Today marks five years since I packed up my life in London and moved across the North Sea.

I originally planned to stay here for six months as a kind of ’emigration alpha’, to see how I liked it. Half a decade has passed and I’m still here. So I guess I’ve passed the assessment and Sharon In Amsterdam is officially a Live Service.

The city marked the occasion – intentionally, I’m sure – by taking the scaffolding down off the Westertoren after 18 months of repairs, so I have this wonderful view from my front window again. 🥰

Moving abroad for the third time has been one of the most challenging and rewarding experiences of my life.

It wasn’t just about adapting to a new country or sloooooooowly learning a new language—it was also about discovering who I am when all the comforts and familiarity of home are stripped away.

Here are five lessons I learned about myself in these last five years:

1. I’m more resilient than I thought 💪

Living in a foreign country tested my limits in ways I never expected. There were days when everything felt overwhelming and I lay in bed thinking “what the hell am I doing here?”. Especially during Covid when home was no longer just a short flight away.

But I discovered a well of resilience and adaptability within myself that I didn’t know existed. I realised that I could handle uncertainty and find solutions to problems, even in unfamiliar situations.

2. My values became clearer 🔎

Being far from home forced me to confront what truly matters to me. Without the familiar surroundings and support networks, I had to rely on my core values to guide me. I found myself reflecting on what I need to feel happy and fulfilled—whether it’s a sense of community, meaningful work, or the simple pleasure of exercise. This experience taught me to prioritise what truly matters and let go of what doesn’t.

3. I learned to be self-reliant 👊

Unlike my previous move to Singapore, I had to navigate this on my own, without any corporate relocation package. Navigating life admin and building a new social circle all forced me to step out of my comfort zone. I learned to trust my instincts and rely on myself more than ever before.

This newfound self-reliance gave me a sense of empowerment that I had never felt before. That’s given me confidence in other areas of my life too, and I can see how this has propelled me to grow the business to a whole new level.

4. Embracing uncertainty became my new normal 🤷🏻‍♀️

Moving abroad taught me to let go of my need for control. Things often didn’t go as planned—whether it was a bureaucratic hiccup, a language barrier, and the small matter of a global pandemic messing with my shiz.

Over time, I learned to embrace uncertainty and go with the flow. That shift in mindset made me more flexible and open to new experiences, allowing me to see setbacks not as failures but as opportunities for growth.

5. I discovered the joy of solitude 🧘‍♀️

Living in a new place, especially when you’re far from friends and family, can be lonely at times. But this solitude also taught me a valuable lesson: I discovered that I enjoy my own company. I learned to find comfort in quiet moments and appreciate the freedom that comes with being alone. Whether it was exploring my new city by myself, enjoying a solo coffee at a local café (not that kind!), or learning to love exercise, I found that solitude isn’t something to fear—it’s something to embrace. It allowed me to reflect, recharge, and become more comfortable with who I am.

I know this sounds cheesy, but moving abroad was far more than just a geographical change; it was also a journey of self-discovery. I’m grateful for the opportunity to learn and grow.

If you’re thinking about making a similar leap, know that it’s not just a change of scenery—it’s a chance to learn who you truly are, and what you can be if you push yourself out of your comfort zone.

Some things I did this week

• We’re working to identify content needs for a future intranet. As part of this process we have a team reviewing existing sites to identify valuable content that really needs to exist on the future site. This is useful, but intranet programmes should look forwards not back. We should work with users and stakeholders to understand what content people need, will value, or for whatever reason needs to exist (eg compliance). We need to be careful not to over-index on content audits, as this risks merely moving indentiying stuff over from one site to another. These should inform the discussion on user needs, not be the primary source of insight on user needs.
• All that said, on another project we don’t have an audit of existing content at all. That makes it difficult to understand what content is widely used in practice. We shouldn’t base content decisions on hunches and vibes, so we’ll need to think creatively on how we validate these. On the plus side, it gives a good opportunity to start all over again – greenfield – with content. That so rarely happens and I’d like to think the outcome will be better as a result.
• Developed a proposition and vision for a client’s intranet. It’s critical to co-create this with stakeholders up front, so everyone has a shared understanding of what the site is, what it should do – and what it will not. This helps to ground and guide stakeholder comms and engagement later, bringing conversations back to what we’re trying to deliver for users.

Some non-work things I did this week

It was a pretty quiet one. No gigs. I saw French arthouse film Daaaaaalí at the cinema, which was predictably, enjoyably surreal. Plus the usual gymmage and enjoying the summer weather we’re finally having.

Went to a talk on the opportunities and risks of AI. The speakers (from Google amongst others) were great, but overall I felt like this was covering the same ground rather than moving the discourse around AI on. I’m getting rather tired of pronouncements about 30% productivity gains, rarely based on actual real-world examples, that overlook the impacts on quality, accessibility and performance and skirt over the risk questions.

