weeknotes

Weeknote 2025/24

/ Sharon O'Dea / 1 Comment
A red barge on the Prinsengracht canal in Amsterdam. It's a clear sunny day.
Amsterdam summers are something else (Photo: me)

Middle age has arrived, not with a crisis but with a calendar reminder. The quiet realisation that I’m now older than most start-up founders, Olympic athletes, and several government ministers. Which, frankly, explains a lot.

Between birthday reflections and packing for yet another work trip, it’s been a week of wrangling conference decks, academic papers, and coming to terms with the fact that my knees now make a noise when I stand up too fast.

This week at work

A week of contrasts. Juggling wildly different projects, which I tell myself is what keeps it interesting.

  • Finalised my slides for Intranet Italia Day next week, with a few solid practice runs
  • Helped a client plan how their leadership can actually show up on the social intranet — plus wrote quick-start guides for low-effort, high-impact engagement
  • Sat through a couple of intranet/employee experience vendor demos. One looked genuinely startled when I asked about things like functionality gaps, governance, or how this would work in an organisation with more than one type of employee. As if complexity were some kind of curveball, not the baseline most IC folks are dealing with.
  • Followed up on a series of workshops with a long-term client — great to see momentum building
  • Supporting our brilliant 300 Seconds speakers as they prep for Camp Digital (less than three weeks to go!)

Meanwhile, quietly ramping up a(nother) secret side project. More on that soon.

Also this week

Turned 45 this week. Officially middle-aged — not in crisis, just doing the maths. It’s the age where you realise that you’ve probably had more than you’re getting. Strangely, that’s a relief. Less to prove. More clarity. Fewer big swings. And the slow, inevitable expansion of the midsection.

A box of donuts with different icing and toppings
In the Netherlands, you bring cakes inn for everyone else for your birthday
A woman (me)with brown hair, holding a glass on Mimosa
Mimosa-based birthday breakfast
Presents, wrapped, and flowers
I was spoiled rotten

Because no one asked, here’s 45 lessons I’ve learned in 45 spins round the sun:

  1. You don’t need to finish the book
  2. Or the bottle
  3. Lifting heavy weights makes you feel superhuman
  4. If someone shows you who they are, believe them the first time
  5. Good lighting fixes many things
  6. No one is thinking about you as much as you think they are
  7. If you need to ask whether it’s worth the drama, it’s not
  8. A well-timed “hmm” can save you hours
  9. Good sleep beats any wellness trend.
  10. You’ll never feel like going for a walk. Go anyway.
  11. Pay attention to how people treat waitstaff
  12. The hotel iron will ruin your top. Pack something that doesn’t crease.
  13. Always look up. You’ll notice stuff and be glad you did.
  14. Walk away. From the app. From the thread. From the man with a podcast.
  15. Airports are emotional purgatories. Don’t make big decisions there.
  16. Drink water, then decide if you’re really hungry
  17. It’s OK to be the person who leaves early.
  18. Wear the good outfit.
  19. Cheap shoes are a false economy
  20. You will regret trying to save money with a flight that leaves before 7am
  21. A single “lol” can prevent a workplace argument.
  22. It can also cause one.
  23. Just because it’s urgent to them doesn’t mean it’s important to you (with thanks to the late David Pearson for the line “your bad planning is not my emergency”)
  24. If you’ve packed contact lenses and your credit cards, everything you’ve forgotten is fixable
  25. Never trust someone who says “I don’t do drama.” They are the drama.
  26. Boundaries aren’t mean.
  27. You don’t owe everyone an explanation. Most people aren’t even listening.
  28. Sometimes the bravest thing is not replying.
  29. There’s no award for most burnt out.
  30. You can outgrow people without hating them.
  31. Getting older is a win. Plenty of people don’t get the chance.
  32. The red flag is never that subtle.
  33. Skincare is mostly pseudo-science, except for good sunscreen. Factor 50 FTW.
  34. Everything feels worse when you’re hungry.
  35. You will never regret leaving a bad job.
  36. But you will regret not standing up for yourself in it.
  37. If a company says it’s a family, run.
  38. You don’t owe anyone on the internet your attention
  39. It’s OK to only give it 70% once in a while.
  40. Confidence doesn’t come before doing the thing. It comes from doing it.
  41. You can’t change people. Only your expectations of them.
  42. Not everything has to be #content.
  43. You’re not behind. You’re on your own route.
  44. Compare your life to a LinkedIn post and you deserve the existential crisis that follows.
  45. You can always make money. You can never make time.

Consuming

👩🏻‍💻 Internetting

This week’s descent into the rabbit hole: the Pentagon Pizza theory. Credit to the FT’s data editor, who noticed a spike in pizza orders near the Pentagon just before Israel’s recent strikes on Iran. Turns out: when staff start pulling long hours ahead of global mayhem, the local Domino’s gets busy. Forget Bloomberg terminals — the true indicator of looming geopolitical chaos is a pepperoni surge in Arlington.

📺 Watching

Caught Titan on Netflix — the docuseries that unpacks the doomed OceanGate submersible and the spectacular hubris that powered it. What starts as a story about billionaire adventurers quickly becomes a cautionary tale about ignoring experts, side-stepping safety protocols, and brushing off internal dissent.

If there’s a workplace moral here, it’s this: when someone raises a hand to say “this seems dangerous,” don’t label them difficult — listen. Whistleblowers aren’t the problem; they’re the last line of defence before disaster.

📚 Reading

This week’s book-writing milestone: a shiny new library card for the University of Amsterdam. Great social sciences collection, and a Proustian flashback to my dissertation days in Senate House. I’m loving getting stuck back into the communication theory I studied two decades ago — proof, perhaps, that a media degree is more useful than its “Mickey Mouse” reputation suggests.

A had with shiny pink nails holds a University of Amsterdam library card

This week’s highlight reel of academic page-turners included:

🎧 Listening

Caught the Happy Mondays at the Paradiso, and it was brilliant. I’ve seen them twice in recent years, both times in bigger venues, but there was something magic about seeing them up close in a packed, sweaty room. Bez was fully Bezzing, limbs everywhere, powering the crowd with vibes alone. Shaun Ryder barked out lyrics like a man reading a gas bill under protest. It was chaotic, feral, and all the better for it. No polish, no pretence — just joy at full volume.

Bez from the Happy Mondays, on stage with maracas
Pulp's 'More' album on blue vinyl

I’ve also been spinning the new Pulp album (in delicious blue vinyl). It’s gloriously familiar; simultaneously novel and like pulling on an old, comfortable jumper that somehow still fits perfectly. Jarvis sounds as sharp and sideways as ever, and the whole thing hums with that unmistakable mix of kitchen-sink melancholy and disco sleaze.

Connections

No one this week. Honestly, was people-d out after last week.

Travel

This week the wheelie bag and I are off to Milan, then London. I have a little spare time in both so shout if you’ve got time for wine.

