writing

Weeknote 2025/40

/ Sharon O'Dea / Leave a comment
Autumnal Amsterdam. Photo: Sharon O’Dea

Some weeks feel like a hinge — the quiet click between what was and what comes next. This was one of them. Projects paused, others reignited, the to-do list reshuffled yet again. A reminder that most progress doesn’t look like momentum; it looks like waiting, adjusting, packing, planning.

Autumn’s fully arrived in Amsterdam, ushered in by the season’s first storm, Amy. All wind, rain, and sideways bikes. Bleak, but bracing. There’s a certain kind of forward motion in the colder air: the sense that the year’s winding down, and it’s time to get things finished, filed, or flung into motion before winter properly settles in.

The trees along the canals have started to turn, the light’s gone soft and golden, and the air smells faintly of woodsmoke and deadlines. It feels like the season for tying up loose ends — wrapping edits, clearing decks, and sketching out what’s next.

For me, that’s Japan. It’s suddenly just days away: a shift in season, continent, and perspective all at once. The perfect point, perhaps, to pause and take stock before the next chapter properly begins.

This week at work

A quieter one, though not without its twists. Two proposals we’d been hopeful about got knocked back — not lost to anyone else, just shelved as client plans shifted. Always frustrating when work evaporates for reasons outside your control, but that’s consulting life: sometimes you’re sprinting to meet a deadline, sometimes you’re rearranging the post-its and waiting for the next wave to break.

Happily, another project that wasn’t due to start until next year has come roaring back into view, so the pendulum swings both ways. If there’s a lesson in all this, it’s that flexibility isn’t just a virtue in this job — it’s survival.

Between that and chipping away at edits for the book (slowly, steadily, like a glacier), I’ve been getting ready for the Japan trip; finalising logistics, lining up interviews, and reaching out to people I’ll be speaking with while I’m there. It’s shaping up to be a fascinating few weeks of research, conversations, and new perspectives — and, hopefully, a bit of inspiration to carry back home.

Also this week

I went to a Science & Cocktails talk at Paradiso on the emergence of a post-growth society, given by Derk Loorbach. It was one of those evenings that quietly rewire your brain a little.

He spoke about how societies evolve not through steady progress but through short, chaotic bursts — moments when old systems destabilise and new ones start to take shape. The idea of “transitions” was framed as both inevitable and hopeful: collapse as transformation, not just destruction.

There were plenty of sharp takeaways: that our economy’s dependence on perpetual growth is fundamentally unsustainable; that our obsession with technological “fixes” is often an implementation illusion masking the need for deeper change; and that the real barrier is not resources or technology, but imagination — we’ve forgotten how to picture alternatives to extractive growth.

The phrase that stuck with me most: “Transition is a more hopeful form of collapse.” A useful lens, perhaps, not just for climate policy but for any complex system — from organisations to the digital workplace.

Also, I can confirm that lectures are vastly improved when preceded by smoky cocktails and a funk band.

Consuming

📺 Watching

With less than a week to go until I head to Nagasaki, I thought I’d give Silence — Martin Scorsese’s 2016 film about the Christian missionaries who came to Japan in the 17th century — a go. That was an error.

It’s a punishingly joyless three hours of mud, martyrdom, and men staring meaningfully into the middle distance while being slowly crushed by the weight of their own faith (and, occasionally, actual rocks). It’s beautifully shot, of course (Scorsese can’t help himself) but it’s the cinematic equivalent of flagellation: grim, ponderous, and utterly devoid of warmth or light.

By the end I wasn’t enlightened; I just wanted someone, anyone, to shout, “Cut! Enough suffering, lads!” I suspect the real silence here was my will to live slipping quietly away.

If the goal was to get me in the mood for Japan, it failed spectacularly — though it did make me grateful for central heating, antibiotics, and the fact that nobody’s currently boiling Christians in Nagasaki Bay.

📚 Reading

After listening to a podcast about the Levellers — the 17th-century political movement, not the 90s crusty band — I picked up Blood in the Machine by Brian Merchant. It traces the parallels between the early industrial revolts of the Luddites and today’s tech-driven upheavals, arguing that resistance to automation isn’t anti-progress but a fight for dignity and agency.

I’m about a third of the way through and impressed so far. It’s well-researched, surprisingly pacey, and full of eerie echoes: the concentration of power, the myth of innovation as inherently good, the way workers’ rights get trampled in the name of efficiency. You could swap the textile mills for data centres and the rhetoric would barely need editing.

It’s one of those books that makes you glance uneasily at your laptop and wonder which side of history you’re really on.

🎧 Listening

On Thursday my bestie and I caught the sold-out final show of Little Simz at AFAS — the North London rapper, actor, and all-round force of nature. She was magnetic: precise, powerful, utterly in command, with a crowd that sang every word back in adoration.

But the week’s real soundtrack belonged to Taylor Swift, whose much-anticipated new album dropped on Friday. I devoured it immediately. Unconvinced at first, but by the time of writing it had properly lodged itself under my skin — the kind of slow-burner that keeps revealing new layers every listen.

Saturday morning saw me at a special “Swiftie Saturday” spin class — 66 of us belting along on stationary bikes like a pop-powered peloton — and by evening I was at the cinema for the album launch film. Immersion therapy, basically.

It’s not a cult. It’s a group of like-minded individuals engaging in synchronised cardio and light emotional processing.

Connections

I had the pleasure of catching up with Amsterdam-Canadian communicator Cassie Jorgensen this week. We chatted about the challenges of building a professional network as a blow-in from another country and the merits of agency vs in-house.

Travel

Six days till Japan (and two of those involve a side-quest to Paris). Packing lists are being honed, chargers located, adapters counted, and contingency plans made in case the airline decides my suitcase needs a longer layover than I do.

This trip has come around quickly, but it feels like the right moment for it: the book nearing its final stretch, work shifting gears, the season turning. If this week’s talk on transitions had a message, it’s that change rarely happens neatly — it’s messy, unpredictable, often inconvenient — but also full of possibility if you keep your eyes open.

I’ll be spending the first week between Nagasaki and the Goto Islands, talking to people about how work, technology, and community are evolving in Japan — a country that’s long been living the future the rest of us are only now stumbling towards.

More on that next week, from the other side of the world.

This week in photos

Two musicians performing on stage with keyboards, illuminated by purple lighting, and an abstract background projection.
A narrow Amsterdam street lined with traditional buildings, featuring a rainbow flag hanging on the left and the tower of a church visible in the background, under a cloudy sky.
A serene view of a canal in Amsterdam during autumn, with trees displaying yellow leaves and reflections seen on the water's surface.
A person with shoulder-length brown hair, wearing a white shirt with black polka dots, smiles slightly while posing in a well-lit indoor setting.
A cozy café scene with a glass of red drink on a wooden table, silver headphones nearby, and a rose in a vase beside the window showing passing pedestrians and buildings outside.
A person holding a large bouquet of flowers, wearing a black jacket and red shirt, with a red bag slung over their shoulder. They are reflected in a shop window on a street in Amsterdam.
A digital clock and a round clock displayed on a dark screen in a cinema, with a countdown of two seconds remaining before the Taylor Swift film begins.
A promotional card for 'The Life of a Showgirl' album release ride, displayed on a wooden stand, with cycling shoes visible in the background.
A group of individuals participating in a spin class, surrounded by red lighting, with one person taking a selfie in the foreground.

Weeknote 2025/39

/ Sharon O'Dea / Leave a comment
A scenic view of a canal in Amsterdam, featuring trees with autumn foliage, a clock tower in the background, and boats floating on the water.
Autumn in Amsterdam. Photo: Sharon O’Dea

Some weeks are about routine, others about momentum. This one was about spotting opportunities and grabbing them before they slip past.

As Seneca put it: “Luck is what happens when preparation meets opportunity.” I’ve never been much for masterplans — my career has been more patchwork than roadmap — but I’ve learned that when the right thing comes along, you say yes and work the rest out later.

And while there’s a bigger adventure brewing in the background, the week itself had plenty to get stuck into closer to home.

This week at work

The book keeps marching forward, as has the season. Amsterdam has taken a sudden autumnal turn, the light thinner, the mornings chillier. The shift feels like a metaphor: the year heading into its final quarter just as the book does. Another week, another chunk wrangled into something that (hopefully) resembles prose. This time I’ve been working on the chapters that shift from platforms to messy and unpredictable people, which means wrestling both with frameworks and with the practical realities of how organisations actually operate. Let’s just say it’s one thing to cite the Barcelona Principles, it’s another to translate them into something a harried comms team can actually use on a Tuesday afternoon.

I’ve also been thinking a lot about multilingual content. European Day of Languages was a neat reminder that we default far too often to the assumption that “everyone speaks English.” They don’t, and even when they do, it’s rarely the language of the heart. For intranets and employee comms that aspire to feel genuinely inclusive, that means more than slapping machine translation on your news pages—it means designing governance, content types, and workflows that respect linguistic diversity from the outset. I’ve blogged about that here.

