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!

I spent most of this week in sunny Italy, attending the wedding of a dear friend, and taking a few days out to explore Perugia and Florence.

I adore weddings, especially now they’re comparatively rare among my friends. And this one was special. The bride, my pal Christina, has had a tough few years battling breast cancer. She’s out the other side now and was determined to have a blowout bash to celebrate love and life. And delivered that in spades.

The warm sun casting a golden glow over the Umbrian hills, the scent of fresh flowers in the air, the sounds of a string quartet and laughter filling the stunning rustic villa. It was just perfect.

I started blubbing the moment I saw her. It was a beautiful emotional day. This was not just a wedding; it was a messy and glorious fusion of love, tradition, joy and the enchanting spirit of Italy.

The next day we headed to Florence to do the tourist thing, but found ourselves getting annoyed by tourists (I know, I know) so flipped to exploring the city’s odder sights. Like tracking down Galileo’s preserved middle finger, stored in a glass case in a museum, forever flipping the bird at the establishment that condemned him as a heretic.

Some things I did this week

However, working for myself and not being very good at taking time out I did end up doing some work things.

• More work on how we structure content across both internal and external sites. This finally feels like it’s making sense now.
• Ran a focus group, which is pretty much the final hurdle on an intranet and internal comms discovery we’ve been doing. This gave us the chance to dig a little deeper on some of the issues that our survey and interviews flagged up, and helped to explain some of the trends we were seeing.

Saw Bob Log III play at a lovely outdoor free festival in Florence. Midway through this gig I got an email confirming we’ve won yet another new project and new client. We’ve been talking to them for a while, got the sense they liked our approach, and felt like this was one which would land in the end. And it did. It’s an interesting client and project and we’re really excited to start working with them.

Bob Log invited me to drink prosecco out of an inflatable duck while making toast and throwing it into the audience. This seemed as good a way to celebrate as any.

In fact, I might make Drinking Prosecco Out Of A Duck my standard New Client Win celebration.

Connections

In theory I was having a week off, but as the beautiful bride is a former colleague from my Houses of Parliament days it was a good chance to say hello and catch up on the gossip. We managed to avoid talking shop, fortunately.

What I’m reading

I finished reading the Keir Starmer biography. The second half of the book covers his career. Leaving university, becoming a barrister, defending the pair in the McLibel trial, representing mineworkers who’d been injured at work, and his time at the DPP.

And finally on to his move into politics, the Corbyn years, winning the party leadership and the inside story on the battle to transform the party and get it ready to lead again. Starmer was (is) often accused of being boring. I liked his reply to this – there’s nothing more boring than opposition.

Given the news this week it’s been a timely and reassuring read. I’m so excited for politics to be boring again.

Hotels

It was another two hotel week. The first, in Perugia, had colour-adjustable lighting in the bathroom. Why? What is this for? In the bathroom one needs sufficient bright lighting to shave, pluck and apply make-up. There are no circumstances in which making the lights green, blue or pink enhance the bathroom experience.

Despite this I think I did a reasonable job on wedding make-up and hair.

In a sign that I spend far too much time in hotels, on Friday night I woke up at about 3am, and thought “I can’t remember where the bathroom is here”. I turned on the torch on my phone to find it, and realised I was in my own bed at home.

Theresa May famously once said “if you believe you are a citizen of the world, you are a citizen of nowhere — you don’t understand what citizenship means.”

Maybe I don’t know what citizenship means. Or maybe I just don’t share her definition of citizenship. This week I’ve been in four cities in three countries and felt at home, and felt like a person with rights and responsibilities, in all of them.

I like being a citizen of nowhere – or a citizen of Europe. As I’ve been flitting across the continent I’ve been watching the return of Farage back in the UK and hoping this is the last gasp of a dying band of obsessive, self-defeating Euroscepticism, before sanity prevails again in my (other) home country.

(And, as my Twitter feed makes all too clear, I am very much enjoying not having a politically restricted job this time around).

