birthday

*Me at Intranet Italia this week (photo: Sam Marshall)*

It’s midsummer. The days are long, the sun’s out, and Amsterdam is at its absolute best—golden light, lazy canal shadows, the whole city leaning into the heat. The world might feel heavy right now, but coming home to this place is something I never take for granted.

Especially this week, as Amsterdam marks its 750th birthday—with a giant street party on the ring road, naturally. Because what better way to celebrate than dancing on a motorway in full sunshine, in a city that knows exactly how to have fun without taking itself too seriously?

This week at work

My big focus was a trip to Milan for Intranet Italia Day—a brilliant chance to connect with Italy’s intranet community and reflect on how the field is evolving.

My highlights:

Giacomo Mason reminded us how intranets are evolving into integration hubs — one example had 40 services connected! He nailed the pace of change in intranet roles: “I used to be an internal communicator, now I’m digitalising parking spots.”
Sam Marshall explored what intranets are really for. We’ve gone from the comms-and-info hub, to the everything-platform, to what he calls the Minimalist Intranet—a layer that helps make sense of everything else. He unpacked four key trends from ClearBox’s annual review: the push for employee experience, renewed focus on frontline workers, better comms ‘air traffic control’, and (of course) AI.
Stefano Besana from Deloitte shared compelling thoughts on AI and the future of work. AI can boost team performance—but may flatten creativity. 94% of leaders say it’s essential; only 7% think their organisation is doing it well. A telling gap.
Anna Kravets delivered a great talk on design on a budget. “It looked good in Figma” got a laugh, but her advice (avoid unnecessary customisation and use out-of-the-box widgets to sidestep maintenance nightmares) was spot on.

My own keynote wrapped up the day. I argued that it’s time for a new Renaissance for the intranet. We’ve built digital workplaces overflowing with content, yet employees still struggle to find what they need. The problem isn’t a lack of information—it’s the volume, and the lack of structure or purpose.

I shared the SEFE story: a client with four legacy intranets and just 100 days to build something better. We didn’t throw AI at it. We focused on clarity, consistency, and content that served a purpose, using content design to deliver value, not volume.

An intranet should be a workshop, not a dumping ground. A place of deliberate creation, not digital clutter. Like the Renaissance masters, we need to lead with standards, intent, and a commitment to quality.

Back in Amsterdam, Jon and I have been cracking on with the book. The first section—on definitions, discovery, business cases, and the platform ecosystem—is finally starting to take shape.

Also this week

My friend Lauren and I went to Science & Cocktails, a monthly lecture series with smoky drinks and surprisingly solid live bands. The theme was Power and Countervailing Power in the 21st Century, delivered by WRR researcher Haroon Sheikh.

His argument: power today isn’t just about armies or treaties. It’s embedded in chips, supply chains, social networks, even the strategic use of migration. We’re living in an age of ambient power projection, where influence is diffuse, deniable, and increasingly hard to regulate.

Democracy’s old guard isn’t built for this kind of fight. Sheikh made a compelling case for fresh thinking and new tools to counterbalance power that no longer wears a uniform or waves a flag.

Consuming

👩🏻‍💻 Internetting

A new study confirms what many suspected: relying on ChatGPT to write your essays doesn’t just affect the output—it rewires your brain. People who used an LLM to write essays showed weaker brain activity, worse memory, and couldn’t even recall what they’d “written” a few hours later. When asked to go back to writing without help, they struggled.

In short: using ChatGPT might make the task easier, but it makes you less mentally engaged. Like GPS for your brain—convenient, but at the cost of knowing where you are.

It’s made me reflect on thoughlessly turning to AI to speed up a task, and being more deliberate about stepping back and doing it slowly but more intentionally.

📺 Watching

I watched Grenfell: Uncovered this week, and it’s stayed with me in that way only something truly harrowing can. The series is devastating—not just in its depiction of what happened that night, but in the slow, avoidable build-up that made it inevitable. It’s forensic, unflinching, and absolutely damning.

What hit hardest, though, was the familiarity. I grew up nearby. My primary school was (literally) in the shadow of the tower and my classmates lived there. Some still did when the fire struck. The estate, the streets—they’re not anonymous cityscape, they’re places I used to walk through daily. Seeing your childhood backdrop become the site of a national tragedy is surreal. But that’s the point, really: Grenfell isn’t some abstract failure. It’s what happens when systems designed to protect people decide some lives just don’t count as much.

When I tell people I’m from Notting Hill, the reaction is often the same: ooh, fancy. People forget that Notting Hill, like much of London, is a neighbourhood of sharp contrasts and deep inequality. Gentrification didn’t replace the community; it happened around it, and not always with it. The Notting Hill I come from is the one in Grenfell, not the one in the Hugh Grant film.

I read One Kensington last year, which explores the same dynamic in meticulous, painful detail—the wilful neglect of the borough’s poorer, northern half by a council that would rather pretend it doesn’t exist.

📚 Reading

I had a sneak peek at Lisa Riemers and Matisse Hamel-Nelis’s upcoming book Accessible Communications. I’m halfway through and it’s packed with useful, practical advice on what accessibility means and how to get it right. Highly recommend.

Also knee-deep in book research. This week’s pick: Introduction to Employee Experience Platforms by Shailesh Kumar Shivakumar. It raises questions we’ve been circling for a while: what is an EXP, really? Is it different from a digital workplace or intranet—or just new branding for the same old problems.

🎧 Listening

Been deep in a Sparks rabbit hole ahead of seeing them live this week. If you don’t know them: imagine if Gilbert & George made synth-pop, or if Wes Anderson formed a band with your eccentric uncle. Still going strong after 50 years. Deadpan, operatic, and completely unbothered by what’s fashionable.

Connections

Milan was a chance to catch up with familiar faces from the intranet world—Sam Marshall, Anna Kravets—and finally meet others I’d only spoken to online.

Also squeezed in an impromptu Aperol catch-up with my old StanChart colleague Stefan Chojnicki, who I’d forgotten had moved to Milan. We hadn’t seen each other in over a decade.

Impromptu catch-ups are great. Impromptu catch-ups with Aperol in the sunshine: even better.

Travel

Just a short trip back to London this week for an event. More on that next week.

This week in photos

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 — In the Netherlands, you bring cakes inn for everyone else for your birthday

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

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

Technostress and internal branding (spoiler: it’s bad for you)
Digital comms in Industry 4.0 (less sexy than it sounds)
Digital internal communication: An interplay of socio-technical elements (it’s still the people, not the platform)
How to measure internal comms satisfaction (thrill! suspense! Likert scales!)

🎧 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

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.