On Friday I joined 6,000 members of Amsterdam’s middle-aged community at the first date of Pulp’s European tour.

I caught sight of myself in a mirror on the way to buy some weak lager at the bar, clad in combat trousers and a freshly bought band t-shirt from the merch stand. You could say I haven’t moved on from 1997.

But coming two days after the surprise general election announcement, I’m fully embracing the late 90s nostalgia.

“Do you remember the first time? I can’t remember a worse time…But you know that we’ve changed so much since then.”

Do I remember the first time? Yes. But I wasn’t old enough to vote. This time around I am enjoying every second of this car crash campaign, and feeling hopeful that things are finally going to change.

Some stuff I did this week

Months back I decided to tack a few days on to my Lisbon trip, to give myself a few days chill time after what was set to be a busy few weeks of work/travel/speaking. I booked an Airbnb by the sea which promised fast wifi for remote working.

As it turns out the wifi was well used, with calls from 7.30am to 7pm both days, and not much chill time in-between. Sigh.

But it was lovely to knock off work and be able to go for a walk by the beach and get stuck into some tasty and cheap seafood.

Much of that work was a bunch of proposals and pitches. They’re not something I enjoy as they take a good chunk of time, with no guarantee that anything will come of them. But these were all solid, qualified asks from existing clients or those we’ve been talking seriously to, so we felt they were worth doing. Will have some serious scheduling to do in the coming months.

I recorded a podcast with the folks over at workplace tech firm Joan. A long old chat which was supposed to be about workplace tech but ended up being about people. Like I frequently say, tech is the easy bit. It’s people and culture that are harder to change. I love geeking out in this stuff. Will share when the episode is out.

We landed a chunky project to support a super interesting client with the next steps of their digital workplace transformation.

Between that project and our ongoing ones, and other projects coming down the line, we’ve got a lot on, and a lot to coordinate. So we hired two people this week to support us with delivery management and client content development. I’m looking forward to both of them starting with us in the coming weeks.

What I’m reading

Apparently it’s reasonably common for people who (like me) lack 3D vision to think in mental or visual maps, and I suspect that’s why I’ve had a life-long obsession with cartography.

I also love a history book. So I’d been waiting for Jonn Elledge’s A History Of The World In 47 Borders to hit the shelves. And it didn’t disappoint. Each chapter is a standalone tale of the (mostly bad) decisions and historical accidents behind the lines on our maps, and how these are still impacting people and politics today.

I’ve powered through the first half of this. There’s no better travel companion than a good book; I took this one to bars and enjoyed it with a few sangrias (pictured). I expect to devour the rest in the next day or two. Recommend.

Connections

Caught up with Anne-Marie Blake at the Sky Bar in Amsterdam to talk about comms, training and balancing the demands for a steady stream of updates on LinkedIn and the like with being too busy with the day job to produce them.

Coverage

I was interviewed for this piece in BA’s Club Magazine about building a trip around going to a gig – something I do regularly.

The folks over at Nexxer have made all the videos from Camp Digital available. Which gives me the opportunity to see all the talks I couldn’t catch because there were so many good ones to choose from at the same time. And also means I can share the 300 Seconds session for new speakers with the wider world.

Here it is, with an intro from me and four brilliant stories from four brilliant women.