Back from holiday I’ve also thrown myself back into Statement, focusing on the narrative and comms. The app’s core idea — authenticity through verified transactions — is resonating, but the story around it needs to land as strongly as the product itself. So I’ve been sharpening the positioning, and working out how to talk about Statement in a way that’s both clear and compelling.

Towards the end of the week I virtually sat down with Jack Aspden from The Company You Keep to talk about my career.  Which will never not be funny to me, as (as I wrote about in Week 28) I’ve been working for over a quarter of a century and am still to have anything close to a plan. My career is less a trajectory and more a Jackson Pollock spray-painted across a life. A series of (occasionally good) decisions and some sheer dumb luck. We spoke for over an hour, a conversation that felt more like a session with a therapist at times. I wish him the best of luck editing that into something resembling useful career advice. As Helen Keller said, “Life is either a daring adventure, or nothing at all.”

Finally, proposals. We have a couple on the go, in that place where we kick them back and forth between us and the client until the shape of the project feels right. This where I get excited about the work itself and slightly queasy about the potential workload if they all land at once. It’s the consultant’s eternal dilemma: complain about the pipeline being too quiet, then panic when it starts filling.

Also this fortnight

Remember back in Weeknote 38 when I said I had some big news? Here it is: I’m off to Japan.

Starting next month I’ll spend a few weeks living and working there as part of a digital nomads programme with the Prefecture of Nagasaki. It’s a proper experiment in how regions can attract and support place-independent workers — and for me, a live case study in the future of work.

Japan is already grappling with challenges others are only just waking up to: ageing populations, shrinking talent pools, automation, AI, and the redesign of work for wellbeing and productivity. Those forces shape our comms, processes and platforms — the digital workplace is just a mirror of that reality, and the reflection is shifting fast.

I’ll be based mainly in Nagasaki (with some time on the Ghibli-esque Goto Islands) before wrapping up in Tokyo. I’ll keep client work ticking along (just seven hours in the future), while also writing, researching, and learning from innovators, business leaders and fellow nomads.

The future of work is being written everywhere. For a few weeks, my chapter will be from Japan.

If you know of anyone doing interesting things in the comms, collaboration or future of work space in Japan or the broader APAC region, I’d be grateful for an intro.

Consuming

👩🏻‍💻 Internetting

Unusually for this section, a podcast. WB40 is a long-running show about tech, but what makes it special is the community around it: regular listeners who are collaborative, generous, and always up for sharing advice.

This week’s episode features my friend — and occasional Lithos Partners associate — Lisa Riemers, talking about her new book Accessible Communications. I was lucky enough to get an advance copy, and I love how she and her co-author Matisse Hamel-Nelis not only make the case for accessibility in comms, but show how achievable it can be.

Listen in… and then go and buy the book.

📺 Watching

I dipped into Alice in Borderland on Netflix, partly to whet my appetite for all things Japan. It started off promising — stylish, intriguing, Tokyo-as-character — but it veered into Squid Game territory faster than I expected. Not sure yet if I’m hooked or just mildly traumatised.

📚 Reading

Somehow didn’t have much of a book mojo this week.

🎧 Listening

Bret McKenzie’s new album turned out to be an unexpected treat. Best known as one half of Flight of the Conchords, he’s gone solo here with something warmer and more musically layered. I put it on out of curiosity and ended up staying for the melodies — witty, yes, but also surprisingly tender. Proof there’s more to him than business time.

Travel

Nothing at all this week, and ngl I’m delighted about that.

This week in photos

A busy art gallery exhibition featuring a diverse group of people engaging with artwork displayed on the walls, with a focus on a central table where attendees are interacting.
A man in a light suit riding a bicycle carrying his bride in a white dress, adorned with flowers and bells along a tree-lined street in Amsterdam during autumn.
A cyclist riding in Amsterdam while pulling a wheeled suitcase. The street is lined with bicycles and storefronts, showcasing the urban landscape.
A hand holding a coffee cup with a logo that reads 'SCREAMING BEANS COFFEE ROASTERS' in a street with colourful buildings in Amsterdam.
An indoor exercise class taking place in a large, ornate space with stained glass windows and dramatic lighting. Participants are on yoga mats, some in poses, while others interact with the instructor.
A view of a canal in Amsterdam surrounded by trees displaying autumn colors, with a boat docked along the bank and buildings in the background.
A scenic view of a gazebo surrounded by trees and a calm pond, with lily pads floating on the water's surface under a clear blue sky.

Weeknote 2025/38

/ Sharon O'Dea / 1 Comment
Group of five hikers posing triumphantly at the summit, with rugged mountains and a clear blue sky in the background.
My pals and I at the peak of the Valbonë-Theth Pass in Albania, this week

Bumper two-week note: I spent ten of the last fourteen days adventuring around the Balkans. So this one’s light on work and heavy on holidays. I’m not apologising.

Two themes stuck with me: who shows up, and what happens when they do. At the IABC summit Mike Klein dropped the line “the world is run by the people who show up” (sometimes credited to Ben Franklin, who probably didn’t say it but would’ve if he’d had LinkedIn).

Then in Albania I learned how a tiny communist party basically turned up, seized power, and held the country in a half-century headlock. Proof, if you needed it, that history isn’t written by the best ideas; it’s written by the people who managed to get a room booked and never gave back the keys.

In politics, as in comms, it’s never the smartest who win. Just the ones who had the audacity to pull up a chair and refuse to sod off.

This week at work

Book progress continues: three new chapters in draft. People, on the skills and roles that actually make digital comms work. Content, the stuff employees actually come for, and what shapes their real user experience. And Communities, why they’re not fluffy side projects but strategic assets in the comms mix.

I drafted mine in a bar in Tirana while Jon hammered his out in a Bristol home office. Then we swapped, edited, iterated. That’s our system: one of us gets words down, the other makes them better, and the time zones/weird schedules do the heavy lifting.

Back from holiday, I went straight into the IABC Strategic Communication Leadership Summit. Blissfully free of the usual death-by-panel (aka “three senior leaders carefully saying nothing for 45 minutes”) or the kind of platform case study where a vendor insists their intranet launch was “seamless” and everyone claps politely while knowing full well it wasn’t.

Instead: an unconference. Fifty comms leaders from 30+ countries, fifteen sessions, zero sponsor pitches, and actual conversations about the real stuff — strategy, frontline and middle managers, the impact of AI, the future of the profession. I even left with a notebook full of scrawls that might translate into something useful, rather than the usual bingo card of buzzwords. If I can read my own writing, that is.

The big theme: Leadership in comms isn’t about craft or channels. It’s about showing up, making space, and keeping the profession credible, vibrant and tied to business goals.

Huge thanks to Mike, Natasha, Ruxana and Monique for pulling it together. I left buzzing with ideas — and reminded that this job is at its best when we stop presenting at each other and start working with each other.

Also this fortnight

But for most of the past two weeks I’ve been blissfully offline, on a proper adventure in Balkans. Some people spend two weeks horizontal on a beach. But  apparently my idea of a holiday is “exhaust yourself in three different countries, climb a mountain, then fly straight to a strategy summit.”

Kosovo first. Europe’s newest country, where Tony Blair is such a national hero that people have named their children after him. (Yes, Tonibler is an actual given name. No, I didn’t meet a little Gordonbrown.)

Colorful large letters spelling 'NEWBORN' in a public square in Pristina, Kosovo, with a blue sky and buildings in the background.
A panoramic view of a city in Kosovo, showcasing modern buildings, green park areas, and clear blue skies.
Interior view of a modern building featuring a geometric skylight and circular patterned flooring, with a person standing in the center.

A stop in the capital Pristina, with its monuments to Mother Teresa and Madeline Albright. Prizren was next: Ottoman bridges, minarets, mountain views — basically Türkiye on decaf.

A view of a traditional architectural structure featuring a dome and minaret, surrounded by trees and a courtyard with a fountain.
A person sitting on a stone bridge overlooking a river in the historic town of Prizren, Kosovo, with a mosque and scenic hills in the background.

Then North Macedonia: home of the Cyrillic alphabet, Alexander the Great, and views so good they should come with subtitles. That also makes it my 86th country. I promised myself that’s the last new one this year, but let’s be honest: my willpower is about as strong as Balkan WiFi.

A historical church with a red-tiled roof situated near a calm lake, surrounded by greenery and mountains in the background.
A historic stone church with a conical red tile roof, surrounded by neatly trimmed green hedges and trees, under a bright blue sky.
A scenic view of a calm lake (Lake Ohrid, North Macedonia) surrounded by green trees and a distant mountainous landscape under a partly cloudy sky.

Speaking of which, Tirana. Bunkers, boho bars, bonkers architecture. The whole vibe reminded me of backpacking in South America in my 20s — nothing works how you expect, yet everything somehow does. Bring patience. And raki.