This week in photos

Sanctum exercise in an atmospheric candlelit church
It’s iced coffee weather
And ‘pootling about on a boat’ weather
The first Amsterdam Vinyl Club was a huge success
Crate digging at Amsterdam Vinyl Club
The Dutch tradition of hanging a school bag from a flagpole to mark school graduation
Buying flowers at the market, again
This town 🥰
One of four spin classes this week

Weeknote 2025/23

/ Sharon O'Dea / Leave a comment
On stage at LumApps Bright Paris (Photo: Andrew Hesselden)

It’s been 13 days since my last weeknote and, somehow, I’ve crammed in a month’s worth of work, two cross-border events, several metric tonnes of confetti, and a minor brush with academic despair. I’ve danced under a disco ball in a museum, communed with inflatable robots in a laser fog, and read so many journal articles on “organisational sensemaking” that I briefly lost the will to live, then found it again in a footnote citing Habermas.

I’ve had days where I felt like a confident grown-up delivering keynotes and running strategy workshops, and others where I stared at a blank slide titled “Relevance at Scale” for so long I started to question whether anything in this life is ever truly relevant, let alone scalable.

Anyway. Here’s what else I’ve been up to while trying to outrun both burnout and late capitalism with a portable ring light and a decent day rate.

This week at work

It’s been a blur of conferences, client sessions, and the slow, creeping suspicion that time is folding in on itself. Conference season is in full swing, which means I’ve been knee-deep in decks, speaker notes, and trying not to visibly malfunction when someone asks me to “slow down a bit” — a request I find almost physically impossible once I’m excited and mid-flow.

First up was a thought leadership webinar for Cerkl on personalising comms at scale. Conveniently, it ties into a chapter of the book — distribution, personalisation, targeting, and relevance — so I got to test-drive some of our thinking in the wild.

Then came the European leg of LumApps Bright, where I gave the extended ‘director’s cut’ of my Chicago keynote — same themes, more depth, this time with added self-depreciation about my bad French. I also ran a roundtable on understanding employee needs, which turned into one of those lovely sessions where people are honest, energised, and insightful. DEEx and comms folks continue to impress me with their blend of grit, grace and spreadsheets.

There was also a UK client workshop — part of a series — and pleasingly, we can actually see momentum building between sessions. Progress. Real, tangible, post-it-note-covered progress.

I asked Copilot to edit this to remove the text on post-its, for client confidentiality. It did, but also edited Jon to be a completely different person. Go figure.

And with Camp Digital just around the corner, I’ve had prep calls with our brilliant first-time speakers. I can’t wait to see them in action — and to be the overly proud backstage goblin cheering them on.

Also this week

Went to Vincent op Vrijdag, the Van Gogh Museum’s monthly late-night opening — this time a joint venture with the Stedelijk, letting you do a cultural double-header with drinks. I saw the Anselm Kiefer show across both venues (big, bleak, brilliant), then stayed for the part where you dance under museum lighting and feel like a very sophisticated art heist is about to unfold.

Caught the Flaming Lips in Utrecht performing Yoshimi Battles the Pink Robots in full — a retina-searing, glitter-drenched fever dream of lasers, confetti, and inflatable robots. Wayne Coyne, framed by a giant inflatable rainbow, looked like a man who’d seen the future and decided it needed more sequins. Utterly bonkers. Utterly wonderful.

We won’t let the robots defeat us.

Consuming

👩🏻‍💻 Internetting

I know nothing about private equity — truly, nothing — but I adored this explainer on what Taylor Swift’s masterstroke of reclaiming her catalogue can teach the buyout bros. Equal parts fangirl essay and forensic takedown, it’s a reminder that you underestimate a billionaire pop star and her army of emotionally over-invested fans at your peril.

On the other hand, I do know quite a bit about writing. Just not this well. Lauren Razavi’s piece on AI authorship is one of the most thoughtful, lyrical takes I’ve seen — part essay, part live DJ set, and all signal, no noise. Read it. Then reread it. Then make peace with the fact she’s probably written your next best idea, too.

📺 Watching

Gingerly stepped into the final season of The Handmaid’s Tale, watching in careful, rationed doses — partly because it’s harrowing, partly because it now feels like market research. Gilead is no longer dystopian fiction; it’s starting to look like a standard Wednesday in some parts of the world.

📚 Reading

In my last weeknote I worried that reading for fun would get pushed aside by reading for the book. Reader, it has. The International Journal of Strategic Communication now haunts my dreams.

🎧 Listening

Discovered British-Dutch electro-pop-punksters Crgclt at a party in a barn somewhere outside Leiden. Their set was a glorious mess of synths and snark — like Chvrches got drunk with Le Tigre in a tulip field. I will be seeing them again.

Connections

The last fortnight’s seen me people-ing at Olympic levels.

Caught up with Cargill’s Paul Thomas for a proper chinwag about hybrid work, generational gaps, and the quirks of Dutch corporate comms.

Money 2020 brought the finance glitterati to town — which meant finally meeting Jas Shah IRL, hanging out with Theodora Lau, and catching up with my old Standard Chartered pal Natalie Pereira, a full decade after our last night out in Kuala Lumpur.

Bright Paris also reunited me with DWG’s Paul Miller and internal comms veteran Andrew Hesselden, and gave me the joy of finally meeting some long-time online pals in person. The best bit of any event’s still the coffee-break conspiracies.

Travel

On Tuesday I managed breakfast in Amsterdam, lunch in London, and dinner in Paris — which sounds terribly glamorous until you realise breakfast was a sad airport lounge croissant, lunch was mystery beige from a meeting venue canteen, and dinner was a lukewarm M&S salad eaten on a hotel bed at 10pm.

Staying put this week. Thank god. Milan and London await next.

This week in photos

Dutch summer
Knee deep in decks at the hairdressers
My pal’s 40th on a sunny day in Amsterdam
Bonjour Paris
Crgclt at JoFest in Koudekerk aan den Rijn

Weeknote 2025/21

/ Sharon O'Dea / Leave a comment
Quintessentially Berlin (Photo: me)

Some weeks you feel on top of things. Other weeks, you’re writing a book, delivering workshops, prepping talks, flying to Berlin, crying in a photo exhibition and accidentally going to two punk gigs at opposite ends of the country.

No idea what kind of week this was, but it definitely happened.

This week at work

I didn’t realise how jam-packed this week was until I sat down to write this. No wonder I’m tired.

First, the big news I’ve been hinting at: the cat’s out of the bag. I’m writing a book with my colleague and longtime co-conspirator Jonathan Phillips.

Digital Communications at Work: Designing Channels for Employee Engagement and Experience is a practical guide for comms professionals handed responsibility for digital channels. It’ll be published by Kogan Page in 2026 and is packed with case studies, real-world advice, and the kind of tips we wish someone had given us when we were in-house.

If you’ve ever been given the intranet keys, told to “sort out comms,” or been stuck between IT and HR, this one’s for you.

Over the coming months, these weeknotes will chart our progress — and my slow descent into madness — as we try to write a whole book in our spare time.

(There’s another exciting cat in another bag, but that one stays put for now)

Jon and I also popped over to Berlin to see our client SEFE, the German energy company. Late last year we delivered them a new intranet — config, IA, content, training, the whole shebang — in just 100 days. They’re thrilled with it, and so are we. This week we finally met the team in person to celebrate and look ahead to what’s next.

