Weeknotes
I write weeknotes on and off. Sometimes I've been very consistent, other times not.
Week 42: Birthday Week
It was my birthday on Monday I turned 49 or as I'm rebranding it version 4.9. The week ended with a dislocated shoulder.
Read itWeek 38: Chamonix to Martigny
An e-mountain bike ride from Chamonix to Martigny, building a finance dashboard and life admin assistant with Claude, and writing up the GovTech Barbados story.
Week 32: lagom
Leaving GovTech Barbados at the right time, what it taught me about AI-era ways of working, and heading up a mountain to rest.
Week 30: two weeks left at GovTech Barbados
Two weeks left at GovTech Barbados, winding down, handing over and making sure the product management community can carry on.
Week 22: everything starts with Claude
A month in Barbados with a "let's ship stuff" mentality, and what happened when the GovTech Barbados team went into full-on AI mode.
Week 9: skiing from Italy to France
Back from a week's holiday, thinking about agile governance for GovTech Barbados, the first show and tell of the year, and skiing across the border.
Week 7: full spectrum
Recruiting product managers, a roadmap for GovTech Barbados, forms as a Trojan horse, and a week alone skiing with my niece and nephew.
Week 6: from doing to coaching
Product manager interviews, relationship-building across government, and thinking about how to move from doing the work to coaching the team.
Week 4: standing in the middle of a hurricane
A tough week in Barbados testing the register a birth service and getting a batch of forms live on alpha.gov.bb.
Weeks 2 and 3: depth and scale
Two busy weeks of user research, a survey, flyers and polling at GovTech Barbados, and a seven-and-a-half-hour day on Zoom building a roadmap with Claude.
Week 51: the magic is in the work you're avoiding
After an intense three weeks, two of them in Barbados, a look back at the year and the one thing I'd do differently about setting expectations for an alpha.
Week 47: 13 weeks that felt like 13 months
Looking back on 13 weeks with GovTech Barbados, from 99 services and the launch of alpha.gov.bb to the CEO talking about the work on national TV.
Week 45: here's the chief exec
A week in Barbados: the Chief Registrar, the Head of the Public Service, the Queen Elizabeth Hospital, one lucky phone call and a chat at Heathrow.
Week 42: 30 pages and almost 20 entry points
A manic week of migrating content from gov.bb and publishing almost 20 service entry points on alpha.gov.bb.
Week 40: urgency is uncomfortable
The GovTech team led its second show and tell, I wrestled with going faster without cutting people short, and I finished a 12.5-hour mountain race.
Week 39: sometimes you've just got to decide
Plate spinning on alpha.gov.bb, picking the first 20 entry points, a chat about MCP and agents, and a 50K race I'm not ready for.
Week 38: an email client on a sunday night
A slower week paying down the debt from moving fast on alpha.gov.bb, and building an email client with AI.
Week 37: the unit of delivery is the team
The first GovTech Barbados show and tell, a brand for alpha.gov.bb, and using AI to help prioritise the first entry points and write a maturity report.
Week 36: 114 services in a week
A week of workshops in Barbados with seven ministries and departments, mapping 114 potential services for alpha.gov.bb.
Week 35: storming, forming, norming
Kicking off a 13-week phase of work with GovTech Barbados in London before flying out to run workshops across the island.
Week 34: plans are worthless, but planning is essential
Starting a digital maturity reassessment for Ontario One Call with AI doing some of the legwork, and getting ready to head back to Barbados.
Week 30: a full-time recruiter
A chaotic week of scheduling interviews, wrestling with Greenhouse and thinking about how recruitment should work for GovTech Barbados.
Week 29: a chance meeting at the AI for Good Summit
Sifting CVs, a chance meeting at the AI for Good Global Summit in Geneva, a call about digital public goods, and a best mate's wedding.
Week 27: a small, momentous step
Setting up Greenhouse for GovTech Barbados, getting the first jobs live, and watching a glacier retreat in a heatwave.
Week 26: back to basics on recruitment
Writing job descriptions and designing a recruitment process for GovTech Barbados's first team.
Week 20: work with your friends
The end of the first phase of the GovTech Barbados work, and some reflections on a crazy couple of months.
Week 19: building the foundations
Boiling GovTech Barbados's remit, organisation design and strategic priorities down into a short deck the CEO can use to talk about the work.
Week 18: red lines in a spreadsheet
Back from Barbados and battling jet lag while pulling the final deck into a coherent story.
Week 17: a bar at the Hilton
A short note from Barbados: a week of diplomacy and pulling people together, meeting GovTech's new hires, and a four-day week.
Week 16: what's best for Barbados
Planning the next trip to Barbados, and framing the work around what's best for the country.