A vibrant restaurant interior featuring colorful decor, eclectic artwork on the walls, and neon signs. Patrons are seated at tables, enjoying their meals and drinks in a lively atmosphere.
A blend of modern and traditional architecture, featuring a mosque with a tall minaret alongside contemporary buildings under a clear blue sky.
Aerial view of Tirana, Albania at sunset, showcasing a mix of modern and traditional architecture, surrounded by green hills.
A panoramic view of a city at sunset, showcasing tall buildings and lighted streets, with a mountain range in the background.
Interior view of a dome featuring multiple framed portraits arranged in a radial pattern, illuminated by lights, with a central skylight at the top.

Then things got really good: a farm on the edge of Lake Koman, a place as beautiful as any I’ve ever seen, accessible only by boat, where we swam, kayaked, ate food that had been growing approximately five minutes earlier, and slept under a million stars. Basically an Instagram advert for “disconnecting” that, for once, was actually worth it.

And then: the Valbonë–Theth trail. 16km, 1100m of climb, endless switchbacks. My lungs and thighs staged a coup about halfway up, but the views shut them right up. There’s something oddly satisfying about doing hard things — like hiking a mountain or checking your inbox after a week offline.

Person standing on a rocky outcrop, arms raised in triumph, overlooking a mountainous landscape on a sunny day.
A hiker trekking on a rocky mountain trail surrounded by lush greenery and distant snow-capped peaks under a clear blue sky.
A panoramic view of a mountainous landscape featuring steep peaks, lush greenery, and a winding river in the valley below, under a clear blue sky.

And then, as if to prove I have range: Tirana airport, shorts and hiking boots still on, headed straight to a Brussels for the conference. From mountains to meeting rooms in 72 hours. Wouldn’t have it any other way.

Consuming

👩🏻‍💻 Internetting

CIPR’s new report An Age-Old Problem confirms what most of us already knew but the industry prefers to pretend isn’t happening: PR has an ageism problem. If you’re young, you’re “too green to lead”; if you’re older, you’re “out of touch”. The sweet spot, apparently, is being exactly 32, fluent in TikTok dances and miraculously free of childcare or eldercare responsibilities.

The report calls for common-sense fixes: make age part of DEI, stop sneering at colleagues across generations, build careers that don’t fall off a cliff at 40, and measure progress instead of writing another report about it in five years’ time. Reverse mentoring even gets a mention (because god forbid we admit that both a 23-year-old and a 57-year-old might know useful things at the same time).

In short: if comms wants to be taken seriously as a profession, it needs to stop treating people’s date of birth as more important than their talent. Otherwise, the only thing ageing gracefully in this industry will be the clichés.

📺 Watching

Didn’t turn a TV on for two weeks. Turns out the world keeps spinning (and the scenery’s better).

📚 Reading

Finished The Albanians: A Modern History while trundling around the country. I like to read the history of wherever I land, and in this case it was much-needed: I knew shamefully little about Albania beyond bunkers and Enver Hoxha. The book filled in the blanks — a crash course in how a small, beautiful country endured decades of isolation and is still shaking off the aftershocks at speed. Makes wandering its chaotic, charming present-day streets feel a lot less baffling.

And yes: turns out there’s more to Albania than Taken 2 and handing out pity points at Eurovision.

🎧 Listening

Nothing in particular — except discovering that Boney M’s Ma Baker is bizarrely popular in Albania. No idea why, but it seemed to follow me everywhere. Answers on a postcard (or a disco beat) please.

Connections

The IABC event was basically a high-end school reunion: catching up with old comms friends and finally confirming that the people I’ve known online for years do, in fact, have legs.

Also managed a Breakfast App meet-up with Rita, an academic visiting from California (proof that occasionally the internet serves up something more useful than ads for AI tools). And Brussels gave me the bonus of a catch-up with Anthony and Jane Zacharewski — because apparently I can’t set foot in a European capital without turning it into a networking opportunity.

Travel

Made it home yesterday and, for a fleeting few hours, thought I might actually have no travel booked for the rest of the year. Cute idea. Obviously didn’t last. Now there’s something very exciting in the diary… but you’ll have to wait for Weeknote 39 for the reveal. Consider this the cliffhanger no one asked for

This week in photos

A historic stone bridge with two people walking on it, set against a backdrop of traditional houses and a mosque with a minaret, under a partly cloudy sky in a picturesque Balkan town.
Serene view of a lake surrounded by lush greenery and colorful autumn leaves, featuring two small boats docked near the shore.
An abandoned room with peeling walls, broken tiles, and overgrown plants, illuminated by natural light coming through the windows.
A hiking signpost with various trail directions and distances, surrounded by green pine trees under a clear blue sky.
A stone structure rising from a rocky base, framed by green leaves and against a backdrop of cloudy sky.
Speaker presenting at a conference, gesturing with one hand and holding a microphone. Behind them, a digital screen displays a collaborative brainstorming tool with sticky notes and questions.
A group of five people taking a selfie outdoors with a mountainous landscape in the background, surrounded by trees.

Weeknote 2025/36

/ Sharon O'Dea / Leave a comment
Panoramic view of a lush green valley - the Les roches Tuilière et Sanadoire - surrounded by rocky cliffs under a partly cloudy sky.
Les roches Tuilière et Sanadoire. Photo by me.

This week I travelled to the Auvergne to scatter my grandmother’s ashes, close to the village where she was born more than a century ago.

In her last years she painted from memory a scene of her childhood: a forest road, two great rocks, then suddenly a clearing — the valley opening up below. “It was a wonderful sight I would always remember,” she wrote.

On Friday I stood in that same spot, saw the same view she carried with her for a lifetime, and laid her to rest in the ground she loved. A return, of sorts, to her beginnings.

Nan’s life stretched far beyond that valley. She lived through occupation in Paris, celebrated its liberation in a shower of tricolores, trained as one of the few women engineers of her generation, raised a family in a new country, and never stopped campaigning for the values she believed in: liberty, equality, fraternity.

But she was also the woman who knitted us jumpers, made extraordinary birthday cakes, and whose cooking remains unmatched. She juggled logic and creativity — designing a trigonometry-inspired cushion one day, writing poetry the next.

Being back in the volcanic hills where she was born, I kept coming back to this thought: our origins matter. The places we start from, the people who shape us, the values we inherit. Even if we take a different path, we carry those beginnings with us.

That theme ran through the rest of my week too. A conversation with Cathryn, who was a formative influence on me as a teenager. And then my gym instructor, during a Sanctum class — which, if you’ve not had the dubious pleasure, is essentially a wellness cult disguised as a workout. Picture a candlelit room full of beautiful people in Lululemon, bouncing in silent-disco headphones to pounding techno, somewhere between burpees and interpretive dance. It’s like Berghain meets a yoga retreat, only designed to be an Instagrammable Experience.

In the middle of this fever dream, the instructor delivered his pep talk about looking back at who you were five years ago. Normally I’d have rolled my eyes so hard I’d need medical attention. But, landing as it did at peak pre-menstrual sensitivity, I found myself ugly-crying into my wireless headphones while influencers around me humped the ether like it was a path to enlightenment. A spiritual awakening via techno squats.

And I couldn’t help but wonder what my Nan (practical, principled, sharp as a tack) would have made of it all. Probably a raised eyebrow, then a wry laugh at the strange, circuitous ways we find meaning.

So that’s this week’s reflection: on beginnings, origins, returns — and remembering to be proud of the journey as much as the destination.

This week at work

After a quiet summer, the inbox has suddenly remembered we exist. A flurry of new business signals came through, so this week was largely about shaping proposals. One’s already had a tentative yes — the best kind of feedback — and I’m looking forward to getting started. The others are out in the world now, hopefully working their magic.

On the book front, Jonathan and I made good progress on the next two chapters: one on the people and skills needed for digital comms at work, the other on content. We’re finding our co-writing rhythm — passing drafts back and forth, layering in ideas, editing each other’s words until we’re not quite sure who wrote what. It’s satisfying, collaborative, and occasionally a little disorienting.

But even as the chapters take shape, I can hear the sound of deadlines approaching fast, like distant thunder that’s getting louder every day.

Also this week

I climbed up the Dek van de Stad, a temporary platform built on top of the Nieuwe Kerk. The views were spectacular — a chance to look down on Dam Square and Amsterdam’s rooftops from a height you don’t normally get. Equal parts breathtaking and mildly vertigo-inducing.

Aerial view of Dam Square in Amsterdam, showcasing a busy plaza with numerous people, surrounded by historic buildings under a cloudy sky.
A sign stating a disclaimer about a restoration project, indicating that it has no relation to Taturo Atzu's work titled 'The Garden Which is the Nearest to God.' The sign is set against a backdrop of scaffolding and a brick wall. I have no idea why this sign exists.
I… have questions about this sign
A panoramic view of Amsterdam featuring a mix of historical and modern architecture, with rooftops, trees, and cloudy skies in the background.


