This week’s weeknote comes to you from my grandmother’s home city, Paris. She died a couple of years ago and I miss her terribly.

Her fellow Parisian Guy de Maupassant wrote

“Our memory is a more perfect world than the universe: it gives back life to those who no longer exist.”

I can’t really explain it but being here makes me feel connected to her again. Just hearing French spoken around me reminds me of her voice and her laugh and all the things that made her special. It’s oddly nice, to walk around and be reminded of conversations we had and places that she talked about.

Taste has a remarkable way of evoking emotions, too. I had old school classics Boeuf Bourgignon and Tarte Tatin at St Germain neighbourhood fave Chez Fernand Christine last night, and suddenly I could taste the memory.

Food was Nan’s love language. When she moved to the UK in the 50s she bought with her a notebook of hand-written family recipes for traditional French favourites. To Mum’s schoolmates – raised on the standard 1960s diet of overcooked meat and veg – an invite to tea after school at Chez Marguerite became legendary.

I should try and make some of this at home,

This week at work

Jon and I met up in London on Monday for some in-depth planning. In Q4 we were deep in the weeds on client work and didn’t have a moment to zoom out and look at the bigger picture (or even really to lay the groundwork on anything beyond the short term). Too busy IN the business to work ON the business.

We have a short breather before things go bonkers again, so we made sure to take some time to look at the bigger picture.

Communication history was made at the old BBC Television Centre, so it was fitting that it was where we met up.

I’d love to say this was on-brand planning, but if I’m honest it’s because it’s close to both tube and cheap parking.

Nonetheless, the setting was a perfect background for our day: reflecting on the stories of the past year and envisioning the future we want to build.

We celebrated successes, learned from the challenges, and scribbled plans for what’s ahead.

We’ve got one project ongoing and another about to start. So we’re using the few weeks while that ramps up to do some industry research we’ve been talking about for ages.

Once we made a plan, we were all go. Within days we had a solid proposition and a plan. I’m kind of excited to see how this goes now.

Also this week

I made it back to weight training. It took three days for my legs to stop hurting.

Ann and I met up in Paris to eat our body weight in patisserie and put the world to rights. Successful trip on both counts.

Paris has got a lot nicer – cleaner, quieter, noticeably less car-centric – since I was here last.

A highlight was visiting the newly-reopened Notre Dame. I was awestruck by the sheer scale, and the speed and quality of the restoration. It’s almost odd how no traces of the devastating fire are left. The near-thousand-year-old church feels… new. An extraordinary job. Imagine the craftsmanship that went in to making this happen. Breathtaking.

Consuming

👩🏻‍💻 Internetting
Bits of digital lint from my browser’s belly-button

• The UK Government’s AI opportunities action plan. I admire the ambition – positioning the nation as a global leader in artificial intelligence, and the proposed investment (£14bn) is substantial enough to take seriously. But I’d like to see the government be bolder on policy to enable a transition to a future of work in which humans are augmented by computing power. That means investing in skills, but also supporting people and businesses through a period of rapid change.
• I had a quick scan-read of the WEF global risk report. A must-read for me every year. Will give it a much more thorough read this week and share thoughts.

📖  Reading
Books I’ve read (or tried to)

• Started Tony Blair’s On Leadership

📺 Watching

• I did not expect to enjoy a Robbie Williams musical auto-biopic in which he is anthropomorphised as a chimpanzee anywhere near as much as I did. I laughed out loud. I cried. I managed not to sing along.Surprisingly emotional – and watchable. Recommend.

🎧 Listening

• Quite enjoyed The Rest Is Classified, on the North Korean intelligence agencies’ cyber heist. And not just because I learned they’re known in the intelligence community as NORKS

🧳 Travelling

This week I’m heading to London again, briefly.

Connections

Met the first of this year’s 100 People: Laura Morgan from University of the Arts London.

Coverage

All employees really want from their digital platforms is timely, relevant information and easy access to the tools and answers they need, when they need them.

The dream of a personalised workplace that automates rote tasks and delivers information and assistance where and when you want it is – in theory anyway – in reach through the application of AI in the digital workplace.

In my latest for Reworked I explain how much potential AI has to deliver that vision. But also that we need to be realistic — we’ve got our work cut out to reach digital workplace nirvana. Getting there starts with user research, so we’re solving real problems rather than making new ones.