Like much of Britain’s middle-aged community I spent my Saturday trying and failing to get Oasis tickets. It made me yearn for the simple, stress-free experience of getting into Glastonbury.

It’s funny how we often measure our weeks by tasks completed or meetings attended (and this week had a lot of both), yet the most valuable moments usually happen in the spaces between—the unexpected conversations, the fleeting moments of clarity, the rare occasions when we can knuckle down and truly focus.

This week was no different, filled with its share of planned and unplanned, the expected and the serendipitous. And I find myself wondering: What if I paid more attention to those in-between moments? And do I need to carve out more time to be less busy so I can have more of them?

(Yeah I think I know the answer to that one already)

Some things I did this week

• The start of any project is a little frustrating as it feels like things are moving slowly, but if you don’t get the foundations in place it just causes headaches down the line. Skip this stuff at your own risk. We’re three weeks into one project, and it feels like we’ve now got key decisions made and people aligned so our blended team can pick up the pace on a content audit and understanding user needs for internal content.
• We did our first show and tell with this client. The early ones are often awkward as there’s not much to show, or tell. But there was a lot of interest in the foundations and how we’ve agreed to move forward, so it was pretty positive I think.
• All that means we can also now get stuck into all the stuff that isn’t content; scope, organisational needs, technical feasibility, resourcing, roadmapping, managing the associated business change, and so on. Really getting our teeth into the factors that will define what’s possible and how quickly it can happen.
• Similarly, we worked with another client to define their vision for intranet content. Any project like this will face difficult stakeholder conversations and trade-offs. Having a vision agreed up front will make those conversations easier, as we can bring it back to what the intranet and its content should deliver for employees and for the company.
• We onboarded another new starter to the team at Lithos Partners. We have someone new starting every week lately, which is exciting and scary in equal measure. I’m trying to find the right balance between documenting our onboarding as much as possible so I don’t need to repeat myself every time, while being available and welcoming and not leaving people to flounder about alone. Not sure we’re anywhere near getting that balance right, but we’re learning.

Some non-work things I did this week

As I write this, I’m sitting at my window, and the sounds of the annual Prinsengracht Concert are drifting from a stage on the canal nearby. In late August a stage is set up on the edge of the water and locals park their boats up for an evening’s music on the water, braving the inevitable rain to enjoy the concert with friends and wine on a boat.

The concerts always close with Peter Goemens’ love letter to Mokum, Aan De Amsterdamse Grachten (On The Amsterdam Canals). Amsterdam has a way of captivating your soul, and that’s captured in the timeless lyrics.

I’m not Dutch, but I feel like I’m an Amsterdammer now. And Goemans had it right; no one could wish for better to than to make this city home. It will have a piece of my heart forever.

Connections

Nebius Group’s Peter Morley was in town so we met up and talked about corporate comms and the challenges of working with dispersed teams.

I also caught up (remotely) with Christian Hunt. Ostensibly to appear on his Human Risk podcast, but it was just a hugely enjoyable, meandering chat about digital workplace, AI, the future of work, and balancing a desire to work out loud with client confidentiality.

Coverage

I was interviewed for this piece in Reworked on the importance of auditing your internal comms platforms, processes and content. This is something I’m hugely passionate about. Organisations always get better results, and spend their budgets better, by taking the time to do an audit or discovery first. As my business partner Jonathan, a recovering geologist, always says: time spent on reconnaissance is never wasted.

The key is to understand the barriers to effective comms and collaboration that exist within your organisation, and changing how you communicate and how you use your channel mix to meet your employees’ needs and the reality of how they work.

Travel

After getting back from Finland I had no travel booked at all. For the first time in years my Flighty App didn’t have a single flight lined up.

My itchy feet got the better of me within days and I’ve booked a long weekend in Riga and a solo adventure in Georgia and Armenia. Hit me up with your tips for either.

As another week comes to an end, I find myself pondering the nature of time. A bit deep for a Sunday evening, I know.

I had an old friend in town. On Friday it hit me quite how old… it’s twenty five years since a strange teenage adventure in which our friendship was formed (of which thankfully there is no photographic evidence).

So time, then. It’s got this curious ability to feel both fleeting and infinite. There are days when hours stretch endlessly, weighed down by tasks and to-do lists. And yet a quarter of a century can slip through my fingers like sand, leaving me wondering where my life has gone.

What I’ve been up to this week

My big focus was the formal kick-off of a new project. We’ve an ambitious timeline and we’re working with a platform vendor as well as the client to deliver it. There’s no sugarcoating it: this one is going to be intense. But it was reassuring that everyone involves is well aware of that, and of the need for rapid delivery and decision-making to keep up that pace. We’ve got this.

Our other big programme is starting to make sense too. Between us and the internal team we’re making sense of the landscape and what we need to do, pragmatically, to move forward.