And then straight back down to earth (and into chaos) at Paradiso, where I saw Kneecap. Security was tight, the crowd was raucous, and it’s still mad to me that less than two years ago I saw them in what was basically the upstairs of a pub. Now they’ve got a sold-out Paradiso bouncing in unison, two nights in a row. The rise has been meteoric, the energy relentless — right through to the crowd singalong to Come Out Ye Black And Tans after they went off stage.

Consuming

👩🏻‍💻 Internetting

News this week that the UK Department for Business and Trade’s three-month trial of Microsoft Copilot found… no real productivity boost. Emails and meeting summaries sped up a bit, but anything more complex actually slowed people down or spat out lower-quality work. So much for the hype cycle.

Does that reflect a lack of proper strategy and training, or just cold, hard reality? Probably both. In my experience, some people and roles naturally click with AI tools while others flounder when left to get on with it. Curiosity, persistence, confidence — and the time to experiment — all matter. Without those, adoption lags.

There’s clearly a lot we need to do to help people level up with AI at work. But I can’t say I was surprised. My own encounters with Copilot have been… underwhelming. Let’s just say it’s not yet living up to the billing of “revolutionary productivity tool” — more “expensive intern who occasionally remembers to attach the file.”

📺 Watching

Marking 50 years since its release, we re-watched Jaws. Still the ultimate advert for staying on dry land. Half a century on, the special effects remain gloriously ropey, the mayor still deserves a prison sentence for crimes against public safety, and John Williams’ two-note score is still the best thing ever written about imminent death by fish.

It’s amazing how Jaws manages to be both a tense thriller and a camp comedy, depending entirely on how rubbery the shark looks in a given scene. And yet it still works: a masterclass in making you terrified of something that looks like it escaped from a theme park gift shop. Just the thing I need before a holiday that involves boats.

📚 Reading

Continued with The Albanians: A Modern History, but have only got as far as the Ottoman Empire. Hoping to nudge my knowledge closer to the 20th century by the time I get there.

🎧 Listening

Driving around with my brother this week introduced me to Cheekface, an LA indie trio who specialise in anxious brain dumps set to catchy riffs. Imagine Lou Reed or Jonathan Richman talk-singing about late capitalism, social awkwardness and existential dread.

They’re smart, deadpan and gloriously uncool, with songs that turn modern malaise into shout-along anthems. Start with I Only Say I’m Sorry When I’m Wrong Now or Listen to Your Heart. If you like those, welcome to the cult of Cheekface.

Coverage

My Red Hot Opinion Department was working overtime this week.

For Strategic, I looked at the noticeable chill in corporate culture — how empathy has slipped off the agenda, and what that means for leaders trying to engage their people when the mood music is getting distinctly frostier.

And over at Unleash, I turned a jaw-droppingly bad comms experience into something more useful: practical advice on governance, sequencing, and the role internal comms can play in making difficult moments a little less painful.

Connections

Earlier in the week I had a long Teams chat with Cathryn Atkinson, who led the youth journalism project I was involved in as a teenager (which I mentioned back in Weeknote 33 — and which prompted this catch-up). The last time I saw her she had a baby strapped to her in a harness; that baby is now in his late 20s and about to get married. Safe to say we had plenty to catch up on.

I also met with Cai Kjaer, CEO of Swoop Analytics, who was in Amsterdam for meetings. We talked about the looming launch of their Information Overload Calculator, the Viva Engage Benchmarking Report, and the uncomfortable truth that while tech platforms — and now AI — make it easier than ever to publish, people’s bandwidth hasn’t magically expanded to cope. My line on this: internal comms needs to focus on orchestrating flows and making sure messages land safely. Hyper-personalisation will be key, but that comes with its own challenges.

A smiling woman and man posing for a selfie on a staircase with stained glass windows in the background.

Travel

I’m off on an adventure tomorrow — Albania, Kosovo and North Macedonia, all firsts for me and all a little off the usual tourist trail.

Next weekend I’ll be hiking in the gloriously named Accursed Mountains (because why not tempt fate on holiday?), and there’ll be a few boats involved too. Which, having just re-watched Jaws, feels like impeccable planning. So there won’t be a Weeknote 37 — unless I’m writing it from the belly of a shark.

This week in photos

A dimly lit yoga class taking place in a grand, circular room with an ornate organ. Participants are scattered on yoga mats, using wireless headphones and surrounded by glowing candles.
A person with sunglasses posing next to a stone sign indicating an altitude of 1415 meters.
A scenic view from a rocky outcrop overlooking a lush green valley and distant mountains under a partly cloudy sky.
A historic stone tower of a castle set against a clear blue sky, with some greenery at the base.
A panoramic view of a lush green valley surrounded by rolling hills, under a bright blue sky with fluffy white clouds.
A lively Kneecap concert crowd with enthusiastic fans dancing and raising their hands, illuminated by stage lights.
View of a canal in Amsterdam with houseboats lining the banks and a clock tower in the background under a clear blue sky.
A person taking a selfie reflected in a shop window, wearing a white shirt and denim shorts, with a bag slung over their shoulder.

Weeknote 2025/35

/ Sharon O'Dea / Leave a comment
A tranquil view of a canal in Amsterdam, lined with trees and colorful buildings, reflecting in the water under a clear blue sky.
A last blast of summer in the city. Photo by me.

Six years ago tomorrow I packed up my London life into two suitcases and moved to Amsterdam.

In previous years I’ve marked the date by listing lessons: how to get lost (a lot), how to start again, how to build a life from scratch armed with nothing but Google Maps, a bicycle with no brakes, and one magic Dutch ID number that unlocks everything from taxes to library books.

But this year feels different. This year, I feel settled.

I’ve found my gang. I’ve got my groove.

It took a while to get here. The pandemic didn’t help. Two years suspended, the streets quiet, friendships impossible to spark. Loneliness isn’t dramatic; it just seeps in, until you look up and realise the only stranger you’ve spoken to in weeks is the cashier at Albert Heijn. Add the Dutch weather and the joy of navigating Belastingdienst paperwork, and it sometimes felt like a long audition for a very niche endurance sport.

And then, gradually, things shifted. The map filled in with people and places. Now there’s the crew I go to gigs with, shouting lyrics into the night. Local WhatsApp groups that point me to the freshest dahlias or the new season herring hitting the kraam. Gym buddies who somehow make turning up at 8am almost fun. The barista who knows my order before I open my mouth. Dining companions who linger long after the plates are cleared, conversations spiralling into politics and philosophy. A neighbour with my spare keys and another who’ll lend me a sander. Friends who water the plants when I’m away, sending sheepish updates about the ones that didn’t make it. The impromptu neighbourhood borrel that starts with “just one drink” and ends, inevitably, with bikes wobbled home in the rain. The late-night ping of a meme, answered instantly with another. And a friend who says, simply, “Pop by on your way home — I’ll put the kettle on.”

Small things, maybe. But they’re the everyday glue of belonging; the tiny threads that weave a city around you until it feels like home. Things I never really had in London, but here I’ve somehow found.

It turns out that moving countries isn’t really about geography. It’s about patience and persistence, and the slow magic of weaving yourself into the fabric of a place. Until one day you look up and realise the unfamiliar city has become familiar. The strange has become ordinary. And you somehow quietly belong.

I came here with two suitcases. What I’ve gained is a home, and a community.

This week at work

A productive stretch on the book front: we submitted three new chapters, and resubmitted another three we’d reworked to make the flow more logical. Feels good to see the pile growing and the structure sharpening up.

Tiny green shoots are popping up online too — the book quietly sprouting on pre-order pages for the exceptionally keen. A strange but thrilling sight: proof it’s starting to become real.

At work, the same theme of belonging surfaced in conversations with a client about how they use Viva to build connection, and what to do when those bonds fray. It struck me that the process is the same: digital spaces can be where colleagues find their gang and their rhythm. Because belonging at work isn’t really about tools or systems. It’s about that moment when you realise you’re part of something bigger.

Otherwise it’s been a deliberately quiet spell before the next project kicks off. We’ve used the breathing space to wrangle business admin and finally give our website some overdue attention.

Over at Statement, it’s been live for a week now. We’ve got a steadily growing number of people signing up, using it, and (crucially) giving us feedback. The team have been busy fixing things behind the scenes, while I’ve been working on comms to answer questions about how it all works. Early days, but exciting ones.

Also this week

The carillon of the Westerkerk, just across from my house, played a concert of Amsterdam-themed songs on Friday. I’d like to think it was for me personally, but I suppose it’s possible it’s in honour of the city’s 750th birthday. Either way, I was treated to a very Dutch soundtrack, including a rousing rendition of Tulips From Amsterdam. Hope you enjoy it as much as I did.

Tulips From Amsterdam played on the carillon of the Westertoren, filmed from my front window.