We also went to Flip Forward, a sharp one-day event from employee app vendor Flip, focused on what the digital workplace really means for the frontline. A few standout themes:

  • AI is now the infrastructure, not just a feature. Flip (like everyone else) is “AI first,” but the most useful applications weren’t flashy — they helped people quickly access the info they actually need. Like when’s my next shift?
  • Flip’s Marian Finkbeiner said: “Interview people on the shop floor and solve from there.” I’d add: also observe and triangulate. What people say and what they need aren’t always the same.
  • Martina Merz delivered a brilliant keynote on AI, trust and dialogue. Her warning: don’t simulate listening with AI and call it connection. Real trust comes from real dialogue, not a chatbot pretending to care.
Flip Forward in Berlin.

That idea — making sure people are genuinely heard — came up again in a series of workshops we’ve been designing for another client. We’re building ways for people to contribute before, during, and after sessions. Not just once, but as an ongoing habit.

Camp Digital is now less than two months away, so prep is ramping up. I had a great call with one of our first-time speakers, and I’m already excited for what’s shaping up to be a brilliant programme.

But first: a few more speaking commitments.

In a couple of weeks I’ll be in Paris, giving the extended version of the employee experience keynote I did in Chicago at the European leg of LumApps Bright. I’ve been reflecting on what landed, what didn’t, and where more clarity or examples might help.

I’ve also been prepping for a webinar I’m doing with Cerkl, as part of their IC Thought Leader series. I’ll be talking about why internal comms needs to move past volume and focus on relevance: using data to deliver useful, usable messages in the moments that matter. Sign up here. It’s free to attend — or sign up and get the recording later if you can’t make it.

Also this week

I went to this year’s World Press Photo exhibition at De Nieuwe Kerk. As ever: devastating and essential. The 2025 edition features powerful photojournalism capturing war, displacement, climate crisis, and human resilience. The winning image — a young boy in Gaza who lost both arms in an airstrike — was particularly hard to take.

Other standout stories: the drought-stricken Amazon, the aftermath of the Turkey–Syria earthquakes, and several photo sets showing the disproportionate impact of conflict on women. Sexual violence as a weapon of war in Tigray. Women trying to protect their families in Gaza and Ukraine. Women stripped of all rights in Afghanistan.

The memorial to journalists killed in the line of duty was horrifyingly long. 2024’s total matched that of 2020, 2021, and 2022 combined, almost all of them in Gaza.

I cried twice. But I go every year, because bearing witness still matters.

The World Press Photo exhibition inside the Nieuwe Kerk, Amsterdam
A series of blue banners with a long list of names of journalists killed in th line of their work
People's wishes written on square white pieces of paper, pinned to a board

Consuming

👩🏻‍💻 Internetting

I read this Eventbrite piece on “Fourth Spaces” — their term for the way digital communities now spill into physical gatherings. It’s based on research into Gen Z and millennials, who want to connect around shared interests formed online.

It’s a helpful way to think about modern community-building: not just passive audiences, but people looking to co-create, belong and participate. If you’re in events, engagement or comms, it’s worth a look.

📺 Watching

I watched Fred and Rose West: A British Horror Story on Netflix. I knew a lot from the news at the time, and from All Killa No Filla, but seeing the victims’ families speak was utterly heartbreaking. It’s a grim but important reminder of the need to listen, to believe, and to keep asking uncomfortable questions.

📚 Reading

Nothing this week, unless you count background reading for the book (I fear reading for pleasure may be the first casualty of this writing project)

🎧 Listening

A two-gig week. Went to Den Haag on a whim to catch Japanese garage rockers Electric Eel Shock. Then saw UK punk duo Soft Play (formerly Slaves) — a ferocious, sweaty wall of sound. Two blokes. One guitar. One drum kit. Absolute carnage.

Connections

Berlin was a good excuse to catch up with internal comms legend Tony Stewart — someone who understands the power of community both on and offline. I hope we get him on a Lithos project soon.

Also caught up with Michael Nottingham, another of our Lithos collaborators, over an Ethopian meal in Kreuzberg. We talked content, govtech, politics, and the challenge of restaurants meals eaten without cutlery.

Travel

Back from Berlin. One full week at home before heading to London and Paris. I will not waste it.

This week in photos

Seven pillows. One head.
Kreuzberg sunset.
Jonathan and I at Flip.
Turkish barbecue. Basically Korean barbecue with mezze. Nothing wrong with that at all.
Berlz
My Saturday market run.
Soft Play at Melkweg
Electric Eel Shock at Sneister Fest, Den Haag
A magnet fisher tries to retrieve whatever this girl dropped in the canal opposite my house

Weeknote 2025/20

/ Sharon O'Dea / Leave a comment
Sunshine, sectarianism and sequins in Glasgow (Photo: me)

Mid-May, and everything’s in full swing, from Glasgow’s sunshine-and-sequins chaos to rooftop chats and research calls back in Amsterdam.

This week’s had a bit of everything: live music, sectarian parades, strategic business cases, and a reminder that good comms (like good gigs) need more than just volume — they need structure, purpose, and the right rhythm.

This week at work

Last week’s Strategic post on the damage caused by flimsy, made-up productivity metrics sparked a flurry of comments and DMs — mostly variations on: “OK, but how do I build a real business case, with numbers that actually mean something?”

The honest answer is it takes time, expertise, and a bit of graft. You need to understand the problems you’re solving, the costs and benefits of each option, the risks of doing nothing — and then turn all that into a case the board can’t ignore.

One of those DMs came from a communicator whose previous business case had been knocked back. This week we helped her map out an eight-week plan to build a stronger one. It starts with discovery: not just how the current channels are performing, but where the friction points and missed opportunities lie. From there, we’ll shape solutions that fit their timeline, budget, and culture — and wrap it all up in a business case that blends data on business impact with human stories that make the cost of inaction impossible to ignore.

The team’s excited. It’s the kind of partnership we love — where we bring the strategy, structure, and skills, and they bring deep knowledge of their people and context.

Elsewhere, we’ve been planning the second in a series of alignment workshops with a long-term client, and I’ve started prep for a webinar I’m delivering with Cerkl on 28 May, on how to personalise internal comms at scale.

And I’ve been cracking on with interviews for our current research project. It’s been a brilliant excuse to chat to smart, thoughtful people working at the coalface of the digital workplace.

Also this week

Back to Glasgow again — this time for my annual weekend away with a different group of friends. The city was every bit as sunny and welcoming as last week, but with an added chaotic twist: Celtic’s league win, an Orange March, and Kylie headlining during Eurovision weekend. Sunshine, sequins and sectarianism made for quite the cultural cocktail.

Boozy backdrop aside, it was a glorious long weekend of laughs, wandering, and very good company.

Consuming

👩🏻‍💻 Internetting

Intrigued by this story in the weekend’s FT: a law firm offering a £1m bonus pot if staff collectively rack up a million Microsoft Copilot prompts this year.