Between both of those, plus an ongoing programme and a smaller piece of work I have been spread rather more thinly than I’d like this week. I feel like I’m not really giving anything quite as much attention as I’d like. I’m grateful to have other members of the team who are able to crack on with minimal input from me. But I’m glad Jon’s back on Monday. This has NOT been a quiet summer.

Some non-work things I did this week

As I said, my old pal Adam was in town over the weekend. We met in Hong Kong when we were 18, hit it off immediately and, along with a mutual friend had a few weeks of madness that was standard for Wanchai in the late 90s (and which no teenager would believe today). But he’s one of those friends who I can go years without seeing, then pick up the conversation like it was yesterday.

Someone responded to my last weeknote to say it sounds like I am good at maintaining and nurturing friendships. I hadn’t really considered that before. But I guess I am. I’m lucky that I have a wide network of friends I’ve collected over the years. Every single one is important to me. I’m not always as good a friend as I’d like to be, but maintaining friendships does take effort.

Here’s a tip I picked up from Jane McGonigal on deepening relationships with people you’re rubbish at keeping in touch with, or new friends you’d like to know better.

• Text a friend you’ve been meaning to get in touch with and ask them: “How’s your day going, on a scale of 1 to 10?”. The scale’s important as it encourages people to share the reasoning behind their score.
• When they respond, ask them if there’s anything you can do to move that score up by 1. That shows that you’re willing to make an effort for the other person. It builds and encourages reciprocity.
• More often than not the friend will reply to say just you getting in touch has moved the dial up by itself. But if you commit to doing a thing, then do it.

McGonigal explains this, and the science behind it, in this video here.

The hotel review no one asked for

The early part of the week I spent in the Scandic in Helsinki. On the whole I like the Scandic chain, with its combination of good design, decent service and city-centre locations. It’s my no 1 choice when I’m in Scandiwegia.

This one was SO close to getting it right, and yet… it featured two of my pet hotel peeves in one ostensibly stylish room.

1 This is not a desk

I opted to get a hotel rather than stay with my friend as I had a shedload of work to do either side of the weekend and needed quiet, private space to join Teams calls.

But while there was plenty of space it was somehow all wrong.

All I ask is that someone actually attempts to do some work at whatever you’re selling as an in-room workstation.

2 These are not helpful curtains

I need it to be dark to sleep. These were perfectly decent curtains, yet no one had considered that given the angle of the walls these were functionally useless against the midnight sun of the Scandinavian summer.

It was so bright I might as well have been outside.

This week I’m on holiday in Finland. Except I’m not fully on holiday, because the reality of self-employment is you can take as much time off as you like as long as you accept you’ll have to spend at least some of the time either working or thinking about work.

I am, at least, in Finland. I can confirm, as Monty Python did, that it has mountains so lovely and treetops so tall. More on that shortly.

Some things I did this week

The team are making rapid progress looking at the path of least resistance in moving a whole bunch of content from old sites to a new intranet. At this stage there’s SO much left to define, but I’ve been impressed by how everyone has got stuck into the detail while being pragmatic about what really adds value.

Sure, you can look at every single page, you could even migrate every single page – but who does it help? And how could that time be better used to deliver a better, more user-centric solution?

We’re working as a blended team with some in-house folks, some of whom have been with the client a long while and have heaps of institutional knowledge. It makes so much difference when you have people on the inside who know where the (digital) bodies are buried.

I’m still juggling two other very full-on projects alongside that one, while Jonathan is having an actual holiday with his family. I feel like I’m being pulled in too many directions at once this week. I’m exhausted.

Some non-work things I did this week

Despite – or perhaps because – I am totally stacked with work, I found my exercise mojo again and went to spin, Sanctum or the gym every day until I headed on hols. In fact one day I went twice. I feel so much better when I’ve had time to step away from screens and move my body.

On Thursday I hopped on a plane to Helsinki. This is the third year in a row I’ve had a little summer break here, and the fourth visiting my dear friend Hanna.

Hanna and I originally met at a work conference in Denmark. We hit it off immediately and have been good friends ever since. I love how being a massive intranet nerd has given me such a great network of friends.

For the second year in a row we went to Flow Festival, a pop/rock/arts festival on the outskirts of the city. My highlights were:

• Idles. Brilliant raw energy and the lyrics – against the backdrop of recent racist thuggery back in Blighty – felt particularly apt
• PJ Harvey. Always a delight.
• Fred Again… Has been on repeat in my ears for the last two years.  Danced like an absolute twat and loved every second
• Alvvays. Everyone raves about how much fun they are live, and they were quite right.
• Pulp. I was at the first show in their Euro tour in Amsterdam, back in May, and it was rather lovely to be at the finish too. In Finnish.

I was looking forward to Raye but honestly I found her a bit meh. But we worked our way through all the flavours of longkero so swings and roundabouts.