Consuming

👩🏻‍💻 Internetting

This week I was struck by Emma Parnell’s piece on living abroad and returning home.  She writes beautifully about the dislocation of overseas life — how it’s not always the big things that unsettle you, but the small absences, like the sound of owls in the morning. And about how moving back, supposedly the “easy” part, can feel just as alien: friendships moved on, milestones missed, the nagging sense you’ve fallen behind.

What I loved most was the ending. Ten years on, she’s not only rooted again but surrounded by people she loves — proof that the feeling of “home” is less about geography and more about connection.

It resonates with my own experience of moving abroad (and back, and abroad again): that moving countries isn’t only about the logistics of visas and flat-hunting, but about patience, persistence, and the slow work of building community until one day you realise you belong. You’re home.

📺 Watching

I finally made it to Amsterdam’s oldest cinema, The Movies, and watched The Roses. Essentially a British remix of the 80s American classic The War of the Roses, but with upgraded swearing. Benedict Cumberbatch and Olivia Colman play a couple whose marriage unravels in increasingly petty and chaotic ways. I love both actors, the narrative was charming, and Colman’s wardrobe was iconic.

It’s not winning any prizes, but as a stylish way to pass a couple of hours it does the job. Come for Colman’s shirts, stay for the creative insults. A solid 6/10.

📚 Reading

I’ve just started The Albanians: A Modern History ahead of my holiday there in a couple of weeks. Albania’s a country I know embarrassingly little about, so it’s time to learn my Enver Hoxhas from my Mother Teresas. Looking forward to seeing how what I read on the page stacks up against what I find on the ground.

🎧 Listening

Been on a CMAT tip this week. Big choruses, sharp lyrics, country-pop with a wink. The kind of soundtrack that makes late-summer evenings feel like they’ve got a bit of eyeliner and a sense of humour.

Travel

Off to the Auvergne later this week. Volcanoes, valleys, villages, and the chance to dust off my GCSE-level French.

This week in photos

A group of people practicing yoga in a beautifully decorated church, wearing headphones with blue lights, creating a serene atmosphere.
A cozy Amsterdam canal-side bar illuminated at dusk, with people seated outside and a tree nearby.
Close-up of a hand showing metallic silver nail polish with a red bike in the background on a cobblestone path.
A person wearing sunglasses holds a large bouquet of colorful flowers wrapped in brown paper, standing in front of a reflective window.
A glass of beer sits on a table in a café with a view of a bustling Amsterdam street behind it. People are seen cycling and walking in the background, revealing the lively atmosphere of the city.
A person sitting cross-legged on a mat in a bright room, holding a phone in front of them. The background features large windows and a dark wooden wall.
A scenic view of an Amsterdam canal with boats and people enjoying the waterfront, featuring a tall tower in the background against a clear blue sky.
A bowl containing two oysters, a lemon wedge, a small bowl of red dipping sauce with diced onions, and two small round items, alongside a glass of mint-infused beverage.
Person taking a mirror selfie in a gym setting, wearing a black workout outfit, with a colorful background.

Weeknote 2025/34

/ Sharon O'Dea / Leave a comment
A busy scene on the water during a festival, with various boats and people enjoying the event under a partly cloudy sky.
Sail Amsterdam was chaotic and wonderful. Photo by me.

This was one of those weeks that makes me sound far more impressive than I actually am: shiny award, marathon of book research, and — for reasons that presumably made sense once — launching a social network. From the outside: overachiever. From the inside: mostly caffeine, bad posture, and a browser with 147 tabs open.

Aristotle said excellence is a habit*. Personally, I’ll settle for a week that pinballed between dusty footnotes and the App Store. Hardly the Nicomachean Ethics, but it kept me out of trouble.

* actually he didn’t, it’s misattributed to him, but let’s roll with it.

This week at work

Some weeks crawl by with all the excitement of a damp Weetabix. Then there are weeks like this one: I won a big shiny award and launched a social network — while allegedly “writing a book” in my spare time. IKR? Truly, I contain multitudes (and also have no free evenings).

First up: the intranet we delivered for German energy company SEFE bagged a Step Two Intranet & Digital Workplace Award. This matters because, unlike so many industry awards these aren’t pay-to-win baubles dished out to whoever coughed up for a table at the gala dinner. They actually recognise… excellence. Imagine!

And this project was exactly that. We turned around an entire intranet in 100 days: config, IA, content, training, the lot. In an age where everyone is trying to duct-tape ChatGPT onto their mess and call it strategy, we did the radical thing: used humans. Actual, qualified humans, working with subject matter experts to create content that was both new and correct. Wild, I know. We binned the outdated sludge, rebuilt the lot (in two languages), and put governance in place so it doesn’t immediately rot again. Is it sexy? No. Does it work? Yes. And frankly, that’s what counts.

Bonus humblebrag: between Jon and me, that’s now three Step Two Awards. At this point we may need a bigger shelf.

Meanwhile, I spent much of the week haunting London’s university libraries like some over-caffeinated academic poltergeist. Goldsmiths, my alma mater, has somehow become a library with almost no books. Which feels a bit like opening a pub that’s mainly vibes.

One afternoon I even wandered back to my old haunt: the 5th floor of Senate House, same desk, same view, same faint eau-de-dust. In a world of absolute batshit chaos, it’s oddly reassuring that one corner has politely refused to move on since 1976.

A quiet library aisle filled with tall shelves of books, with a single stool positioned in the middle of the path.
An empty study room with multiple wooden desks, a laptop on one desk, and a black chair with blue wheels. Sunlight is coming through a window.

And because nothing says “healthy work-life balance” like juggling flaming chainsaws, I also launched a whole new social network. The big idea: Instagram and TikTok are increasingly full of shit, so how do you prove something actually happened? Simple. Your bank statement.

Enter Statement: Strava, but for your wallet. You securely connect your bank account, pick a transaction, and share it. It’s a social network powered by proof.

Yes, it’s early days. Yes, it’s missing about nine hundred features we’d like to add. But it looks good, it works, and it’s live in the US app stores. We’ve got a small band of early adopters making Statements and sending us feedback. If you’ve got a US iTunes account, go on, download it. Because nothing says fun like letting your friends know you really did make that 3am drunk eBay purchase.

Screenshot from the Statement app
Screenshot
Screenshot from the Statement app
Screenshot

Also this week

I landed back in Amsterdam just in time for the last couple of days of Sail — the floating festival where hundreds of ships gather on the IJ and the entire city decides to throw a party on the water. It’s meant to happen every five years, but thanks to You-Know-What the last one was cancelled, so this was my first. And honestly, it was magical. We hopped on a boat to get up close, which turned out to be like playing Mario Kart with actual consequences: hundreds of little vessels jostling for space, glasses clinking in the sun, the whole city afloat and slightly tipsy.

As if that wasn’t enough, last night was the Prinsengracht Concert — the annual tradition where a stage is built on the canal by my house and everyone piles into boats to watch. It closes with Aan De Amsterdamse Grachten, sung by hundreds of people swaying and belting it out across the water.

Between the tall ships and the canal choirs, this weekend was Amsterdam at peak Amsterdam: chaotic, beautiful, and just a little bit smug about how lovely it all is.

Consuming

👩🏻‍💻 Internetting

Stumbled across e-mail.wtf this week — a quiz on allowable formats for email addresses. Turns out the answer to “is this valid?” is almost always “yes, unfortunately.” You can have an address that starts with an exclamation mark, or one that’s just a single letter. Fun little distraction, and also a reminder that the internet is basically held together with duct tape and regret.

📺 Watching

Not a thing.

📚 Reading

This week I mainlined close to 100 journal articles. Anything even vaguely relevant from the International Journal of Organisational Analysis, Public Relations Review, Review of Management Literature, and everything in between. Footnotes, citations, abstruse diagrams: give me the lot. And you know what? I loved it. Apparently “spending a week buried in academic journals and calling it fun” is my kink. Maybe a PhD isn’t such a terrible idea after all.

🎧 Listening

News just dropped that Belle and Sebastian are touring next year for their 30th anniversary. And yes, I immediately bagged tickets for both nights. Obviously. Cue me tumbling headfirst into one of my periodic B&S rabbit holes, where I remember all over again that no one does wistful indie quite like them. Some people binge Netflix; I binge flutes and wryly observed teenage melancholy.

And the timing was spot on: I’d just spent the week buried in my old university libraries, right where I used to listen to them on my OG iPod while reading books on media theory. Full circle moment, soundtrack included.

Connections

A week in London meant the rare treat of seeing a bunch of people I’ve not caught up with in yonks. Highlights included coffee with my old colleague Nic Wilson, scheming with my regular co-conspirator and accessibility wizard Lisa Riemers, swapping stories with comms legends Janet Hitchin and Anne-Marie Blake, and a long-overdue reunion with governance guru Steve Way — who I somehow hadn’t seen in a full decade. Proof, if nothing else, that time really does bend in strange ways.