It’s a bold move to drive AI adoption, but it also raises familiar questions. When you incentivise a behaviour that can be gamed, are you driving real change, or just inflating the numbers?

This kind of thing will be familiar to anyone who’s ever had a KPI based on clicks or page loads: dashboards full of ‘engagement’ that doesn’t stick, incentives that drive quantity over quality, and habits that vanish the moment the carrots do.

Does this kind of scheme lead to sustained, meaningful use, or just a a race to writing meta Copilot prompts that generate twenty prompts a day?

(Which is precisely what I would do if offered that bonus)

Incentivising prompt count feels a bit like rewarding people for sending emails. Technically activity, but is it progress?

AI’s the future, shouldn’t we be teaching people to *think* with it, not just rack up prompts like step-counters for productivity?

📺 Watching

Nothing. At all.

📚 Reading

I picked up Careless People, a sharp, scathing account of life inside Facebook, as part of my airport WHSmith book haul. It’s brilliantly, terrifyingly compelling. I’ve ploughed through 39 chapters in three sittings.

The book charts how a company that promised to connect the world instead amplified division, eroded privacy, and ducked accountability — all while its leadership, particularly Zuckerberg and Sandberg, remained either wilfully blind or strategically indifferent. A story of hubris, harm, and the high cost of scale without ethics.

(I still haven’t deleted my Facebook account though, although I do barely use it anymore)

🎧 Listening

I caught San Francisco psych-rock heroes Osees at the Paradiso last night. Few bands summon chaos quite so joyfully. Relentless, raucous, and gloriously weird, they tore through a set that felt more like a ritual than a gig — and yes, any band with two drummers gets bonus points for commitment to noise.

Enjoy the setlist, but do it properly: volume up, neighbours be damned.

Connections

Caught up with Dutch intranet veteran Samuel Driessen this week for a great chat on a sunny Amsterdam rooftop — the sort of meeting that reminds you why in-person is still magic. We covered a lot: the tricky leap from Dutch to international markets, the different rhythms of public vs. private sector work, and how intranet strategy is (finally) starting to converge with product thinking. A thoughtful conversation with someone who’s seen the field evolve and isn’t afraid to challenge it.

Travel

Tomorrow I’m heading to Berlin to catch up with our client there and to attend Flip’s conference. I’ve got a little spare time so if you’re about, give me a shout.

This week in photos

Eurovision ready in Glasgow
As close as I was willing to get to the Celtic parade
Kintetic theatre, Glasgow.
Iced lattes from a Tardis
Necropolis
With the lads at Fayre Play, Glasgow
Book and beer on a sunny day
Boxing class in Amsterdam
Glasgow
The Osees at Paradiso, Amsterdam

Weeknote 2025/19

/ Sharon O'Dea / 2 Comments
Cone on the head of the famous statue in Glasgow
Hello, Glasgow! (Photo: me)

It’s been a week of looking back—at old stats, old habits, and old gigs. That well-worn claim about intranets saving millions in productivity has resurfaced, yet again. I’ve written about it for Strategic, because, as the saying goes, some people use statistics like a drunken man uses lampposts—more for support than illumination. And we deserve better.

At the same time, I’ve been revisiting email. Not in my inbox (LOL no. I am heroically bad at my own email), but in research, trying to understand why the channel everyone loves to hate still quietly endures. And then, on the weekend, came Barrowland: a venue I’d mythologised since my teens, where I finally saw Supergrass play the album I bought with my pocket money. It’s strange how some things stick—channels, bands, friendships—and how time sneaks up on you while you’re still busy singing along.

This week at work

For someone in communications, I spend surprisingly little time actually communicating. Most of my work is on the plumbing behind the messages: platforms, processes, systems, and governance. Understanding user and organisational needs. Finding solutions. Helping clients sell the vision and deliver the change. I work closely with comms leaders and manage content teams, but rarely get to roll up my sleeves and write actual messaging these days.

This week was a welcome exception. I spent time with a product team, helping them articulate what they’re building and how it adds value for different kinds of users. It was great fun to stretch that part of my brain again—one I haven’t used much lately.

Jon and I also got stuck into a new writing and research project. For the next few weeks, we’re diving deep into email. Tech bros and comms pros alike have been confidently predicting the death of internal email for at least 15 years. And yet, it persists. Clunky? Often. Badly used? Certainly. But for many use cases, it’s still the most effective tool we’ve got. It cuts across hierarchies, systems, and schedules in a way few other channels can. As I often say, two things will survive the nuclear winter: cockroaches and email.*

(*I think I got that line from Sam Marshall, but I could be wrong.)

Also this week

My two besties and I had our annual girls’ weekend away. The tradition is simple: if a band we all like announces a tour, we pick a city we fancy visiting and make a trip of it. This year it was Glasgow, and Supergrass.

We finally made it to Barrowland—an iconic venue I’ve been reading about since I was a teenager. It’s one of those rare places that lives up to the myth: a sprung dancefloor, a luminous ceiling, and a crowd that knows how to have a good time. There’s a magic to it. Seeing a band you love there feels like a rite of passage.

Supergrass played I Should Coco in full—an album I bought with my pocket money in Our Price when I was 15. My pal Katy and I have been seeing them together since we met at 17. Mid-gig, fuelled by several beers, I turned to her and said: “I can’t believe we’ve been watching this band for twenty years.”

She looked at me, with the weary kindness of someone breaking bad news, and said: “It’s thirty years.”

And just like that, the beer wore off and my knees started hurting.

Supergrass' Gaz Coomes at Barrowland, Glasgow, 9 May 2025

Consuming

👩🏻‍💻 Internetting

Spotted this  thoughtful piece this from Sarah Daly which explored the subtle but significant ways AI is reshaping how we work. It’s not always about job losses; more often, it’s the quiet squeeze—doing more with less, with little time to adapt. While AI tools promise to save time, they often just shift the burden elsewhere. We’re now swimming in content: drafted, summarised and polished at speed, but lacking the depth or judgment that makes it useful. The term botshit—AI-generated sludge that clutters rather than clarifies—feels painfully apt.

The biggest loss might be the space to think. As AI accelerates the pace, opportunities for reflection, strategy, or just breathing room are eroded. If we want AI to genuinely augment human potential, we need to start designing for thinking time, not just throughput.

📺 Watching

No time for telly this week

📚 Reading

I’ve been reading Cal Newport’s A World Without Email—part research, part self-flagellation—as we dig into why the one channel everyone claims to hate just won’t die.

🎧 Listening

This week was all about Supergrass. Enjoy this setlist. The classic album in full, followed by a few fan favourites. Nostalgia turned up loud.

Coverage

A few weeks ago I posted on LinkedIn about dodgy McKinsey stats that do the rounds on vague productivity savings, and how I learned the hard way that these don’t wash with CFOs.

The same flawed stats did the rounds again this week, so Mike Klein invited to write my first piece for Strategic on how bullshit maths doesn’t help our profession to be taken seriously. 

Travel

Glasgow again later this week. Berlin next week. Shout if you wanna catch up.