Week 15: a week of writing
Writing principles and recommendations for GovTech Barbados, and getting ready for the next trip.
Week 14: more than a website
Vision and mission statements for GovTech Barbados, the messages we'll need to repeat, and using ChatGPT to draft outcomes for 60-odd initiatives.
Week 13: that messy stage
A two-week note on stakeholder mapping, pulling together everything GovTech has promised, and helping define why GovTech exists.
Week 11: now, next, later
Refining how we describe the GovTech Barbados work into now, next and later, and fitting it on one or two pages.
Week 10: a 45-degree couloir
Framing the GovTech Barbados work as three things, meetings about process maps and land records, and three and a half days in the mountains.
Week 9: a building opposite Parliament
Back from the first trip to Barbados, starting on a roadmap for GovTech and talking to people about joining the team.
Week 7: on my way to Barbados
Written on the flight to Barbados, at the start of a short piece of work advising on the setup of GovTech.
Week 6: nobody comes to work to do a bad job
Early thinking on a report about what makes a resilient environment for change, some LinkedIn experiments, and a night in a tiny mountain hut.
Week 5: cold outreach and avalanche debris
Learning how to do cold outreach, setting up a CRM, two useful conversations, and a near miss while skiing.
Week 4: looking for a silver bullet
Getting back into weeknotes, first attempts at outreach in Geneva, and some thinking about how to get Kollektiv noticed.
Week 51: hopes and fears
A short end-of-year note on a hopes and fears workshop, messy keyword data and thanks to everyone helping get Kollektiv off the ground.
Week 50: what Google thinks a topic is made of
A tough week of possible COVID and a house sale, alongside new website profiles, a first CTO interview and a lesson in content strategy.
Week 49: if this fails, the view goes away
What's really driving me as Kollektiv gets going, and how knocking on enough doors got me my first job.
Week 48: a podcast of our own meeting
Fighting LinkedIn's subscriptions, thinking about how people join Kollektiv, and turning a meeting transcript into a podcast with NotebookLM.
Week 47: you are moving fast
Two weeks into Kollektiv, with a French company registered, a basic website live and honest feedback on the pitch from an old boss.
Week 44: finding my why
Wrapping up with Public Digital and Ontario One Call, analysing a year of weeknotes with ChatGPT, and starting a pitch deck for a new idea.
Week 43: a reflection and a farewell
Looking back on what we achieved with Ontario One Call as my time on the engagement comes to an end.
Week 39: start page, questions, check your answers
A second round of research on the prototype, a content designer who got it straight away, and some self-inflicted analytics embarrassment.
Week 38: cookie messages at 3am
A working prototype for sharing locate requests, a lesson in patience, and an analytics rabbit hole on my own website.
Week 36: a better design review than expected
Thinking about the messaging for an Ontario One Call exemplar service and an early design review that beat expectations.
Week 35: benefits, not technology
Helping frame an end-of-discovery presentation around benefits to users and the business, and a friend climbing again in Chamonix.
Week 34: maybe a smaller problem than we thought
A short week of reviewing user research and finding the problem may be fixable with sensible interface design.
Week 33: services with cryptic names
What Ontario One Call's two exemplar services actually are, and a Friday-evening workshop to agree the problems.
Week 32: planning a discovery together
Watching events in the UK from France, a third house move, and nudging a multi-company team towards one shared discovery plan.
Week 29: three Teams accounts for one engagement
Back after a break, gearing up for the next phase of work with Ontario One Call and wrestling with Microsoft Teams.
Week 26: the nicest humans in the room
Retrospectives, a final report that refused to be short, and leaving Ontario One Call wanting more.
Week 25: a roadmap they will publish
Presenting the Ontario One Call digital strategy to its leadership teams, finishing the final report, and sketching a roadmap they plan to publish.
Week 24: a roadmap estimator
Tidying up the Ontario One Call digital roadmap and building a spreadsheet that shows how investment choices move the timeline.
Week 23: even when it is not in our best interest
Wrapping up the Ontario One Call roadmap for different audiences, an uncertain moment between engagements, and a first run after a broken leg.
Week 22: the end game, or maybe the first quarter
A second strong session with Ontario One Call's executive team on the roadmap, then packing boxes for the first of several summer moves.
Week 21: you are a digital business
A three-hour session with Ontario One Call's executive team, where the message that they are a digital business landed.
Week 20: people take time
A roadmap that starts to feel shared, a saying from an old boss, and a first trip to Interesting.
Week 19: a now-next-later roadmap
Turning months of early concepts into a three-year roadmap for Ontario One Call, and a knee scare that turned out to be nothing.
Week 17: the Nike matrix
A day in the London office, a talk at a Public Digital event, and sorting Ontario One Call's outcomes into a "just do it" matrix.