordax Data to understand more about what’s really going on with it. But also thinking I’m soon going to be wanting to overtly write more, and discover less
  • Realised that I’m very tired – and actually having a very minimum of January off is an unbelievably good idea. Not least to watch a ton more films, and play with some of this lovely music gear, and read some of these books.

Next week’s is going to be really weird – as DIT will be over. So many fabulous people to miss. Sigh.

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