This morning I went for a long hike in the rain around a lake in Nuuksio National Park and it was absolutely stunning. That cleared my head and filled my heart post-festival. I want to spend more time outside the city next time I come here.

Disconnections

Twitter has been a huge force for good in my life. I joined in 2008, with an account that hardly anyone knows about, before joining as the highly original handle @sharonodea in 2009.

For 15 years it’s been a daily presence in my life, and right in the middle of my homescreen on my phone.

And Twitter suited me. I enjoyed the challenge of finding a scathing pithy comeback in 140 characters. The perfect bon mot to encapsulate an idea.

I loved how being on Twitter meant I was always two news cycles ahead of everyone else. It was the place I went to find out about anything from an unfolding disaster to advice on upholstering a chair.

Twitter was a connector. It helped me find my tribe, prove my chops and grow my confidence. It connected me to brilliant ideas and even better people. Some of the most important people in my life are those I originally connected with via the platform, before quickly finding they were every bit as smart, interesting and funny face-to-face in a pub.

Twitter connections took from an early Tweetup in St James Park to my first digital jobs. To speaking stages all over the world and live on the BBC News At Ten from a conference in San Francisco.

I became smarter, sharper, funnier and more outgoing in real life by honing my craft on Twitter.

I was good at Twitter. I mean, I had enough practice. But I clocked up 21,000 followers and got an OG blue tick for being A Good Tweetist. I went viral many times, usually (but not always) for the right reasons.

And Twitter was good for me.

But now it isn’t. Negativity and anger and disinformation and straightforward hate have been allowed to run rampant. It’s infested with charlatans, liars and grifters. Promoted by an owner who has been driven mad by his own algorithms. When I open the app it doesn’t bring me joy or wisdom. It just makes me despair.

I’m sad about that.

It’s ok to be sad. Some of that is mourning what it was. And, transparently, I guess some of that is the knowledge I was a (low key) somebody on Twitter, and now I’m not. I had a tribe and reputation on Twitter and now I have to start again somewhere else.

But it’s time to go. I don’t want to be part of it anymore. I’m not deleting my account; I’ve got too many links and conversations there I want to preserve.

Moving forward I’m sharing my observations on comms, collaboration, intranets, politics, travel and whateverthehellelse is going on in my mind over on Threads and BlueSky. Do connect with me on either. Or both.

There’s something special about beginnings. A moment brimming with potential and uncharted possibilities.

I love starting things. Getting started is like standing at the edge of a vast, unexplored forest; the path ahead may be unclear, but the promise of discovery beckons irresistibly.

A therapist I saw a while back told me about the Sensation Seeking personality type. And yeah: it me.

I guess I’m lucky that I’ve found work that allows me to find “varied, novel, rich and intense” experiences regularly. There’s always a new challenges around the corner, new places to explore and problems to get stuck into.

I wouldn’t have it any other way.

It’s easy to feel overwhelmed by the magnitude of what lies ahead, but I can’t help getting excited about starting something new. Maybe my superpower is my willingness to embrace the unknown, and my irritatingly exhilarating sense of hope that accompanies every fresh start.

Some things I did this week

The main focus was – finally – having the kickoff meeting for a chunky project. This is a new piece of work with a former client who have asked us back. But despite working pretty intensively with them before we’d never met any of them in person. It’s weird finally meeting IRL when you’ve spent hours talking to people on Teams and feel like you already know them really well.

For all the usual procurement reasons it’s taken a while to get this one over the line and there’s a metric fucktonne to do. So it was good to get cracking. I was joined by Nic, our superstar delivery manager, who kept everything on track, and Lisa, queen of absolutely everything, who asked all the right questions to help bring clarity on what needs doing. I’m really excited to work with both of them on this one.

Lisa and I also spent some time earlier in the week trying to see how we could use AI to do some post-workshop analysis. This is exactly the kind of thing I am rubbish at and don’t enjoy, so I’d really value Claude/Chat GPT/etc doing the write-up and spotting patterns where I don’t have the patience to find them.

Conclusion: plenty of potential but we needed to work through it systematically, step-by-step to get the level of detail that gives the insight and analysis we need.

Last thing on Friday we also signed contracts on another project we’ve been in negotiations on since February. So all of a sudden, having had people on the bench itching to get started, we’re going from 0-60 on two projects at once. Wish me luck! I suspect I will need it.

(Did I mention we’re hiring? Well we are.)

Some non-work things I did this week

On Tuesday, in honour of Kate Bush’s birthday, my friend and I skived off work for the afternoon to do a two-hour-long dance class to learn the Wuthering Heights dance, before performing it on the steps of the Eye Filmmuseum.

It was spectacularly fun. And I surprised myself by both my ability to follow two hours of dance instruction in Dutch, and by not being entirely terrible at the dancing.

Here it is:

Saturday was Amsterdam Pride’s annual canal parade. It’s a spectacular party and passes just by my house. It’s such a smashing day out. The city is at its best. I love this town.