Some things I did this week

With one client, we’re working to develop more structure for the team and programmes, to help everyone move forward with confidence and clarity on goals, roles and responsibilities. And that, it’s quickly becoming clear, is absolutely essential. Without greater clarity on what, where and who, we’ll have paralysis. We spent a lot of time this week wrangling with the detail of RACI matrices and decision-making processes. And it feels like we’re making huge progress with the programme overall, unblocking barriers to getting things done.

But with another, the search for clarity has only created paralysis. After two weeks trying to pin down deliverables in the context where so little else is clear, it’s actually meant we just can’t start anything. So – in an admirably pragmatic move – the client’s suggested we just sign for a Time and Materials contract and crack on iteratively. Just get the initial work done then see what to tackle next, with confidence we have enough flexibility to roll with it.

Both approaches are right, in their own circumstances. As a supplier I guess we have to learn to work with both. It makes juggling resources on our side a little more complex though.

We also agreed next steps for a content development programme we’ve been involved with for a while. And got further into the weeds on a complex site’s information architecture. Lots more to do on that one, but making good progress.

And spoke to a potential client about a possible project that had gone quiet for so long we assumed it was gone. It isn’t, and looking like it’ll turn into something more concrete in the months ahead.

Spent a couple of days with one of my oldest friends in Berlin. Ate schnitzel. Drank beer. Walked along the remains of the Berlin Wall and talked about how weird it was that it went up in our parents’ lifetimes and came down in our own living memory. 

Watched Green Day in the pouring rain at the Waldbühne, a stunning if chaotic amphitheatre next to the old Berlin Olympic Stadium. It was the 30th anniversary tour for Dookie, which has remained in my top 10 favourite albums for the whole of those three decades. 

The journey back from the venue was a nightmare of cancelled trains, buses too full to stop and no Ubers to be found anywhere, so I saw in my birthday on a packed-beyond-capacity S Bahn, under someone’s armpit, soaked to the skin.

My 44th will not go down as one of my more memorable birthdays. I spent most of it on a train from Berlin to Amsterdam that left an hour late then moved considerably slower than anticipated across Germany. I did at least make it home on time to go out for a rijsttafel dinner with my husband.

More cheerfully, on Wednesday I saw Atarashii Gakko at the Melkweg. J-pop at its finest, with a costume change per track, some impressively tight dance moves and stunning stage graphics.

Ay the end of the week I spent a couple of days in Rotterdam with good friends. Bad weather, mad architecture, spicy margaritas, a spin class and a lot of laughter. It was good for the soul.

Connections

The trip to Berlin gave me an opportunity to catch up with two people who are set to join the Lithos associate network in the coming weeks to support on new projects. Exciting.

What I’m reading

I’m halfway through Tom Baldwin’s biography of our presumed soon-to-be PM Kier Starmer. I’m enjoying it hugely. In part because I’m finally allowing myself to be excited about the prospect of a Labour government (disclaimer: I have been a member of the Labour Party since I was a teenager).

But also it’s been an interesting reflection on class politics. Kier’s dad -was a toolmaker (he may have mentioned this 😉), and he was the first of his family to go to university. My siblings and I were the first in our family to go to university, and I recognise the same internal conflict about clearly being middle class now, but not fully being able to explain when (or even if) you ever stop being what you grew up as.

Hotels

I bookended the week in two different chains which claim to have rethunk the hotel experience – Moxy (Berlin) and Citizen M (Rotterdam). I’ve stayed in several of both many times before.

The good: everything just works. Check-in, bedside power provision, shower pressure, decent hairdryer… they trick all the boxes. Nothing more, nothing less.

The bad: Because the chains are designed to be the same everywhere, down to the finest detail, there’s the disconcerting feeling of waking up and taking a few minutes to remember where I am today. I woke up on Friday and genuinely thought this could be Rotterdam… or anywhere?