A person smiling while sitting at a table, with two glasses of beer in front and bookshelves in the background.
Lisa Riemers
Three women smiling together for a selfie in front of a modern building during sunset.
With Anne-Marie and Janet
A woman smiling for a selfie with a man, seated outside a pub with a sign that reads 'British Spirits' in the background.
With Steve Way

Coverage

My recent post on whether corporate culture is shifting — and what comms needs to do about it — was picked up by Jenni Field and Chuck Gose on their Frequency podcast. Always nice when your musings escape LinkedIn and make it into other people’s conversations.

Travel

Nothing for two whole weeks! I barely recognise myself. No airports, no 5am alarms, no half-packed suitcase glaring at me from the corner of the room. Just the novelty of staying put — which, frankly, feels almost decadent.

But let’s be honest: it’s the calm before the storm. September has me ricocheting across five countries in two weeks, all while trying to crank out the next three chapters of the book. So I’ll enjoy the rare luxury of my own bed and my own coffee machine while I can… before life turns back into one long game of suitcase Tetris.

Here’s hoping for a quieter week ahead. Though given recent form, I’ll probably accidentally launch a space programme by Thursday.

This week in photos

A person smiling in front of the Goldsmiths University building, wearing sunglasses and earbuds, carrying a large bag.
A spacious library interior featuring several brown leather sofas arranged around coffee tables, with bookshelves lining the walls.
A view of a canal with boats docked along the side and people seated on tiered seating in the background, under a cloudy sky.
Exterior view of the English National Ballet building alongside a modern apartment complex, with a blue sky and clouds in the background.
A dish featuring a portion of deep-fried croquettes, served alongside cubes of cheese and mustard, placed on a wooden table.
A person holds a bouquet of vibrant flowers while standing in a bustling outdoor market, with people and bicycles in the background.

Weeknote 2025/33

/ Sharon O'Dea / 1 Comment
Moi moi, Helsinki. See you next year.

Writing this from the Eurostar, rattling towards London and attempting to wrestle with the train’s wifi, which is so weak it’s essentially connectivity homeopathy. Between the Chunnel and the capital it fades in and out like the Shipping Forecast at 3am — present, then gone, leaving you wondering if you imagined it.

So while this weeknote is being written at 300km/h, the chances of publishing it before I reach my hotel are roughly the same as Liz Truss winning Come Dine With Me.

Which feels about right for the week: a mix of progress and interruptions, abrupt disconnects, nostalgia trips and pop-culture distractions, and just enough signal to piece it all together.

This week at work

Mostly the book, which at this stage is less “writing” and more “wrestling a many-headed hydra of Word documents, where every sentence I cut seems to sprout two more.” Some chapters are coming together nicely; others still resemble the digital equivalent of a teenager’s bedroom, all half-finished thoughts and discarded drafts lurking under the bed with a feint yet troubling pong.  I’ve spent most of the week coaxing the mess into something resembling structure — deleting, rewriting, then deleting again, until the only thing growing is my word count of expletives.

Writing a book is good practice for life: you don’t always get the response you want, and sometimes whole sections end up on the cutting room floor.

I’ve been playing around with what I’ve started calling Jessica’s Law (blame too much Murder, She Wrote as a student). Every episode hinged on Means, Motive, Opportunity — and it turns out the same applies to comms. Instead of starting with a channel audit (“what do we already provide?”), we begin with Discovery: do people actually have the means to get messages, the opportunity to pay attention, and the motive to care? Get that right, then audit channels against reality, not the other way round. Or, as Jessica Fletcher would put it: you don’t catch the culprit by counting the guns in the cupboard.

Client work was quieter, which is probably just as well: fewer calls, more time to wrestle with sentences that stubbornly refuse to line up in the right order. It doesn’t look glamorous from the outside — mostly it’s me in front of a screen muttering like a minor Shakespearean villain — but progress is being made. Slowly.

Also this week

I spent a couple more days in Finland, including a wander round the fortress island of Suomenlinna — all cobbles, cannons and salt air. The highlight came as a vast ferry sliding improbably through a narrow channel on its way to Tallinn, a floating hotel edging past the old battlements with inches to spare. Standing there, you get a sense of how the island has always been a stage for comings and goings — invaders, traders, and now overnight-trippers in search of cheaper alcohol, all passing through the same strait.

Back in Amsterdam, it was one of those rare, lovely weeks where every evening seemed to fall gently into place with friends. A cup of tea at a friend’s house on my way home from the airport. A couple of casual gezellig nights in the local pubs. Nothing grand, just the kind of easy evenings that make a week feel full without being hectic. Having friends nearby — cobbling them together into a sort of substitute family — is a vastly underrated life hack, and one I’m very grateful for.

On Friday I caught up with my old friend Senab, in town for a gig (she’s now a professional singer, which is exactly as glamorous as it sounds). We first met as teenagers thanks to one of those ridiculous sliding-doors moments. Picture it: I’m 14, stuck at home on a rainy Saturday, half-watching Channel 4 when a short documentary about a youth journalism programme in New York comes on. At the end, they announce they’re running a London pilot. Applications available… by stamped addressed envelope. Peak 90s.

Weeks later I’m in the Guardian’s Farringdon offices, learning how to interview from real journalists. By the end of the summer I’d blagged my first byline. More importantly, I’d fallen in with a group of people who blew my world wide open: different backgrounds, different aspirations, different everything. It gave me confidence, a social circle that wasn’t just girls from school, and the audacity to think journalism (or something like it) might be for me.

Senab and I talked about how that one project sent so many of us off on entirely new paths — she onto stages, me into whatever this is. Others have ended up as academics, authors, artists and CEOs. Proof, not that any is needed, that sometimes your whole life pivots on the price of a 2nd-class stamp.

Consuming

👩🏻‍💻 Internetting

This week’s standout read was Shared Narratives by my friend Lauren Razavi. A gorgeous, layered essay about the private codes we build with people, and what happens when those codes spill out into the public. She drifts from playlists as love letters, to walking routes as relationship metaphors, to graffiti as a kind of intimacy that’s both public and secret.

What struck me most was her point that not everything needs to be spelled out. Some things are obvious, others are hiding in plain sight for those who know how to read the code.

📺 Watching

I watched Fit For TV, Netflix’s documentary series  about The Biggest Loser. A grim time capsule from the early 2000s, when humiliating people on screen somehow counted as primetime entertainment. Contestants were starved, screamed at, pushed to collapse, all packaged as “inspiration.” Two decades on, the fallout is painful: lasting health problems, disordered eating, and the scars of being chewed up for ratings.

Midway through my own weight loss journey (why yes I do look great, thanks for noticing), it made for difficult viewing. The extremes on screen couldn’t feel further from what I’m doing — but it was a stark reminder of how easily health gets twisted into punishment when there’s an audience involved.

📚 Reading

Nothing, unless you count the thousand-odd articles, reports and blog posts I’ve been mining for book references. After a week of scanning PDFs until the words stopped meaning anything, I couldn’t face opening an actual book. Making up for it next week, promise.

🎧 Listening

The Taylor Swift news this week sent the internet into a frenzy, and me straight back into my Swiftie playlists. Say what you like, but no one commercialises petty grievances and messy drafts of their personal life quite like Taylor. If I could monetise my deleted paragraphs the way Taylor monetises her exes, I’d be writing this weeknote from a yacht. Instead I am zipping through Kent, relying on a Taylor playlist and my noise-cancelling cans to block out the sound of a toddler kicking off.

Coverage

This week my latest piece for Reworked went live: a look at what AI intranets mean for internal comms.

Once upon a time, our big worry was whether Q3 results sounded better as “steady performance” or “poised for growth.” Now the real challenge is making sure that update doesn’t get mangled into a beige push notification by a bot that can’t parse sarcasm.

AI intranets are here, which means your carefully crafted content won’t stay in one neat format. It’ll be sliced, summarised, translated and pushed out in ways you can’t always predict. The job of comms isn’t disappearing — it’s shifting. From writing the perfect headline to orchestrating the whole ecosystem: tagging, structuring, and making sure the meaning survives the journey.

Far from replacing us, this is AI politely shoving us up the value chain and making the job more interesting.

Travel

I’m in London all week, swapping Amsterdam canals for campus libraries. I’ll be holed up at Goldsmiths (where I did my undergrad) and at Senate House, where I wrote my dissertation two decades ago. Looking forward to a bit of student nostalgia — the long days in the stacks, the smell of old books, and the faint sense I should probably be revising for something (and yet choosing to knock off and meet friends for wine instead) This time, at least, the deadlines are self-inflicted.