Connections

I caught up with Rod Cartwright for breakfast while I was in London. We talked about the changing relationship with the career ladder as one slides inexorably toward decrepitude. Eventually your real value isn’t in climbing the greasy pole, but handing the baton on to the next generation. Training, writing, speaking, bringing ideas and experience.

Reflecting, I feel this is harder for women, as just as you reach peak wisdom you also become invisible.

Travel

BA cancelled my flight home after I got to Heathrow on Thursday. But one hasty rebook and hotel scramble later, I checked myself in at Redchurch Townhouse. Which is as close to perfect a hotel as you can find in London. The extra night in London gave me an unexpected opportunity to catch up with Paul Clarke for dinner.

I also got to loll about in a fluffy robe watching the Olympics with a G&T. Silver linings.

I’m in Helsinki from Thursday to Tuesday. If you’re around, LMK and let’s grab a longkoro.

As I step into this new week I’m reminded of a quote by T.S. Eliot: “For last year’s words belong to last year’s language, and next year’s words await another voice.”

Each week presents a fresh canvas, an opportunity to write new stories and chart unexplored paths. The lessons learned from the past blend with the possibilities of the future and give an opportunity for a new approach, a new outlook. Onwards. Shaping my journey one moment at a time.

Some things I did this week

I’m feeling reflective because last week was A LOT.

We kicked off the week with a remote workshop. Experience has taught me that running activities on Miro in organisations which don’t use Miro a lot can go either way. They need careful planning and thorough board-testing to give them the best chance of success.

Fortunately this time we’d done plenty of both and came away feeling it went well. Participants understood the assignment, we got loads of great inputs and only a few very minor (and easily resolved) user problems. We could even see people going back to the board days after the session to add additional ideas and inputs. We’ve got far more and far better-quality inputs from this session than we expected to, which is great.

Another focus this week was a big board meeting. It was a tough one, with a central message that there will be some tough decisions to be made, and soon. With any call for compromise comes the admission that not everyone’s desired outcomes will be met, and inevitably that leaves people disappointed and concerned.

It went pretty well, but between the work getting slides ready for this, and presenting and answering a lot of thorny questions on the day, I came away feeling pretty drained after this one.

It was timely, then, that an old colleague dropped me a line sharing a Facebook memory of a similarly bruising day back when we worked together. I realised that I used to have a meeting like that at least once a week, but in a culture that was much more combative and political, and also where I had far less time or support to be properly prepared. It made it all so much harder, with everyone competing rather than working together to find the best solution, and I couldn’t help but take it personally when people were rude or uncollaborative, or I didn’t get what I wanted.

So much of the discourse about resilience at work is bullshit; you can learn to let toxic politics wash over you, but if the toxicity is still there it’s still an epic waste of everyone’s time and energy that produces sub-optimal outcomes for everyone.

So that gave me pause to reflect. In this week’s tough meeting I didn’t take any of it personally, because it wasn’t about me – or anyone else at the meeting for that matter. While it was tough, it was deservedly so and even the most challenging questions came in the spirit of finding solutions. It was hard work but it wasn’t a bad day.

Finally, we had an end-of-discovery report back to do at the tail end of the week. We try to get these things finished and presentation scripted at least a day or two ahead of time, so we can reflect on it before we deliver. But this week we didn’t have the luxury of time and it was all a bit more last-minute than I’d like. We’d done the analysis as we went along and had our recommendations nailed almost three weeks ago, so we were confident in what we were saying, at least, but the slides were metaphorical wet paint. I hate that.

I was pleased, then, that the client said “this is a great piece of work and you’ve been a pleasure to work with”. A nice note to end that project and go into the weekend.

Non-work things I did this week

Very little indeed. It was one of those weeks where I worked late every day then all I was good for was sitting on the sofa reading the entire internet on my phone.

Coverage

I wrote a piece for Reworked on how internal comms teams can build capability in AI. It’s not simply about learning how the tools work, but understanding the possibilities they offer (and the shortcomings they have too), and playing around with them. That process, called interpretive flexibility, is how we make sense of technology until it becomes part of how we operate.

Travel

This week coming I’m in Cambridge and London. I have a little spare time in both so shout if you want to grab a coffee.

Momentum.

In physics, momentum is the product of an object’s mass and velocity, a measure of how much motion it has and how difficult it is to stop.

In our personal and professional lives, momentum often feels just as critical. When we build momentum, we achieve a state where our actions and progress feel almost effortless, like a downhill cyclist propelled by gravity. The challenge lies in maintaining this momentum, especially when we encounter obstacles.

It’s incredibly frustrating; we have key people on the bench itching to get started on a couple of things. But until paperwork gets sorted out, everyone’s kinda stuck. A lack of momentum. Projects, like objects in physics, remain at rest or in uniform motion unless acted upon by an external force. Inertia.