The ugly: I do not – ever – want to select lighting to match my mood.

This weeknote comes to you from a train somewhere in the middle of Germany. I’m en route to Berlin for a weekend with one of my besties…

…two hours later than planned, thanks to DB cancelling my train. The German reputation for train efficiency is entirely undeserved, in my experience.

Some things I did this week

We’re working with two different organisations on intranet content migrations right now. In both cases they have a lot of legacy content which will need a significant amount of work to bring up to scratch and move. Every time I do one of these programmes I end up with the feeling it would be less work and deliver a better outcome for users if we just burn it all down and starting again.

But it’s rare that any organisation has the courage to do that (and it’s all too common for these projects to settle for a huge lift-and-shift to avoid the difficult stakeholder discussions, which just moves crap old content wholesale to shiny new platforms, replicating all the same problems they had before they invested in new tools). 

This feels like a problem that’s getting worse rather than better. We’re so used to hosting being practically free that we’ve lost any incentive to throw anything away, digitally. But every out of date, incorrect piece of content you’ve got makes it harder to find the good quality content you actually need.

AI isn’t going to magically solve this, and could end up making it worse by regenerating crap old content into crap new content. We need more active curation and content governance – and again that’s easier when starting afresh.

Started the heavy lifting on information architecture for a programme bringing multiple disconnected websites into one consistent site. It’s oddly satisfying, bringing order to chaos. But I know from experience that stakeholders are often wedded to their existing sites and structures and need to be convinced to change. So doing solid user testing is vital to make the case for a site restructure. So that’s next.

We also started the analysis phase on a discovery with a US client. I always enjoy this bit, looking at how interviews and surveys confirmed some of our initial assumptions, while flagging up new ones. Encouragingly this one flagged a bunch of relatively easy fixes the organisation can implement quickly and cheaply to show some momentum while they work on the bigger and more fundamental issues.

Saw Dogstar (feat Keanu Reeves) at the Melkweg. This meant I wasn’t able to see Beth Gibbons in Utrecht (as they were on at the same time) so I took a quick trip down to Brussels to catch that show the following night. Glad I did; it was a hauntingly beautiful gig (featuring my old mate on the keyboards, and a sneaky backstage drink after). It was a good music week all round.

What I’m reading

Honestly this week I’ve been so glued to the ongoing car crash that is the UK general election that I haven’t opened a book.

My favourite election blogs/Substacks are:

• Comment is Freed’s election briefings
• Newsletter of (Not Quite) Everything
• Striking 13
• Odds and Ends of History
• Democracy Club

Connections

With both Money 2020 and Unleashing Innovation in Internal Comms both taking place in Amsterdam this week, lots of work contacts/friends were floating about the city. That gave me a chance to enjoy a few beers on the (finally) sunny terrassen while ticking six people off my 100 People list in one week.

Then as an added bonus my impromptu trip to Belgium gave me a couple of hours to catch up with Mark Smitham. We reminisced about the glory days of digital gov and how it’s weird to think 12 years on we’ve both emigrated, got a new nationality and learned Dutch. Neither of us saw that coming.

Coverage

Ana Neves has made my recent tongue-in-cheek talk at Social Now available on YouTube.

The hotel review no one asked for

Motel One Brussels. Selected purely on the basis it was closest to Cirque Royal.

• The good: 8/10 bedside power provision. Hangers! The Scandinavian custom of two duvets on one bed. Every time I see this in a hotel I think I should adopt this at home.
• The bad: Those hairdryers which are wired to the wall and make you hold the button down to operate.
• The ugly: Classic migraine-inducing carpet

I don’t know about you, but I’m feeling 22.

Taylor Swift might be feeling 22, but I most certainly am not. It is somehow June, my birthday month, and I’m staring my 44th in the face.

In a misplaced burst of nostalgia I went to a 90s music theme ride at spin today. Halfway through I realised that not only was I the only person there who danced to these tunes at the time, but at least half of the riders weren’t even born. Life comes at you fast, huh?