This week in photos

Weeknote 2025/18

/ Sharon O'Dea / Leave a comment
Action shot from LumApps Bright in Chicago this week. (Photo: LumApps)

This week’s travels took me to two very different cities: Toronto, which I visited for the first time, and Chicago, which I’ve been to before, but never with quite so many slides in tow.

Toronto was all maple leaves and mid-century apartment blocks, with unexpectedly excellent pastries and the sort of icy politeness that makes British manners feel borderline aggressive. It was good to decompress and catch up properly with friends.

Chicago was all business: a keynote on the future of workplace communication, delivered to a ballroom full of people who hopefully didn’t notice I was running on three hours’ sleep and a Starbucks croissant. The talk landed well (no heckling! some laughter!) and sparked the kind of conversations I always hope for—about clarity, culture, and why the tools we use at work feel like they were designed by someone who’s never actually worked with real humans.

A week of contrasts, then: friends and flights, ideas and jet lag. On the plane back home now, with a suitcase full of leaflets, receipts, and hotel pens, and a head full of new thinking.

This week at work

The early half of the week was mostly consumed by the LumApps Bright event: prepping, presenting, and the usual performance anxiety. But I was on first, as the opening keynote, which meant I could relax and spend the next two days listening and learning too.

Plenty of bright thinking from Bright too. The usual chatter about tools gave way to deeper questions about trust, friction, and how people actually experience work.

Day 1 focused on personalisation, content strategy, and the evolving role of AI. Key themes: effective intranets are governed well, personalised smartly, and designed with the frontline in mind. Employee-led content outperforms corporate noise. And AI? Not a threat, but a capacity-booster—if it’s embedded into workflows, not bolted on as a gimmick.

Day 2 got a bit meatier. Mike Klein shared new research showing a sharp disconnect between comms and business leaders: different views on adversity, tool effectiveness, and what employee engagement even means. Business leaders want more interaction; comms want more streamlining. Everyone wants better alignment between IT, HR and comms—but that’s still a work in progress.

Mike’s survey on the future of work is ongoing. If you’re a comms leader, do take ten minutes to share here.

DWG’s Nancy Goebel did a fireside chat with LumApps’ Sean Winter (who I finally met in person, after working on the StanChart Jive rollout with back in 2012-15!). Key messages from Nancy: AI remains the dominant undercurrent, but treat it like a teammate, not a toy. Hyperpersonalisation is driving a comeback for knowledge management, and there’s a growing call for intrapreneurship and investing in employee adaptability. Or, as Nancy neatly put it: agility is the new social currency.

I also kept a few client plates spinning from hotel desks and airport lounges.

Also this week

Toronto! My first time in Canada 🇨🇦 (taking my country count to 82), and I liked it as much as I expected. Big bookshops, brilliant food, and the kind of orderly vibe that makes you feel like you should apologise for jaywalking. Saw friends, walked miles, and remembered what it’s like to spend an afternoon doing nothing in particular. Bliss.

Elbows up! Headed north.

Also visited Little Canada, a surprisingly delightful miniature version of the country, complete with tiny trains, tiny cities, tiny lakes, tiny forests, tiny music festivals and tiny hockey games. Left wanting to see a lot more of Big Canada, which seems like a delightful place to be.

Tiny East Coast Canada
Tiny Quebec
Tiny Gatinau Balloon Festival
Tiny Ottawa
Tiny Toronto
Tiny Niagra
Little Canada mission control
Normal-sized me outside Little Canada

Consuming

👩🏻‍💻 Internetting

It felt timely to read this after another conference where the AI conversation has clearly moved from hype to value: Johnson & Johnson made headlines by pivoting their GenAI strategy, doubling down on only the highest-value use cases and quietly killing off the pilots that weren’t delivering.

Their CIO, Jim Swanson, was refreshingly blunt: it’s about focus, not novelty. After a year or so of exploratory dabbling across industries, we’re now firmly in the ROI phase. Not every use case deserves to make it out of the lab—and that’s not failure, it’s progress.

I also picked up this pro networking tip from Melinda Seckington on LinkedIn: create a QR code of your LinkedIn profile, add it as an image on your Apple Watch. Took minutes and was really handy meeting people at the conference.

Pro Networking

📺 Watching

Found myself watching a lot of US cable news (Fox, CNN, ABC), which left me feeling equal parts baffled and terrified.

Also happened to catch coverage of the 80th anniversary of the liberation of the Netherlands by Canadian forces. Touching to see the commemorations, given I live there. Something quite moving about watching it unfold on Canadian news, from Canada itself.

📚 Reading

It was not a reading week. But I did find a place in Toronto with a vending machine dispensing a random book for five bucks. I wound up with a copy of Tikta’Liktak: An Inuit-Eskimo Legend, which I’m not at all unhappy about.

🎧 Listening

Went to see The Vaniers, a Toronto band launching their new album. They dressed and sounded like a composite of every Britpop band from the tail end of the ’90s—after Britpop had quietly stopped being cool. The lead singer wore John Lennon sunglasses with an Umbro football top, like Liam Gallagher circa 1997. Watching a nostalgia trend come back round again was like bumping into your own teenage diary: oddly familiar, slightly cringey, and deeply unsettling.

The Vaniers album launch show, Toronto. Photo: me.

In a bout of jetlag-induced insomnia, I listened to the entire series of Invisible Hands, a BBC podcast presented by David Dimbleby about the shifting story of capitalism over the past century or so. The first half of the series explores how ideas once on the fringes—about markets knowing best, governments stepping back, and the primacy of shareholder value—moved into the mainstream.

The second half shifts focus, tracing how support for capitalism is now waning, as its promised fruits have instead delivered widening inequality, hollowed-out public services, and a growing sense that the system no longer works for most people.

It’s thoughtful, balanced, and surprisingly absorbing at 3am when your brain refuses to adjust to a new timezone.

Connections

My two-centre visit gave me a chance to catch up with all manner of brilliant folks.

At Bright Conference I had a chance to catch up with fellow speakers Nancy Goebel and Mike Klein. And like all these events, I was able to put a face to names I know only on LinkedIn, and met a bunch of brilliant intranerds from across the US and further afield for the first time.

And outside of the conference, I had a few great catch-ups too. I first met Jim Ylisela back in 2011 when he gave a memorable keynote on what communicators can learn from the rough-and-tumble of Chicago politics. So memorable, in fact, that I can still recall key points 14 years later—and there are very few conference talks I can say that about.

As often happens in our line of work, we’ve since found ourselves working together on a few client projects that needed some transatlantic expertise in either direction. I couldn’t visit Chicago without catching up with Jim. He was even more delightful in person. I find folks like him usually are.

I also caught up with Sara Zailskas Walsh. Sara and I first met at work events in Denmark and New York, and have kept in touch since. Last time we saw each other was in 2022—since then she’s beaten breast cancer, so there was a lot to catch up on.

Up in Toronto, I squeezed in a coffee with Meena, an old colleague from Standard Chartered. We met in the lobby of the bank where she now works, and it felt like no time had passed at all, like being back at Marina Bay Financial Centre.

But my highlight was catching up with two of the gals from my recent Colombia trip. I’ve done four Flash Pack trips and have kept in touch with people from all of them, but there was something special about this particular combination of people. I feel like I made firm friends that week.