And I’m not good at that. Anyone who knows me, knows I’m incapable of sitting still and very easily frustrated by a lack of progress.

What habits, routines and mindsets do I need to keep moving forward? How do we avoid losing steam? Perhaps the key to sustaining momentum lies not just in relentless forward motion but in recognising and adapting to the ebbs and flows of our energy and motivation, and the bureaucratic inertia we inevitably face.

So today I’m trying hard to find the balance between pushing ahead and giving myself the grace to pause and recharge. Trying.

Some things I did this week

The highlight of this week was our team get-together. Our little business has grown from just Jon and I two years ago to a team of 12 Lithos Partners across five countries today. Six were able to make it to London on Friday for a morning talking through how we work and generally getting to know one another better. It was the first time many had even met IRL.

I left feeling confident that we have the right team of brilliant people,  proud of what we’ve built between us, and excited about what’s coming up.

But I was so overexcited about having everyone in one room I forgot to get a picture to prove it happened. We’ll have to do it again.

Non-work things I did this week

I saw John Cooper Clarke at the Paradiso. Clad in black, shades on, hair wild as his words, Clarke’s performance is a visceral experience, a collision of poetry and punk. I bagged a seat right near the front, the perfect spot to catch the way he rocked on his heels as he spat verse like a machine gun, rapid-fire and razor-sharp. Poetry, punk and poor health advice is perhaps my ideal Sunday night.

The support, Mike Garry, was fantastic too. His poetry about Manchester, Madchester, his son and what his Mum taught him made me weepy.

Coverage

The team at Modolabs have put the webinar I did for them earlier in the line online, available on-demand. Check it out.

What I’m reading

Too brain fried to do any reading this week.

Travel

In posts passim I have poured scorn on the ‘ironing room’, a dingy cupboard by the stairs where the jetlagged traveler, realising their gear is nowhere near work-acceptable levels of creased is forced to go and do the chores they avoid in their own home.

But this week’s stay at the Citizen M has made me reconsider. There at the end of the hall was a board and the most amazing iron ever that steamed the hell out of my crumpled dress in seconds. If you’re going to make a whole floor share one iron then make it the best iron they’ve ever used.

Nationality is confusing isn’t it? At least, it is for me. Last night I went to see West Belfast hip-hop band Kneecap at the Bitterzoet, easily the greatest concentration of Irish people I’ve ever experienced in a single room here in Amsterdam.

I’m one of them. While at the same time I’m not. I have an Irish passport, but I’ve never lived there, don’t have the accent and – importantly – only experienced the events and cultural experiences referenced in Kneecap’s controversial lyrics second-hand. At a gig heavy with political lines I felt more of an observer than a participant.

Later today I’m going to the pub with my friends to watch the Euro 2024 final, where I’ll be supporting England. But I don’t think of myself as English specifically. British, sure, but not necessary that constituent nation, despite being born and living most of my life there.

When England played the Netherlands earlier in the week I watched the game at a friend’s place, hearing the cheers and boos from the nearby pub as England scored their last-second win. In truth I’d have been happy with either winning; Amsterdam would have been a lot of fun today if they’d made it through to the final.

But now England are through to the final I’ll be putting on a red and white top and hoping it’s coming home.

Like I said, it’s complicated. On the whole it doesn’t matter. I live an international city where such experiences are common, and no one cares. But it does make choosing sporting allegiances harder. And every now and then – like last night – I’m reminded that I’m not one nationality or the other, but nor do I really belong to the place where I live. I exist in a kind of liminal national identity.

I asked Dall-E to create a photorealistic picture of the flags of England, Ireland and the Netherlands flying, and it’s even more confused than I am.

Some things I did this week

It was a frustrating week. We’ve got two projects about to start, but both are still with procurement. We’ve got client teams dying to get cracking, and a talented team stuck on the bench waiting for the green light. We made progress this week, but neither is quite over the line yet.

More positively, an intranet we’ve been working on for a while is really starting to take shape now. The first teams are publishing content, and suddenly the thing we’ve been talking about for months is becoming a reality. Seeing it in practice, people are suddenly alive to the potential it offers to change the way communicators work and employees find what they need. And that’s really satisfying.

When I started my own business no one warned me how much admin is involved. The business is going great guns; we’re landing juicy (and progressively bigger) projects. Our pipeline’s very healthy and we’re hiring some great people. But with that comes a proportional increase in paperwork. It feels like more and more of my time is spent on sales, onboarding or admin. Things I’m not good at and don’t enjoy.

I guess we need to look at hiring an ops person soon.

Some non-work things I did this week

I’m not exactly green-fingered. The other week I had to throw a cactus in the bin as I couldn’t even keep that low-maintenance plant happy.

In an attempt to prove I can, in fact, handle responsibility for living things I did a workshop to learn to make a terrarium. It was fun. I learned a bit about terrarium environments, how they work, and how to make one. Then got my hands dirty and made one. It’s cute.