But hey, everything will be alright if we just keep dancing like we’re 22 22 22 22.

Some things I did this week

Trying to bring order to chaos on a complex programme of work. A big question this week was to take a look at recurring meetings and think how to make that time more productive (whether by making the meetings themselves better, or catching up in different ways and using that time better), and how to make it easier and clearer for decisions to be made and turned into action.

We mobilised the team to kick off a new project for a client next week. Exciting. I think.

Talked to two founders in the HR tech space. There’s a symbiotic relationship between digital workplace/intranet and enterprise transactional tools. Employees are focused on tasks over comms, but they often need content to help them at the same time, and as organisations we need to give people relevant comms to build engagement and alignment. Because of that overlap it’s an area I find myself spending more time looking at, and should probably investigate a little more.

Saw Fat White Family at Tolhuistuin. A vastly under-rated band imho, especially live. They have a raw, unapologetic garage rock/post-punk sound and a zero-fucks-given stage vibe.

The following night me and my mate Ngozi saw Paloma Faith at the Melkweg. The first two thirds of the show were tracks off her new album – which I’ll confess I’ve never listened to – which is about her break up with the father of her children. But between her absolute belter of a voice and hilarious bants about motherhood, her ex and her sex life it was a perfect night out.

On Saturday Cate McLaurin and I went on a public transport adventure across the Netherlands – via train, tram, metro and a pedestrian/bike ferry – to Futureland, a visitors centre and exhibit in a far corner of the Rotterdam port. Along the way we learned more than we ever needed to know about container shipping. The most fun bit was the ferry which took us right alongside the ships. The photos don’t convey how monumentally HUGE these things are and what a technical and logistical feat the port is. All in a super nerdy day out which I can thoroughly recommend.

What I’m reading

I finished Jonn Elledge’s A History Of The World In 47 Borders. This book took me on a wild tour of the planet’s quirkiest and most contentious lines.. With sharp wit and a knack for storytelling, Elledge dives into the messy, often absurd history behind borders, from the infamous to the obscure (I was quietly delighted that he covered Bolivia’s coastline, which still appeared on official maps when I was there 20 years ago, despite them having lost it in a war over a century earlier).

Each chapter is a snappy vignette, blending historical insight with present-day relevance. Elledge’s irreverent tone makes heavy topics surprisingly digestible, whether he’s unpacking colonial legacies or modern-day disputes. The last few chapters felt a bit rushed, but even so I loved this equal-parts-eye-opening-and-entertaining book.

For anyone curious about the arbitrary lines that shape our world (or if, like me, you just have an obsession with maps) Elledge offers a rollocking ride through the world’s most fascinating boundaries.

Connections

Had a dinner at Jansz with the irrepressible Lauren Razavi. A digital nomad for over a decade now, Lauren knows more then most about life on the road.

One of the best things about having worked and travelled all over the place – as we both have – is that there’s almost nowhere in the world we don’t know someone I can catch up with coffee. Over dinner we talked about how it’s hard to keep track of who we know where, especially if the people you know are also pretty mobile.

This feels like something LinkedIn could/should help with. A way to tell it I’ll be in this city on those dates and have it give me suggestions of people I’m connected with who are temporarily or permanently in the same place.

Relatedly: The next few weeks will see me in Berlin, Rotterdam, Florence, and Bristol. So if you’re in any of those and want to catch up, do slide into my DMs. Or if anyone’s in Amsterdam for Money2020 I’m uncharacteristically in town for the entire week.

Coverage

With the tiresome debate about low value degrees rolling around again in the latest desperate Tory policy announcement, I was in the i this week talking about my own ‘Mickey Mouse Degree‘.

Those who dismiss newer subjects often betray a lack of understanding of what these degrees actually entail and the skills they offer employers.

But more than that, reducing any degree to its impact on average salary rates is nonsense.