This week in photos

Helsinki city centre with the Orthodox cathedral and the wheel
Helsinki
Cannon and Finnish flag in Suommalinna
Suomalinna, Finland
laptop, feet, wine, passport: a classic Lounge wanker scene
Loungewanker
Monochrome manicure
New nails
A woman (me) reflected in the mirror at the gym
Same old spin nonsense
A man in a red Hawaiian shirt, on the decks
My mate Roland DJing
Two women, obviously a little worse for wear after a night drinking wine and chatting in the sun.
Me and Senab after many glasses of wine. It shows.

Weeknote 2025/32

/ Sharon O'Dea / Leave a comment
Hello from Helsinki

This weeknote comes to you from Finland, where at the weekend they marked Tove Jansson Day. Fitting, as I seem to be living my own Moomin arc: part wandering, part nesting, occasionally hiding from the drama of the wider world.

A quiet week of admin, book-wrangling, and a festival… with just enough adventure to justify another lonkero.

This week at work

A pretty quiet one on the consulting front, which meant I could catch up on all the unglamorous-but-necessary stuff: clearing the admin backlog, wrangling receipts for the accounts, and making a dent in planning for the next quarter. The kind of work that never makes the highlight reel, but keeps the lights on.

The book continues its slow, steady march forward. This week was less about sprinting through word counts and more about wrestling with structure, reshuffling chapters, and chasing down examples that will actually hold up in print. Still counts as writing, even if a lot of it was moving things around rather than adding new paragraphs.

Also submitted a proposal for a potentially interesting project. It’s early days, but if it comes off, it’ll be one of those “clear the decks” pieces of work. Fingers crossed.

And somewhere in between, I’ve been inching along on the side project, in that oddly satisfying stage where it’s all post-it notes, loose ends, and the occasional “ooh, that could work” scribble in the margins.

Also this week

I adore visiting new places. Getting lost down unfamiliar streets, trying things I can’t pronounce, seeing the world through someone else’s lens. Which is why it’s slightly odd that I keep finding myself back in Finland.

This is my fourth summer here, lured by music, food, and the friends I’ve somehow collected along the way. For someone who’s ticked off 83 countries and counting, coming here feels less like an adventure and more like pulling on a favourite jumper — familiar, cosy, and just the right fit.

Turns out even wanderlust likes a regular haunt.

This week also brought the sad news that my former colleague and friend, Raphaelle Heaf, passed away at the far-too-young age of 42. She was smart, kind, and endlessly curious. One of those people who made work better simply by being there. She’ll be very much missed.

Consuming

👩🏻‍💻 Internetting

A few things I’ve read this week have me thinking about a hardening of workplace culture — and what that means for comms.

The headlines aren’t exactly warm and fuzzy. AT&T’s CEO told 100,000 employees: come back to the office five days a week, or consider whether you still belong here. Chevron’s CEO opened his cost-cutting era by telling staff to be less nice to each other. The tone from the top is getting frostier; culture more clinical. Empathy is out, efficiency is in.

And it’s not just leadership. On TikTok, Gen Z are pushing back hard — clear-eyed about boundaries, unromantic about “work family,” and entirely unwilling to play along with performative loyalty.

That leaves internal comms somewhere in the middle. We used to be the warm hug of the organisation; now we’re the polite bouncer at the door. More often than not, our job is to deliver messages that boil down to “shape up or ship out,” but dressed in a way that won’t tank the Glassdoor score.

Enterprise social — once the place for connection — now feels riskier. Less community, more caution. Fewer conversations, more calculation. And if that’s the cultural weather, we have to ask: how should our tone, channels, and role adapt? If the rules of the game have changed, the storytellers need to catch up too.

📺 Watching

Picked Slow Horses back up. River Cartwright’s continued survival is starting to feel like it belongs in the Marvel Cinematic Universe, but it’s still an enjoyable watch. All grubby espionage, sharp dialogue, and Gary Oldman looking like he’s just rolled out of a bin.

📚 Reading

Picked up Powerful by Patty McCord this week, on Ed Greig’s recommendation. McCord, Netflix’s former Chief Talent Officer, makes the case for ditching the comforting fictions of corporate life — like “we’re a family” — in favour of radical honesty, accountability, and treating employees as adults. It’s about building high-performing teams by being crystal clear on expectations, constantly developing skills, and letting go when the fit’s no longer right.

In the current cultural weather (with CEOs swapping empathy for efficiency and employees setting firmer boundaries) it reads less like a provocation and more like a playbook. McCord’s world is one where trust comes from transparency, not perks; and where directness is seen as respect, not rudeness. Which, if we are indeed in a cooling climate, might be the reality comms has to get comfortable communicating.

🎧 Listening

Over the weekend I went to my second festival of the year, Helsinki’s Flow Festival. It’s a completely different vibe to last month’s Down The Rabbit Hole. Less woodland whimsy, more post-industrial chic, set on an old power plant site just a short metro hop from the city centre.

Highlights:

  • FKA Twigs: part art installation, part acrobatics, part fever dream
  • Little Simz: razor-sharp, commanding, and somehow making a massive crowd feel intimate
  • Burna Boy: pure charisma and unstoppable rhythm; had the whole place moving
  • Underworld (yes, again): euphoric nostalgia, still as thrilling as the first time
  • Fontaines DC: brooding, punchy, and gloriously loud
  • Charli XCX: pop chaos in the best possible way

Disappointments:

  • Khruangbin: gorgeous on record, but live it drifted into background music territory
  • Air: Moon Safari nostalgia trip derailed by dodgy sound for the first few songs, and no Beth Hirsch vocals, which left it all feeling a bit flat

Travel

A few more days in Helsinki, then home briefly before a whole week in London — which, for me, counts as practically moving in. I’ll be hiding out in the Goldsmiths and Senate House libraries wrestling with the book, but I can be lured out with the promise of caffeine. If you’re around 17–22 August, let’s plot, gossip, or just complain about the Northern line.

Look for the person mainlining coffee and passive-aggressively guarding a plug socket.

This week in photos

Weeknote 2025/31

/ Sharon O'Dea / Leave a comment
The 2025 Amsterdam Pride Canal Parade (photo: me)

That odd late-summer energy, where everything feels like it’s waiting for something. Cooler air. Colleagues to return. Deadlines to reappear in your inbox like mushrooms after rain. It’s not quite the calm before the storm, more the pause where you realise the storm is the work.

But in the gaps, the good stuff happens. Chapters get reshuffled and start to make more sense. Side projects move from vague idea to actual thing. And outside your window, the city throws a rainbow-drenched street party in celebration and defiance.

Today also marks four years since my accident. The physical scar has faded, and so has the sharpness of the memory. What’s left is something quieter: a growing understanding that loving my body isn’t about how it looks, but knowing — deeply — that it is good, just as it is.

Quietly productive. Occasionally reflective. Very August.

This week at work

With Jon away, I’ve been holding the fort — though it’s been more sleepy outpost than raging battlefield. We got our first round of feedback from the publishers, and while writing the next batch of chapters, had a lightbulb moment: the narrative works better in a different order. Cue much cutting, pasting, and swearing at my laptop.

Caught up with two employee experience vendors this week. We stay vendor-neutral at Lithos, but I like knowing what’s out there — especially as the market’s evolving at speed. Blink and there’s a new acronym.

Plus big leaps forward on The Secret Side Project. Getting tantalisingly close to something I can actually share, and I cannot wait.

Also this week

Amsterdam Pride took over the city this weekend — and my neighbourhood especially — with its usual mix of celebration, protest and glitter. The Canal Parade floated along the Prinsengracht, just metres from my home, inflatables aloft, sound systems booming and buzzing with joy and dance.

There’s something properly magical about how the city transforms for Pride: rainbow flags on balconies, bars, bridges… and this year, even the sky played along, with the rain clearing just in time for the parade.

The theme was Love, and around 80 floats represented everyone from LGBTQ+ refugees to queer judges. It all felt less corporate than previous years — and all the better for it.

With LGBTQ+ rights under threat in so many places (and the Netherlands hardly immune to the shift), it’s worth remembering that Pride is still a political act. I’m glad to live in a city that doesn’t just celebrate queer joy, but continues to defend the right to live it, 25 years after leading the world on equal marriage

Consuming

👩🏻‍💻 Internetting

I’ve been rabbit-holing into how to make your brand findable in an AI-driven world — and these two pieces offer some of the clearest thinking I’ve seen.

Jo Eyre lays out the emerging discipline of AI Optimisation (AIO): not gaming the algorithm, but making sure your organisation shows up when someone asks ChatGPT a question. Think SEO, but for large language models. It’s about clarity, credibility, and showing up in sources AI trusts — and it puts comms firmly in the driving seat.

Nick Gold, meanwhile, reminds us that reputation isn’t just something you manage — it’s something you live. In an age of AI synthesis, fake reviews and always-on scrutiny, consistency between what you say and what you do is what gets noticed — by people and by machines.

Tl;dr: If you’re not on the page, you’re not in the answer. And the page is built from trust.

