Clockwork Orange author Anthony Burgess once said “Manchester is the most wonderful city in the world. It’s full of bars, it’s full of wonderful music, it’s full of wonderful people, and it’s full of more life than any place where I’ve ever been in my life.”

Friedrich Engels provided a starker critique of the city: “The industrial revolution has completed the separation between the industrialists and the landowners. And has produced a new, socially created basis, which can serve only as the foundation of a social revolution, in which the industrial proletariat overthrows the domination of the bourgeoisie.”

I can only assume both were talking about spending an evening, as I did, in a warehouse watching The Happy Mondays, Inspiral Carpets and Stereo MCs along with 1000 or so euphoric 50-something Mancunians all desperate to relieve their increasingly distant youth.

As well as the triple-header gig, my weekend in Rainy City with my best mates delivered a comedy club, going out on the town dancing, an educational walking tour and a lot of excellent food. 

Who knew the foundation of social revolution would be such a laugh?

Some things I did this week

A quiet work week thanks to everyone being off (including me for the second half of the week). Caught up on admin. I even had my expenses done less than a week after the quarter finished. I didn’t know I had it in me.

On Friday I joined Advita Patel for an edition of Curious Rebel TV, her weekly LinkedIn Live show, to talk about the role of digital in internal comms. Inevitably we also talked about whether intranets are still needed (spoiler: they are), I introduced my Miss Marple Theory of Communication Needs and, inevitably, there were questions about Generative AI. If you missed it you can watch it back here.

What I’m reading

I started Hyperfocus: How to be more productive in a world of distraction. But, with no small dose of irony, I got distracted and didn’t finish it.

Connections

Caught up with Lilla Szulovszky and talked about venture building, getting settled in Amsterdam, migration and connecting people with complementary passions and skills so they can make great things.

With Q1 wrapped, it’s time for a progress update on my target of meeting my list of 100 people before the year’s out.

How am I doing? Not too bad: 14. One a week puts me behind target for 100 people by year end, but ahead of where I have been at this time previous years. I’ll give myself a B-.

If we haven’t caught up a while, then let’s do that soon. In the next few weeks I’m in Johannesburg, London and Lisbon. And of course Amsterdam. Let me know if you’re around and have time for a brew and a chat.

The hotel review no one asked for

A tale of two hotels this week. One had zero bedside plug sockets. But it a budget Ibis, chosen for its proximity to the venue where we were seeing the MOndays, so no great surprise there. You get what you pay for – or don’t, in this instance.

Moved to the centrally-located Townhouse Hotel for the rest of the weekend. An impressive array of sockets near the bed and elsewhere, but baffling wiring that turned the same corner light on regardless which order in which one flicked the ten or so switches in the room. Finding the right order in which to turn things off and have them all stay off was a proper challenge.

This was a skill which proved useful on Sunday when we did the Crystal Maze Experience.