University helps you learn how to learn – the most valuable of skills in a modern economy, where the half-life of hard skills is shrinking every year.

Degrees of all kinds foster creativity, cultural awareness, and the ability to build a nuanced understanding of issues, which are invaluable in cultivating a well-rounded, informed society. Those qualitative benefits don’t show up in salary statistics but unlock opportunity, personal fulfilment and societal progress. Perhaps that’s what those who lean on tired stereotypes about “Mickey Mouse” degrees have a problem with…

On Friday I joined 6,000 members of Amsterdam’s middle-aged community at the first date of Pulp’s European tour.

I caught sight of myself in a mirror on the way to buy some weak lager at the bar, clad in combat trousers and a freshly bought band t-shirt from the merch stand. You could say I haven’t moved on from 1997.

But coming two days after the surprise general election announcement, I’m fully embracing the late 90s nostalgia.

“Do you remember the first time? I can’t remember a worse time…But you know that we’ve changed so much since then.”

Do I remember the first time? Yes. But I wasn’t old enough to vote. This time around I am enjoying every second of this car crash campaign, and feeling hopeful that things are finally going to change.

Some stuff I did this week

Months back I decided to tack a few days on to my Lisbon trip, to give myself a few days chill time after what was set to be a busy few weeks of work/travel/speaking. I booked an Airbnb by the sea which promised fast wifi for remote working.

As it turns out the wifi was well used, with calls from 7.30am to 7pm both days, and not much chill time in-between. Sigh.

But it was lovely to knock off work and be able to go for a walk by the beach and get stuck into some tasty and cheap seafood.

Much of that work was a bunch of proposals and pitches. They’re not something I enjoy as they take a good chunk of time, with no guarantee that anything will come of them. But these were all solid, qualified asks from existing clients or those we’ve been talking seriously to, so we felt they were worth doing. Will have some serious scheduling to do in the coming months.

I recorded a podcast with the folks over at workplace tech firm Joan. A long old chat which was supposed to be about workplace tech but ended up being about people. Like I frequently say, tech is the easy bit. It’s people and culture that are harder to change. I love geeking out in this stuff. Will share when the episode is out.

We landed a chunky project to support a super interesting client with the next steps of their digital workplace transformation.

Between that project and our ongoing ones, and other projects coming down the line, we’ve got a lot on, and a lot to coordinate. So we hired two people this week to support us with delivery management and client content development. I’m looking forward to both of them starting with us in the coming weeks.

What I’m reading

Apparently it’s reasonably common for people who (like me) lack 3D vision to think in mental or visual maps, and I suspect that’s why I’ve had a life-long obsession with cartography.

I also love a history book. So I’d been waiting for Jonn Elledge’s A History Of The World In 47 Borders to hit the shelves. And it didn’t disappoint. Each chapter is a standalone tale of the (mostly bad) decisions and historical accidents behind the lines on our maps, and how these are still impacting people and politics today.

I’ve powered through the first half of this. There’s no better travel companion than a good book; I took this one to bars and enjoyed it with a few sangrias (pictured). I expect to devour the rest in the next day or two. Recommend.

Connections

Caught up with Anne-Marie Blake at the Sky Bar in Amsterdam to talk about comms, training and balancing the demands for a steady stream of updates on LinkedIn and the like with being too busy with the day job to produce them.

Coverage

I was interviewed for this piece in BA’s Club Magazine about building a trip around going to a gig – something I do regularly.

The folks over at Nexxer have made all the videos from Camp Digital available. Which gives me the opportunity to see all the talks I couldn’t catch because there were so many good ones to choose from at the same time. And also means I can share the 300 Seconds session for new speakers with the wider world.

Here it is, with an intro from me and four brilliant stories from four brilliant women.

This week was A LOT. Five cities, three countries, two flights and far more people-ing than I’m used to doing these days. And in the background, juggling three live client projects with three that want to start working with us. And, as always, slightly too many side projects.