📺 Watching

Caught the new Superman film at the cinema. It’s enjoyably silly in all the right ways: big set pieces, earnest speeches, and the kind of comic-book logic where gravity and plausibility take a back seat. Not everything lands, but it doesn’t really matter. It’s capes, chaos, and a decent time at the movies.

📚 Reading

Somehow I didn’t have the mental bandwidth this week

🎧 Listening

Saw the legendary Brazilian psych-rock band Os Mutantes at Tolhuistuin and still can’t quite believe it. Pioneers of the Tropicália movement in the 60s, they mashed up fuzz guitars, samba, and sheer surrealism long before it was cool. Weird, wild, and utterly joyous. What a treat to see them live after all these years.

Coverage

When Natasha Plowman invited me on her podcast Cutting Through, I jumped at the chance — mostly for a long-overdue natter. But in this half hour, we talk about how everything old is new again, just with added complexity and risk.

I also joined Egyptian leadership expert Fady Ramzy for a second LinkedIn Live. I’d planned to talk about what internal comms can learn from marketing, but we ended up digging into what audiences really need — and what CEOs could learn from McDonald’s obsession with selling more milkshakes. You can watch it back here.

Finally, I’ve joined Strategic’s global columnist network, where I’ll be sharing thoughts on communication leadership and cutting through the digital hype.

Travel

Another blissful week at home. Next week sees my annual trip to Helsinki for friends, music and saunas.

This week in photos

The England Women's football final is on the TV. In the foreground a hand holds a beer.
Boxing gloves on a ledge with iconic Amsterdam canal houses visible through the window in the background
A unicorn in a shop window. The text on the window reads "Unicorns aren't real, Pride is"
A white woman (me) is in a blue anorak in the rain. She looks annoyed about the rain.
Amsterdam's Westerkerk church with a Rainbow Flag banner hung down the front. In the foreground are lots pf rainbow-coloured balloons.
Rainbow colours draped down the front of an Amsterdam canal house
Two women are dressed up for Pride, wearing lots of glitter
A parade float boat on the Prinsengracht canal. The street is very busy.
A man in leather carries a sign reading "No pride for some of us without liberation for all of us". There is a crowd on people in the street behind.

Weeknote 2025/30

/ Sharon O'Dea / Leave a comment
Summer hangs on my street (photo: me)

This week felt like a pause between chapters. Projects wound down without ceremony. Conversations trailed off. My co-founder wrapped up for his summer holidays. Even the weather felt like a sigh.

In the space left behind, there’s room to think — about what lasts, what lingers, and what slips away without notice. Not everything ends with a flourish. Sometimes it’s just a final email, a change in tense, a silence. Still, even a quiet page turn can mark the start of something new.

This week at work

Writing the book has been an exercise in codifying the mix of tools, processes and practices we’ve cobbled together over the last decade. We’ve been trying to break it all down into frameworks that a communicator could actually pick up and use.

So this week we shared some of that work-in-progress thinking — a simple model for understanding digital internal comms. It’s been bouncing around our heads (and whiteboards) for years, and we’re finally giving it shape.

Across every shiny new EX platform, intranet relaunch or AI-powered comms tool, the same four needs keep showing up:

  • Collaborate: where work gets done
  • Publish: the official source of truth
  • Distribute: getting the right info to the right people
  • Discuss: the feedback and sense-making layer

Most organisations meet these needs with a patchwork of tools — think Teams, SharePoint, email, Slack, Viva Engage, town halls. Some do double duty. Others leave big gaps. But the underlying needs rarely change.

I’ve mapped it all out in a new blog post. Would love your feedback, counter-arguments, or examples of places doing things differently. We’ve already had some great input and are now working out how to evolve it into something genuinely usable. Is it too simple? Or is that the whole point?

And honestly, I’m loving every moment of this process — turning years of messy, real-world experience into something structured, shareable, and (hopefully) useful. Taking the implicit and making it explicit. Building models others can quote, borrow, critique, improve. Putting language and logic around things we’ve long done instinctively.

This week also marked the end of our engagement with a long-time client. Like so many project endings, it didn’t come with speeches or cake or even a well-placed “thank you” — just the quiet arrival of a final PO, the last invoice, and a subtle shift in the relationship from present tense to past. After years of collaboration, it felt oddly transactional. It often does, but I’m not sure I’ll ever get used to it.

Also this week

Some endings feel like a natural conclusion. The work done, the job finished. Others feel like a wrench. This week I’ve been a shoulder to cry on for a friend in the thick of a messy break-up — the kind that sharpens the edges of reality while blurring its centre. And I’ve found myself thinking about endings of all kinds: personal, professional, planned, and those that hit you like a bus.

Because whether it’s a relationship, a job, or a long-running project, the end can leave you caught between two stories. The bitter one, where you wish it had never happened. And the gentler one, where you’re just grateful it did.

There’s the version where you regret the ending (like my last full-time job). And another where you realise it was always going to end — the shape of the finish line already hidden in the starting blocks. As T.S. Eliot wrote, “In my beginning is my end.” We just don’t always recognise the closing scene until the credits roll.

Endings don’t tie themselves up neatly. They fray. They echo. They haunt the spaces where something once was. They rarely offer resolution, only absence — a silence where the noise used to be. They rarely give you what you think you need. But with time — and a little grace — even the hardest ones can leave behind something softer: a lesson, a memory, a scar that no longer stings.

And maybe, if we’re lucky —or ready— an invitation to begin again.

Consuming

👩🏻‍💻 Internetting

In a spirit of seeing if AI can do the stuff I don’t enjoy (rather than encroaching on the stuff I do) I tasked ChatGPT with one of domesticity’s greatest frustrations.

I asked it to analyse a photo of all the socks from my laundry and work out which ones should be paired. It numbered them, matched them, but failed on the request to draw lines to show which socks belonged together.

Lots of individual socks laid out on the floor
Screenshot from ChatGPT showing a request to match the socks inthe photo
Screenshot
Response from ChatGPT describing the pairs of socks
The photo of socks with some useless lines drawn top-left (ChatGPT's failed attempt at annotation)

Result: 10 solid pairs, 4 rogue singles, 1 failed attempt at annotation, and confirmation that yes, the washing machine does still eat socks. Or maybe I do. Either way, AI: 1, laundry chaos: slightly less than before.

A few things caught in the folds of my browser tab situation:

  • Ian Leslie’s “27 Notes on Growing Old(er)” is a rich, often funny meditation on the weirdness of ageing. From Rembrandt to Jagger, it’s less about wisdom and more about resistance, bewilderment, and the awkward comedy of carrying on anyway.
  • A great piece by Andrew Pope argues that middle managers are holding the whole mess together — juggling tech, people, AI, hybrid work… with very little support. The fix? Less platform, more behaviour: clarity, trust and better team norms. Start with listening, not launching.
  • This brilliant, honest post from Beholder reflects on a first-time founder’s journey creating a range of skin-tone inclusive plasters — and the bittersweet reality of shutting it down after a deal fell through. Part memoir, part CPG masterclass, and full of lessons on scale, marketing, and the difference between a hustle and a slog.

📺 Watching

My TV disconnected from the wifi, and thus from performing any useful functions, and I didn’t care enough to even try to fix it. A statement, possibly, about modern life.

📚 Reading

About a third of the way in to The Genius Myth. Helen Lewis takes a scalpel to the idea of the lone (usually male) genius, dismantling the myths we build around brilliance and asking who gets erased in the process. It’s sharp, engaging, and full of righteous, well-researched fury. A smart antidote to Great Man nonsense.

🎧 Listening

T.S. Eliot’s Four Quartets, read by Orson Welles, set to Steve Reich’s minimalist soundscapes. Endings, beginnings, and a lot in between.

Coverage

Earlier this month I had the joy of curating and compering the 300 Seconds x Camp Digital session — and what a lineup. Every speaker brought something fierce, fresh and thoughtful to the stage: new voices, new perspectives, and enough energy to reboot a knackered comms team.

The video’s now online, so if you weren’t there, now’s your time to catch up.

Huge thanks to Hannah Smith, Sage Su, Jane Bowyer, Prashanthi Balachander, Ryan Hill and Saw Nwe — I’ve no doubt we’ll be seeing much more of them on conference stages soon. And to Nexer Digital for inviting us back (and trusting me with a mic again).

🎥 Watch the session — featuring bold ideas, brilliant people, and me bouncing around like a child let loose in a sherbet factory.

Travel

I went no further than walking distance from my home all week and it was bloody brilliant. Recommend.

This week in photos

People sit on yoga mats on the floor of an atmospheric old church, wearing silent disco headphones
A bike hidden among an array of colourful flowers
Be-socked feet on a gym floor, next to a barbell with weights on.
Amsterdam's Homomonument
Hands with pink and purple nails
A woman taking a selfie in a gym mirror. The letter L is in the foreground.
A Japanese-style miso Aubergine on a plate
Selfie of a white woman with brown hair tied up, wearing black earrings and a black dress