As January is finally behind us, different cultures mark the transition into a new season. So yesterday I found myself celebrating both Lunar New Year and St Brigid’s Day, two festivals marking the turn of the seasons in very different cultures.

At their core, both St. Brigid’s Day and Lunar New Year are celebrations of renewal, abundance, and the enduring power of traditions. But in a world where borders blur and cultures interweave, celebrating traditions from every corner of the globe has become a way of life.

My longtime nomad friend Lauren scheduled a Lunar New Year dinner for her first Curiosity Supper Club, intimate gatherings of global citizens to share stories and perspectives shaped by different places, cultures, and experiences.

My dining companions were certainly a cosmopolitan bunch, including a Hong Konger who grew up in Cairo, a Taiwanese man who came to the Netherlands via Colombia, a Thai-Italian former Londoner who grew up in Norway, and a Sámi Swede from Lapland.

Our host asked everyone to contribute some food or drink. And somehow, with no real coordination, we ended up with starters, mains and dessert. A blend of family recipes and favourites from the diverse mix of places all of us have called home at points.

Amidst this wonderfully mixed group of people from every continent, I had the pleasure of introducing ‘Lo Hei’, the Singaporean prosperity toss tradition I enjoyed while living there.

Part of being a global citizen is carrying traditions with you—adopting new ones, sharing old ones, and seeing how they evolve in new places.

Whether tossing raw fish and shredded vegetables in the air for luck or weaving Brigid’s crosses for protection, these rituals connect us to the past while bringing people together in the present.

This week at work

• We’re thinking a lot about digital workplace maturity. Too often organisations focus on platforms and technologies, but maturity is driven much more about how you use them. You can have cutting-edge platforms, but if you don’t have mature processes and the right skills and capabilities, you won’t get the best from them. Conversely, you can have old tech but with great processes (particularly in use of data and thinking on user experience) have a mature DW. “All the gear, no idea” is a common phenomenon.
  
  With that in mind, we’ve been exploring what digital workplace maturity looks like and how you can objectively assess it. We cracked some of the big questions this week and am looking forward to sharing with some partners and clients soon
   
• Started planning for a swathe of conferences and events this year. My travel diary for this year is already looking a bit bonkers (even by my standards!)
   
• Kicked off some thought leadership work for a vendor
   
• Worked on post-launch improvements for a client’s intranet

Also this week

With a bunch of travel coming up I spent this week catching up on personal admin. Legal stuff, tax bills, pension, dentist x 2, haircut (same haircut I’ve had forever; I fear change), gym x 5.

Consuming

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

• This study from the Oxford Internet Institute on the impact of generative AI on the freelance job market. The study finds that the impact on the labour market is complex – creating opportunities in some areas while reducing demand in others.
• Clearbox have published an updated edition of their intranet and employee app review report. It’s an essential resource for anyone looking to invest in a new solution or boost the value of their current one. And it’s free.

📺 Watching
I’ve started watching The Diplomat on Netflix. Only three episodes in – I’ve been out lots this week so not had much TV time – but I can already see why people recommend it

📚 Reading

Nothing this week. I need to find my book mojo again.

🎧 Listening

• Enjoyed a few episodes of Redacted, a series on declassified incidents in government institutions
• I’ve had Confidence Man on repeat on Spotify. Was in preparation for seeing them live, before realising I’ll be away so will miss it. Still, banging tunes nonetheless.

🧳 Travelling

I had a whole week at home. But that changes this week as I’m off on an adventure. More on that next week.

Connections

I caught up with Public Digital’s Cate McLaurin and Oli Lovell (but only a brief wave to Tom Loosemore), and joined them for dinner with colleagues from one of their clients.

I decided to give networking app The Breakfast another go, and ended up matched with Adhar, a marketer from Bangalore. We met for a decidedly non-breakfast drink had a great chat about music, keeping track of your network, craft beer and food in the Netherlands.

Coverage

Jon and I were interviewed for this piece in Reworked on measuring digital workplace maturity

A throwaway post on LinkedIn, in which I asked in Enterprise Social Networks have had their day, blew up big time. It attracted comments from some of the people I respect most in the industry.

My post was picked up by Shel Holtz and Neville Hobson on their For Immediate Release podcast, along with another timely question from Caroline Kealey: is change management dead?

To my mind there are a couple of trends which contribute to both: 1) the hollowing-out of trust at work, which has eroded psychological safety. And 2) a sense of fatigue; people are simply overwhelmed with the sheer amount of change and messaging to process. So they retreat into silos and safer spaces, online.

There’s an irony, then, in my posting a question about thew death of social networking on a public social network and it generating one of the most thoughtful and interesting discussions I’ve had online in years. But I guess that illustrates the point quite well; that where there’s clear purpose, there’s still appetite for community.