But I wouldn’t have it any other way. I’m writing this weeknote from the balcony of my Airbnb by the sea on the Portuguese Riviera, where I’ve taken myself for a few days so I can catch up and unwind.

The sun is shining, the wine is cheap and it’s a beautiful part of the world.

Evoked, maybe, by the scent of jacaranda trees and vinho verde my brain has just unearthed a proverb my Portuguese schoolfriend’s mum used to use, which I hadn’t even thought about for 20 years.

Fia-te na Virgem e não corras, meaning “trust the Virgin and don’t run away”.

It means that you can’t just sit back; you have to act and trust that things will work out.

It feels oddly fitting. There are lots of exciting opportunities on the horizon, and with so much going on I’ve started to doubt my ability to do it. But I need to grab chances as they come and not run away.

Some things I did this week

Like I said, this week involved a lot of juggling of projects and people and places.

Ran a workshop for a client in the UK to help them get a complex, multi-stream programme on track. We looked at scope, comms and routines and helped them get to what really matters and how to make it all actionable and realistic. I enjoyed this a lot and we got really positive feedback from the team afterwards. So: warm glow at a job well done.

Two very different clients want turn discovery work into delivery. We’ve been working with both on how to do that, and how we can – and can’t – help. We’re delighted that clients come back to us again, and recommend us to others, but this week Jon and I reached the conclusion we need to hire someone to help us coordinate it all.

Attended the 10th Social Now event in Lisbon, Portugal. This is the second time I’ve been to this event for people working with enterprise social and digital workplace. Organiser Ana Neves brings together an impressive group of practitioners and vendors but, in focusing it on the needs of a fictitious company with recognisable challenges, makes it action-focused rather than salesy.

My highlights were:

Andrew Pope characteristically sensible opening on empowering managers to build capability and resilience in digital work practices

Fabio Frota (of OrangeTrail) giving a informative and practical intro to Microsoft co-pilot. In a world where every conference has a string of talks on AI that are delivered from a position of zero knowledge and on closer examination aren’t really AI, it was refreshing to have an accessible-yet-expert take on the tool everyone’s talking about

Emily Hinks ☀️ on why we need to make mischief at work to bring values to life and humanity into all we do

Sumeet Gayathri Moghe on taking an async-first approach to work

Simon Scullion on building your Digital Workplace one block or layer at a time

Clearbox’s Suzie Robinson‘s intro to mapping the digital workplace. Every organisation has one – it’s never truly greenfield – and it likely a messy muddle of overlapping tools

I delivered a tongue-in-cheek talk to close the event, called “How to ensure failure in your digital workplace programme”.

Plus a number of hands-on exercises facilitated by Céline Schillinger, and smooth MCing from Samuel Driessen. And – what I think makes this event special – the in-depth chats with experienced, knowledgeable and passionate digital pros over long lunches.

Ana claims this will be the last Social Now, but attendees are already hoping she has a change of heart.

What I read

Nothing. Zero spare time this week!

Connections

Social Now was a brilliant chance to catch up with some old friends and contacts from the digital workplace world, and to meet new ones. We’re already planning a little reunion for the Amsterdam contingent next month.

But I am peopled out now and need a solid few days talking to absolutely no one.

Coverage

For a while I’ve been predicting that Meta would pull the plug on their Workplace enterprise offering as it’s failed to gain the traction they hoped for and is increasingly mis-aligned with their core offering.

I was right. I love being right, but I do feel for everyone affected by the fallout.

I wrote this for Reworked on what went wrong for Workplace.

“As news of Workplace’s demise became public, many former customers and staffers took to LinkedIn to express sadness at the product’s failure to revolutionize the way we collaborate and communicate at work. But perhaps it was the expectation that it ever would do so that sowed the seeds of its failure.“

(PS I’m not sure it actually is week 20. It might be 21. Did I lose a week somewhere?)