It’s been two weeks since my last weeknote, but I feel like I’ve aged six months. Three trips to the UK, one conference, one festival — all while trying to keep the day job, the book, and the side project moving. I’m knackered.

I’m writing this from a hotel room in Manchester. Weekend plans didn’t quite come together — poor timing, crossed wires, and the quiet disappointment of being let down by someone. Maybe it’s just as well. I probably needed the space to stop and catch my breath.

This fortnight at work

Camp Digital was a bright spot — a brilliant event and a reminder that there are still good humans working in digital, design and comms. Our 300 Seconds lightning speakers smashed it. Fresh ideas, fresh perspectives, a healthy amount of swearing: the holy trinity of a good event. Roll on next year.

I’ve been working with one of our partners on some new opportunities — nothing I can share yet but fingers crossed. If it comes off, it’ll be fun.

The book is coming along; the first chapters are due to the publisher this week, so the mild panic is entirely justified. I am flitting wildly between ‘this is fine’ and ‘I should go and hide.’

And we’ve started experimenting with AI agents for communicators. Not the generative AI that everyone’s wanging on about, but actual agentic tools that can plan campaigns, track outcomes, and crunch numbers. The boring stuff no one in comms actually wants to do. The hope is that if the machines can take care of the drudgery, we can get back to the good bit: the human side of work.

Also this week

I have spent a ridiculous amount of time on the road. Cancelled flights, last-minute rebookings, 3am airport taxis, and that bleak routine of going home just long enough to unpack, shove everything through the wash, and pack again. I’m over it.

I mostly enjoy the rhythm of travel — airport rituals, playlists, good intentions to write en route. Now it’s just departure gates, bad coffee, and the creeping sense my suitcase sees me more than my friends do.

Meanwhile, I’ve been quietly chipping away at a side project. It’s killing me not to share more, but I promise it’ll be worth it. Or at least mildly interesting. We’ll see.

Consuming

👩🏻‍💻 Internetting

Matt Jukes posted the full script of his Camp Digital talk, The Power, Peril and Privilege of Working in the Open. It’s brilliant, funny, and painfully honest — basically a roadmap of what two decades of blogging, tweeting and weeknoting does to a person.

I related to a lot of it. Like Matt, I’ve been writing in public for over a decade, and I’ve got the bruises to show for it. He captures why openness is both exhilarating and exhausting — the opportunities, the random connections, the whisper networks and the weirdos.

If you’ve ever wondered why some of us keep putting our messy selves on the internet, this is the best explanation I’ve seen.

📺 Watching

I watched Attack on London: Hunting the 7/7 Bombers on Netflix, in the one day I spent at home this week (cheerful, I know). A tough but compelling four-part documentary marking 20 years since the London bombings. That number still doesn’t feel real — like most Londoners, that day is burned into my memory.

The series does a solid job of telling the story without sensationalism. The attacks, the huge investigation, the botched operation that led to the killing of Jean Charles de Menezes. It’s all there, plus reflections from survivors and first responders.

It’s honest, unsparing, and a reminder of how much that day reshaped the city and the people in it.

📚 Reading

Trips back to the UK meant a chance to stock up on actual books. I picked up The Genius Myth by Helen Lewis. I’ve barely scratched the surface, but so far: yes, this is for me.

🎧 Listening

Spent last weekend at Down The Rabbit Hole, a charming little festival in the east of the Netherlands. Big enough to get good acts, small enough that you’re not spending the whole time schlepping between stages. Plus, swanky glamping — I am absolutely past the point of roughing it.

Highlights: Patti Smith, still a force of nature. Underworld, euphoric as ever. Iggy Pop, Japanese Breakfast, Beth Gibbons, Bloc Party — all excellent. Massive Attack? Bit meh.

This one’s special for me, It was at Down The Rabbit Hole six years ago that I decided I wanted to move to the Netherlands. So in a roundabout way, this festival changed my life. Or at least my postcode.

Travel

Off to Malta on Monday for a quick solo break — a plan that seemed like a great idea when I booked it, and now feels like yet more admin. But then: two solid weeks at home. Thank Christ.

This week in photos