conference

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 2025/15

/ 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 2024/19

/ Sharon O'Dea / Leave a comment
Photo by Matt Jukes

A change is as good as a rest, or so the saying goes. But this week’s involved a lot of change and not much rest and, well, I’m just really bloody tired.

So apologies, but I’m going to skip the laboured intro this week. I’m on a plane for the fourth time in under a week and this week note is late and I just can’t brain anymore today.

Some stuff I did this week

My big focus this week was Camp Digital, the annual event from the folks at Nexer Digital on digital, design and UX. Every year they put on a brilliant, inspirational day which really forces us to think about what good digital is and should be. A world away from the endless vendor presentations you see at so many events.

My highlights:

Finally hearing Lou Downe talk about bad (and good) services, and the impact service design has on real lives.

Refreshing and honest lessons from Katy Arnold on design leadership in the unforgiving context of central government. So many useful lessons there which are equally applicable in corporates. We need to bring people (and leadership) with us to drive real change, and digital teams are often bad at making friends across the wider organisation.

Bringing 300 Seconds to the Camp Digital stage for the second time. Our four new speakers – Laura McKendrick, Galina Ostroumova, Candy Ogbebor and Aershey Khan – all bought fresh stories, perspectives and experiences to the agenda. 

Our four 300 Seconds speakers on the stage. So proud of them all!

As I said in my intro to this session, the ideas we share from the podium have currency beyond the room. They become part of our industry dialogue, and feed into what we do. 

If we want digital services that work for everyone we need to broaden that dialogue. Our four speakers did exactly that – and brilliantly too. I’m sure we’ll be seeing more of them all.

The *other* goal of our 300 Seconds x Camp Digital session is to build a pipeline of speakers for future years. So it was fantastic to witness Coco Chan‘s progress from doing her first lightning talk last year to running her own (hugely oversubscribed) session this year.

The day ended on a smashing, surreal note with Seb Lee-Delisle‘s rapid-fire presentation on massive laser installations. It meandered from burning holes in your walls by having lasers on at home to lighting up a city in lockdown from your balcony to a huge audience-volume-controlled game of Flappy Bird.

All in, a fantastic and inspirational day. See you again next year, Campers.

No sooner did I get home than I hit the road again, to plan and deliver a workshop for a client who have a number of complex, inter-related workstreams. 

I really enjoy creating workshops. Thinking of ways to focus minds, encourage honest discussion and feedback, and turning that into alignment and action. I’m on my way home now, knackered but generally feeling positive about a job well done.

What I’ve been reading

But What Can I Do? by Alastair Campbell addresses the pressing (yet entirely understandable) issue of political disengagement and disillusionment. With his trademark directness and clarity, Campbell outlines practical strategies for ordinary folk to become more involved in political and social activism. 

With an eye on the forthcoming election (dear God can they just put everyone out of their misery), Campbell offers a potent blend of inspiration and practicality, aiming to reignite the public’s commitment to civic duty. This is a clarion call for action, urging individuals to reclaim their agency and contribute to the democratic process. For those of us feeling disillusioned or powerless in today’s way-too-much-all-the-time political climate, Campbell’s work serves as both a guidebook and a source of renewed hope. And that’s something we all need right now.

Connections

Loads! Camp Digital is something of a reunion of digital government OGs. It was fantastic to catch up with Sarah Drummond, Lou Downe and Katy Arnold at the speakers’ dinner, and to meet Seb Lee-Delisle for the first time. I introduced Sarah and Lou to my ‘100 people’ mission to intentionally keep up with my network, and I think I have a couple of converts.

I’m lucky that a good number of ‘industry contacts’ have become friends, and it was a great opportunity to catch up with so many of them. But the less said about the secret karaoke toilet, the better.

The hotel review no one asked for

This week saw me at the Maldron Hotel in Manchester City Centre. Not a bad spot at all. 

But while they’ve eschewed the infuriatingly tiny water glasses favoured by so many hotels, they’ve replaced them with cartons of plant-based water which just raise more questions.