I couldn’t visit Jenna’s hometown and not hang out—and Andrea even drove down from Ottawa to make a weekend of it. It was wonderful to see them again.

Andrea, Jenna and me in Toronto.

Travel

Landing back from Canada this morning. Heading to Glasgow later in the week.

This week in photos

Weeknote 2025/17

/ Sharon O'Dea / Leave a comment
King’s Day in Amsterdam. Photo: me (of photo taken by a random child in the street)

This weeknote comes to you courtesy of epic jet lag. I’m in Chicago for the LumApps Bright conference. Landed yesterday and, in a triumph of willpower, stayed awake until 8.30pm.

Naturally, I was wide awake at 4.30am, because body clocks are cruel and unforgiving. The hotel gym doesn’t open until 6, so I spent a glamorous hour sitting in the dark, contemplating my life choices.

And now I’m committing that self-doubt to the blog. You’re welcome.

This week at work

I moved offices. Then spent about two hours in the new office before hitting the road again. But the new gaff seems nice.

Our big focus was a workshop day with a client.

Workshops are always rewarding, but they’re also hard graft. It takes a lot of thought and preparation to design them properly — working out the right questions to ask, the right exercises to run, the right structure to actually get people talking. It’s not something you can just wing (though plenty try); investing the time upfront makes all the difference.

But when it clicks, it’s brilliant. I love those moments when you can go round the room and hear people properly reflecting, discussing, debating. And just as importantly, actually listening to one another. You can feel the energy shift when people move from lobbing opinions around to properly building on each other’s ideas.

Which is my long-winded way of explaining why I was basically brain-dead by close of play Friday.

Also this week

Which was unfortunate, because Saturday was King’s Day in the Netherlands. 364 days a year you can pretty much forget the country has a monarchy. Then on 27 April (or 26th if that’s a Sunday, as it was this year), the nation drowns itself in orange to celebrate King Willem-Alexander’s birthday.

The party kicks off the night before, on King’s Night, with street parties everywhere. Then on King’s Day itself, every street becomes a flea market, everyone starts drinking at breakfast, and the whole country gives itself over to a sort of joyful chaos. No one cares if you’re Dutch or not — just don something orange and get stuck in.

I scored a fluffy orange onesie in the kids section of Hema and danced the afternoon away at a sound system on the Palmgracht. Some bloke down the road hung a massive disco ball from his gevelsteen (the hook on the front of Dutch houses) and spent the day leading singalongs in the street.

This year was as beautiful and sunny as I can remember. On days like that, Amsterdam really does feel like the best place in the world. I’m so lucky to live there.

Consuming

👩🏻‍💻 Internetting

This week I stumbled across a brilliant story from a small town in Japan. Kawara’s Ojisan Trading Card Game turns real local men — train drivers, noodle chefs, retired robotics experts — into Pokémon-style trading cards.

It started as a way to bring kids and older residents together, and it’s worked: it’s broken down generational barriers, surfaced hidden talents, and turned everyday people into local heroes.

A good reminder for internal comms too. Connection doesn’t come from flashy campaigns. It comes from celebrating real people, making it easy (and fun) to get involved, and keeping things personal. Sometimes the best thing we can do is help people see how interesting their colleagues already are.

📺 Watching

Like millions of others, the news of the Pope’s death prompted me to rewatch Conclave. Impressive synergy between Conclave’s marketing team and God there.

📚 Reading

Finally took a proper deep dive into Internal Communication Strategy by Rachel Miller this week — a book I bought ages ago but only ever dipped into. A timely read for some research I’m doing for another project.

🎧 Listening

It was an eclectic music week.

On Sunday I was lucky enough to score tickets to an intimate performance by Jools Holland. He took questions from the audience of about 100, illustrating his answers on the piano. Over an hour or so he covered the history of the piano, his career, and the greats of blues and jazz, before ending with a few numbers with vocalists from his Big Band.

Jools Holland and his piano (photo: me)

Midweek, we saw the Sugababes at AFAS Live — a lovely early-00s nostalgia fest, albeit in my least favourite venue in the city.

Coverage

This week I published a new piece for Reworked: Less Content, More Clarity

It’s a call for a long-overdue clear-out of redundant, outdated and trivial content, and a shift away from publishing more towards communicating better.

I argue that it’s not enough to audit what we already have — we need proper discovery work to understand what employees actually need. Good internal comms isn’t about volume; it’s about clarity, user focus, and strong governance. When we get it right, we don’t just build trust — we create the conditions for better decisions, better digital experiences, and workplaces where people can actually get things done.

Travel

As I said, I arrived in Chicago yesterday afternoon. Here until Thursday — shout if you want to catch up.

Heading on to Toronto after that.

This week in photos

New office exterior. Obvs only a tiny corner of it is mine.
Flowers laid on my street to remember some resistance fighters who held out here in 1945.
Sugababes at AFAS
First of four planes this week
My bike got its annual service
11am on King’s Day and someone had already tweeted a portaloo into the canal
Traditional King’s Day display on Westerstraat
King’s Day in the neighbourhood
Me on King’s Day
Scenes outside my house
And the next morning
WFP. Trying to practice my talk without actually speaking out loud on the plane.
Smashing BBQ joint in Chicago
This is a ridiculous array of hotel pillows

Weeknote 2025/16

/ Sharon O'Dea / Leave a comment
Papieneiland on a beautiful spring day. Photo: me.

Easter weekend, and while I don’t mark it in any religious sense, I’m grateful for the long weekend all the same. It’s a well-timed pause in a year that already feels like it’s moving at double speed. We’re supposedly in spring now, though the weather hasn’t quite got the memo. Still, a bit of space to slow down and take stock has been welcome after a week that’s been emotionally intense, creatively energising, and, at points, quietly sad.

This week at work

An emotional rollercoaster of a week. We’re helping an organisation re-align and re-plan their digital transformation programme after a difficult-but-necessary pivot. Ahead of a team workshop, we’ve run a series of one-to-one interviews so people can share—confidentially—what’s happened and how they feel about it.

Being external gives us some distance and objectivity. We don’t carry the same baggage, which means people have been refreshingly honest. But at times it’s felt like being everyone’s therapist.

Despite the short working week, by Thursday I was absolutely wrung out.

And yet, also buzzing, because we officially signed contracts on a very exciting something. Which means I can stop being cryptic about it and, y’know, actually start doing the work. But not before a small celebratory toast.

I put the finishing touches on my presentation for LumApps Bright in Chicago next week. A few practice runs still needed, but I’m feeling pretty well prepped.

Oh, and I may have said yes to another side project, because apparently I’ve learned nothing.

Also this week

As mentioned in last week’s weeknote, I took to the stage on Sunday for PowerPints, the PowerPoint-based comedy show. My presentation—Hotels and their Design Crimes—didn’t win Best in Show (robbed, obviously), but I did get to say “jizz-stained wank blanket” repeatedly into a microphone in front of actual humans, so I’m calling that a win anyway.