The terrarium is now 27 hours old and is still alive.

Connections

I had a few drinks with my friend Lauren, a longtime global nomad who is working on a moonshot project to build a country on the internet. We talked about the joys and frustrations of being a global citizen and someone who’s on the move a lot. We both know people all over the place. So how do you know who’s where, so you can catch up if your travel plans coincide?

Luckily, someone’s on the case. Lauren introduced me to former Uber exec Lindsey Elkin, who is building Yayem, a private network and platform for curious travellers, global citizens, and next-gen nomads. I had a good chat with her about it, and about being a person who calls two or more places home.

What I’m reading

Not a lot. I worked late every day this week so managed another chapter of Hags but that’s it.

Travel

A whole week at home. The simple joy of not living out of a suitcase.

I’m in London (Shoreditch) at the end of this coming week. Shout if you are too and let’s grab coffee.

What a week. I went to the Taylor Swift Eras Tour, and that was only the third most interesting thing that happened in the last week. 

Some work things I did this week 

Recruiting. Lots of it. Three different roles for two different programmes.  

After my recent shoutout for content designers I had a whole run of back-to-back intro meetings with content folk. It was great to talk to people about our projects and where they might fit in, but I quickly learned 15 minutes is not long enough to do this, and it’s exhausting doing these back to back.  

Lesson learned: In future it’s 30 min slots and a good 15 min buffer in-between. 

This content programme is still being defined but we have a much clearer idea how we’re going to resource it and confident we have plenty of great people in our network who can help us deliver. 

I’m a little daunted by how much there is to do, and that isn’t helped by having two programmes about to start, neither of which has the detail mapped out. We’re hoping that becomes clearer in the next week or so.

Also did some workshop planning (which I love) and a lot of spreadsheet-wrangling (which I do not).

Some non-work things I did this week 

My politics is hardly a secret – I’ve been a member of the Labour Party since I was a teenager. But despite poll after poll predicting a landslide I couldn’t quite shake the feeling that somehow they couldn’t be right and I’m about to be disappointed again. 

Fortunately I had something to take my mind off endlessly scrolling Twitter till the result came in: a lovely friend Cate had booked us tickets for Taylor Swift’s Era’s Tour for that evening. 

I’m not even that much of a Swiftie (especially given The Incident), but the woman is an absolute icon and everyone says the show is a production not to be missed. And they were all correct. 

So I went all in. Spent weeks listening to the Eras playlist. Ordered sequin-covered clothes that made me a walking mirrorball in the afternoon sun (here for it: should wear more sequins). Jonathan’s daughter even made me some friendship bracelets to swap at the show. I could bore you on how enjoyable this dorkiness was, but The Atlantic’s Helen Lewis has already done it here, and better. 

“Lots of us are basic, and we deserve music too… Swift survived the gladiatorial arena of early social media, refusing to slink away or shrink herself. She takes every setback she’s suffered and gives it a hook that begs to be sung in the car. And she has offered millions of teenagers—and their parents—the purest freedom of all, the freedom to be an absolute dork.” 

And dorky we were, singing along for nearly four hours with Swifties who’d come from all corners of the globe to the Johann Cruiff Arena here in Amsterdam, waving our arms in the air and watching the twinkling of the remote controlled lights on 70,000 wristbands. And it was kind of magical. 

As we left the stadium, our wristbands still blinking in and out, my phone buzzed. It was the exit poll: a Labour landslide. 14 years, over. Time for the Labour Era.

But like I said, that was only the third most important thing that happened this week. On Friday morning – on close to no sleep after staying up to watch the results come in – I flew back to the UK for my baby brother Martin’s wedding. Which was colourful and joyous and had the most banging playlist you can imagine. Had my whole family together for the first time in years too ☺️

What a week. Exhausting but brilliant in every way. 

Connections 

I finally met the internet’s Simon Wilson, who happens to live in Saltaire, Yorkshire, where my brother had his wedding. We talked about design, government and the ups and downs of buying a doer-upper. 

Hotels 

It’s been a while since I stayed in a classic British regional town non-chain hotel. What it lacked in hairdryer quality and water glass volume it made up for in friendliness and fry-up. I didn’t hate it. 

This tweet from Anon Opinion wasn’t me, but I had so many people ask that I have to concede it easily could have been. 

Hotels need to start supplying a decent sized water glass in each room. I don't want to have to do "shots" of water, or sup directly from the tap like a cat in order to quench my thirst.

— Anon Opin👍 (@anon_opin) July 1, 2024

What I’m reading 

In a largely futile attempt to minimise packing for the UK trip I left last week’s unfinished read (Hags) at home and chucked my Kindle in my bag. So I started Amsterdam: A History Of the World’s Most Liberal City on the plane. An enjoyable and well-researched (if slightly dated) read on the culture and history of the city I now call home, but one I feel compelled to rush through as I hate having two books on the go at once. 