I have strong views on plug sockets
And hairdryers
And wish to warn you about kettles

Ciara Murphy’s winning prezzo (“DuoLingo: Smash or Pass?”) had me properly howling. The whole evening was a joy. Would do again.

Some sad news too: Nick Booth died suddenly this week, far too young. Nick—aka Podnosh—was one of the first people I connected with when I joined Twitter back in my local gov days. He welcomed me into the digital government fold at the first LocalGovCamp in 2009. Kind, generous, funny, and full of heart, Nick was one of the good ones. He’ll be missed by so many.

Lloyd Davis wrote a beautiful tribute here.

Consuming

👩🏻‍💻 Internetting

This week I fell down a delightful rabbit hole watching fish on a webcam. Not just any webcam: Utrecht’s Visdeurbel (fish doorbell). It’s a live stream of a canal lock, and with spring migration underway, volunteers are asked to ring a virtual doorbell when they spot a fish. Enough rings and someone opens the lock to let them through.

It’s charming. It’s weird. It’s very early-internet vibes. And yes, I pressed the button

📺 Watching

Sweet Bobby: My Catfish Nightmare, the Netflix retelling of that truly bananas case that spawned the podcast. Years of fake Facebook accounts, phantom illnesses, and even Skype calls with someone who refused to show their face. Kirat Assi is a calm, sympathetic narrator—but I still spent most of it yelling “HOW did you fall for this for ten years?” at the screen. “Witness protection? Come on.”

Glossy production, plenty of unanswered questions, and a resolution that lands with more of a shrug than a punch.

📚 Reading

Absolutely nothing. My brain said no thank you.

🎧 Listening

Caught French psych-rockers The Limiñanas at Tolhuistuin. Channelling Gainsbourg, Morricone and The Cramps, they delivered fuzzed-out riffs, retro cool, and pure groove with barely a word spoken. Like a Tarantino soundtrack come to life.

Support band David Shaw and The Beat were an unexpected delight too. Dark synthy post-punk vibes. Brussels-based Mancunian weirdos: I’m in.

Travel

A whole week without going near an airport. Glorious.

Sadly, the last such week until… late May.

Coming up: London, Chicago, Toronto, London again, Glasgow (twice), Berlin. And probably London again.

Pray for my inbox.

This week in photos

The most photographed spot in town, before all the tourists arrived
Een koffiemometje
Singel, 9am.
Limiñanas on stage at the Tolhuistuin
Monet painted this. And did a far better job of it than I did.

Weeknote 2025/15

/ Sharon O'Dea / 1 Comment
Obligatory touristy shot of Nyhavn, Copenhagen. Photo: Sharon O’Dea

There’s something about spending time with your nerd tribe that hits the reset button in the best way. After a few days in Denmark talking shop with the digital workplace faithful—followed by a gloriously sunny weekend back in Amsterdam—I’m feeling that perfect combination of knackered and energised. The kind of tired that comes not from burnout, but from doing work that matters, with people who get it.

This week at work

Huge week. Monday brought excellent news about a new project I can’t tell you about yet (and keeping it a secret is killing me). But rest assured, the moment the NDA drops, I’ll be shouting about it from the nearest rooftop.

Tuesday saw me hopping over to Copenhagen for the IntraTeam Event. My annual pilgrimage to the temple of digital workplace nerdery. I’ve been going since 2011, and it remains one of the few conferences that doesn’t just skim the surface. No hype, no fluff, just solid, detail-rich sessions with people who’ve done the work on complex, interesting digital workplaces.

My Lithos colleague Jonathan took to the stage with Sabine Arnold from our client SEFE Securing Energy for Europe, talking about how we delivered a content-first intranet in just 100 days. No generative AI in sight, just good, old-fashioned content design done properly, in two languages and at a frankly indecent speed. We didn’t stop at launch either: we built in training, governance, and community spaces so the thing can grow without collapsing under its own weight.

Jonathan Phillips and Sabine Arnold on stage at IntraTeam
Lithos Partners’ Jonathan and SEFE’s Sabine Arnold at IntraTeam

As ever, the real value came from conversations in corridors. Susan Hanley’s SharePoint insights were especially useful (though, as someone about to dive into a new SP project, they also induced mild heart palpitations). Copilot agents are showing promise (but as ever the biggest challenges are in the human factor side of implementation), intranet governance is still the wild west, and the best strategy remains doing less, better.

After the main event, IntraTeam’s Kurt gathered a gang of us “invited experts” to discuss where the industry’s going. I wasn’t sure what to expect, but it turned out to be the most valuable day of all. No slides, no sales pitches, just actual grown-up debate with some of the smartest people in the game.

And then, in an odd bit of narrative whiplash, I got blocked on LinkedIn.

Someone posted one of those “a bad intranet costs millions of dollars a year” type takes, based on the McKinsey stat about people spending 1.8 hours a day searching for information. You know the one. It did the rounds again, complete with some back-of-the-napkin maths and sweeping statements about the cost of poor digital experiences.

If you’re going to make the case for a better digital workplace, “time saved” isn’t going to cut it. Telling the CFO you’re saving five minutes a day is like telling a doctor you feel vaguely better. It’s not a diagnosis. It’s not a business case. Time spent searching is a symptom, not an outcome. Want to be taken seriously? Show how poor findability leads to risk, compliance failures, attrition.

So I said so. Politely. Succinctly. Then followed the LinkedIn prompt and turned my comment into a post. Got a ton of engagement—likes, nods, DMs… and then, boom. Blocked.

And interestingly (depressingly?), it’s not the first time. A few weeks ago another industry “influencer” responded to a (very polite) build I’d offered on one of their posts by… quietly deleting it. Poof. Gone. Not because I’d been rude or even really challenged their post, just because I’d dared to expand the conversation beyond a narrow comms focus.

And look, it’s their feed, they can do what they want. But if your response to professional critique is “lalala can’t hear you,” we have a problem. Our field doesn’t move forward by clapping along to every fluffy take.

If we’re not willing to have grown-up conversations about what good looks like (and doesn’t) then we don’t get to complain when we’re not seen as a business-critical function.

We do our industry a disservice when we treat criticism or challenge as a personal attack. If our default mode is cheerleading and groupthink, we’re not growing, we’re just echoing.

Disagreement isn’t disrespect. And blocking someone for calling out lazy thinking isn’t strength—it’s fragility.

Also this week

I also managed a quick visit to the Ocean exhibit at the Louisiana Museum of Modern Art. A stunning, immersive look at our relationship with the sea, blending science, art and activism in a way that somehow made me feel both awestruck and vaguely guilty.

Tonight’s the night: PowerPints, the PowerPoint-based comedy show. I submitted my slides Monday and promptly panicked about learning the thing. Enter ChatGPT, which turned out to be an unexpectedly brilliant rehearsal partner. Its dictate function can’t hear tone or pace, but it will sit quietly while I mumble at my screen for 10 minutes and offer some surprisingly helpful prompts to help me memorise my script.

Feeling ready. I’ll report back next week (unless I bomb spectacularly, in which case let’s all pretend this paragraph never happened).

(Still a few tickets left. If you’re in Amsterdam, come witness the chaos.)