This is weeknote 26, which means we’re halfway through 2024. And somehow I have kept this up (bar a couple of weeks I missed).

My music taste (and arguably my politics) are stuck in the 90s, and this week was bookended by moments of sheer joy watching two of my favourite bands I’ve loved since I was a teenager. More on that below.

Some things I did this week

Went to Bristol for a couple of days, where Jon and I spent some rare face-to-face time on plans for two chunky projects we’re just kicking off. On Wednesday we were joined by Nic, our new delivery and programmes lead. It wasn’t as productive as we hoped but as a distributed team I think we all quickly realised the time was better spent building team relationships. We can get the detail of work done when we’re back at desks.

I forgot to get a team photo so only have this weird pic JP and I took of our reflection in the planetarium on the way to the car park.

Suddenly we have a LOT on. One chunky programme of work with a client we’ve been working with for some time now, another with a client we’ve done a smaller discovery with before, and one entirely new client.

We’re building out new teams to help us deliver all of these, and have a lot to do in the weeks ahead to mobilise and coordinate.

In the past week I’ve done a shout-out for a technical architect and for content designers. The former got almost no response, while the latter saw my inbox flooded with high quality applications in just a few hours. I’m not sure how much of that is a reflection of the job market in both of those fields and how much is down to my adding a picture of a young Bruce Springsteen to the Content Designer post on LinkedIn.

That’s something I’ll need to A/B test as we start trying to fill other roles.

One theme this week was: what’s the right balance of ambition and pragmatism? It feels like every programme begins with great ambitions to transform the way people communicate and collaborate. And almost always the realities of timeline, budget and stakeholder pushback mean these ambitions are scaled back. Sometimes just a bit, often quite a lot, and – rarely – until the thing being delivered is little better than what it’s replacing.

Deliver something that isn’t a tangible improvement on what preceded it and you lose all credibility with stakeholders. But fail to deliver on time and you’ve let everyone down. We’re working on project scope right now, treading that fine line between ambitious and pragmatic. The trick – if there is one – is to aim for the long wow rather than the big bang.

That is to say:

The ‘big bang’ is delivering a great product on a set launch date. Sometimes this is necessary, but it will kill you getting there.

The ‘long wow’ is something that makes you go ‘that’s pretty decent’ on first viewing, but keeps on improving from there. Not an MVP, but a decent if not spectacular meeting of requirements that people generally like. Then adding features or content so it keeps on improving – and gives you regular upgrades you can talk about.

For our upcoming projects we’re trying to map out what form that long wow could take so it shows just the right level of ambition.

Non-work things I did last week

Went to the World Press Photo exhibition which is on annually at the Nieuwe Kerk here in Amsterdam. Bringing together notable and lesser-known photojournalism from the last year it’s always sobering. This year it felt especially so, as the covid bleakness of the past few years has given way to war and conflict. The memorial to journalists killed in the course of their work had a record number of new entries since last year, almost all of them in Gaza.

I saw the Foo Fighters on a blisteringly hot day in Cardiff. A ‘best of’ set, three hours of solid rock and roll with 70,000 people belting out Best Of You, Monkey Wrench and (my favourite) Everlong as the sun went down on a midsummer evening. People dunk on stadium gigs but there’s something life-affirming about a crowd that big joining in a massive moment of musical bliss.

Then at the other end of the week, and of the scale, I saw Belle and Sebastian play at the Bostheater, a little outdoor amphitheatre surrounded by twinkling lights in the woods at the Amsterdamse Bos. It was magical.

I can’t remember exactly when I discovered B&S, but it suspect it was via my standard teenage route of a Melody Maker mixtape, graduating to a CD bought from the basement of the Music Exchange in Notting Hill Gate.

And for a quarter of a century since, Boy With The Arab Strap has bought me joy. It’s not the best indie pop tune. You could argue it’s not even Belle and Sebastian’s best number. But there’s something about the mix of indie pop folk, strings, lyrics (“Colour my life with the chaos of trouble / ‘Cause anything’s better than posh isolation”) and the childish playfulness of a song namechecking a cock ring that features a playground melody played on the recorder that makes this such a likeable number.

Acknowledging its status as an indie disco banger, the band invite an organised stage invasion every time they play BWTAS live. This being far from my first rodeo, I was poised by the stage stairs ready for the opening bars, and first to get up there.

And so I ended my week on the stage, in the rain, in the middle of the forest in my favourite city, dancing like a loon to my favourite song and it was pure unadulterated happiness.

What I’m reading

I started Hags: The Demonisation of Middle-Aged Women by Victoria Smith. Powered through the first third in one sitting – it’s a compelling and well-crafted read – but not had time for more.

Hotels

A whole week at home (and at my best mate’s house). It’s been great!