Consuming

👩🏻‍💻 Internetting

I’m glad people are out there asking the important questions about emerging technologies. Such as “why DO so many AI company logos look like bumholes?”

📺 Watching

I’ve been too busy to watch anything this week, which has helped me manage the FOMO of knowing the final series of Handmaid’s Tale is out across the pond.

📚 Reading

Hallie Rubenhold’s The Five was brilliant, so I’ve leapt straight into her latest, Story Of A Murder. Only a few pages in, but I’m already hooked.

🎧 Listening

Delighted with the new Pulp single, like bumping into an old mate in a pub and realising they’re still cool as fuck.

Connections

IntraTeam was full of excellent humans, but the people-ing didn’t stop there. I caught up with UX designer Eugene (from The Breakfast) for coffee, had dinner with two of my Colombia travel crew in Copenhagen’s achingly hip Meatpacking district, and squeezed in a drink with Hiveonline’s Sofie Blakstad before my flight. 10/10 week for chats.

Flash Pack Colombia reunion

Travel

Nowhere next week. A rare and beautiful thing. But after that, it’s all systems go: London, Chicago, Toronto, Glasgow.

If you’re local to any of those, let’s grab a cuppa. Or a gin. I’m not fussy.

This week in photos

The engine and side of an orange and white EasyJet plane, on the tarmac with a clear blue sky
On the move again. AMS > CPH
A white woman with brown hair stands in front of a Microsoft sign. She is wearing sunglasses, a bright green top and a black jacket,
At the Microsoft offices in Copenhagen
An AI-generated picture of an action figure. The text says "Sharon O'Dea: Digital Workplace Expert"
The AI-generated action figure trend
A historic brown brick building with a mostly empty square in front. It has a clock tower on the top-left.
Copenhagen Radhuisplads
A selfie of two women - Sharon O'Dea and Sofie Blakstad.
With Sofie Blakstad in CPH
A Japanese-style stage in the background with a patch of daffodils in the foreground.
Finally visited Tivoli Gardens
A woman (me) surrounded by coloured lights in a dark room
Inside the Yayoi Kusama artwork at the Louisiana Museum of Modern Art
Spring Saturdays in AMS

Weeknote 2025/14

/ Sharon O'Dea / Leave a comment
London, this week. Photo: me.

Time is a flat circle, calendars are lies, and yet somehow it’s April and I’m still knee-deep in tasks I confidently told myself I’d wrap up in January. The to-do list has developed sentience and is now breeding in the wild. Meetings beget more meetings. Progress is measurable only by the faint glow of a Teams notification turning off.

So: not a week of breakthroughs, but of motion. Possibly even forward.

This week at work

A week of spinning plates rather than carving out any serious thinking time.

Bitsy jobs included planning workshops, writing and delivering a couple of presentations, and wrestling the year-end finances into something resembling order.

Had a great chat with an HR tech vendor about digital employee experience. Specifically, how platforms only deliver value if they’re actually aligned with processes and, wild idea, people. Training, culture, the human stuff. We’re exploring ways to work together, so watch this space.

Started digging into pre-work for a team alignment piece with a client. Everyone needs a say, but time is tight, so we’re walking the tightrope between inclusion and getting it done. So we’re having to be flexible and creative, while giving everyone confidence that we’re genuinely listening and can be trusted to be discreet.

A recent pitch didn’t land. New client, new sector—it was always a stretch, but still a bit of a sting after putting in the hours.

More positively, I had a fab chat with a founder about something new, interesting and intriguing. The thinking behind it really resonated, my brain’s fizzing with ideas, and I’m keen to get involved. But I need to find some clear headspace to give it the depth of thinking it deserves.

Also this week

Spent one more day in Bucharest and visited its crazy-large Parliament building.

Back home in Amsterdam, I found myself in Dam Square at the exact moment someone drove in and set themselves and their car on fire. What looked, from my brisk departure angle, like a terrorist incident. Flashbacks to growing up in London in the 80s and 90s. Suspicious bags, dodgy alarms, constant low-level anxiety. Ah, the nostalgia.

Did a lightning dash to London to catch up with a bunch of mates I’ve known since I was a teenager. Between us: Johannesburg, Singapore, Amsterdam, North London and several time zones’ worth of baggage. First time we’ve all been in the same place in years, and it was glorious.

My long-delayed turn at PowerPints—the PowerPoint comedy night—is finally next week. Slides are ready. Memory? Less so. Wish me luck.

If you’re local, come down to Boom Chicago on Sunday and heckle support. Tickets here.

Consuming

👩🏻‍💻 Internetting

New research from Centre for Cities shows how WFH has reshaped the capital’s pub trade. Thursdays are now the new Fridays, as seen in both pub takings and TfL passenger data.

London bucks the national trend. Elsewhere, post-work pints have vanished almost entirely. Commuters are also spending less on food near the office, but not at cafés—it’s all going to suburban supermarkets. Living the Aldi dream.

The FT did a piece last weekend on LinkedIn “super users”. Apparently, I’m one—81,000 followers puts me in the “mid-tier influencer” bracket.

Is it useful? Occasionally. Mostly, it means more men in my DMs explaining things I already know.

But despite the hustle bros, AI sludge and endless posts about personal brands, LinkedIn can still be brilliant. It’s where I show how I think, what I do, and learn from people outside my bubble.

People ask how I “grew my audience”. No strategy, no funnel, no content calendar. Just be useful, be funny, be consistent. For years.

My top tips, if you want them:
🚀 Say something original. If ChatGPT could write it, maybe don’t.
🚀 Ditch your niche now and then—you’re allowed layers.
🚀 Social media is social. Don’t just dump content like a cat dropping a dead bird to impress its human.
🚀 LinkedIn loves video and carousels. I don’t. That’s ok.
🚀 Be a human, not a brand.

Accidental mid-tier influencer, signing off.

📺 Watching

Series 3 of Slow Horses. Still loving it. Still wouldn’t trust any of them with a stapler.

📚 Reading

Almost finished the book about Romanian history I started last week, Children of the Night: The Strange and Tragic Story of Modern Romania.

Got over-excited in the airport WHSmiths yesterday and bought a whole stack of dead tree books to get me through the next few months.

Connections

With Q1 now done with, here’s a progress update on my 100 People project – my annual mission to catch up with 100 people in my network.

19 met, 5 booked. Just shy of 25%. But with a travel-heavy Q2 looming, I’ll be racking up catch-ups at pace.

Travel

Last week’s trip to Bucharest reminded me of another hotel design irritant: the annoyingly quirky labelling.

“This might be vodka.” No. It’s lukewarm water from the bathroom sink, and confusing the jet-lagged is not a flex. Please stop.

🇩🇰 Next stop: Copenhagen on Tuesday for IntraTeam. Ready to nerd out about intranets with the best of them.

This week in photos

My feet in Bucharest
I like large administratve buildings anfd I cannot lie
Incident in Dam Square on Thursday
Amsters early in the morning, when it’s weirdly peaceful
Travelling light
My first visit to Stansted in 20 years
With my mates in London