Weeknote #14-15: Friends reunited

A two-week edition following a short break with university friends, recreating a pre-graduation trip to Rhodes. Less sun, swimming, and dancing. More walking, whiskey, and reminiscing about our forgotten youth.

What's been happening?

There were definite first lock-down vibes over these last two weeks: both kids were off, we worked from home, the sun was (sort of) shining and everything was fitting around revision for upcoming exams. Everyone will be a lot more chill in a months' time.

I've banged on about this before but global supply chain issues are hitting us hard, with delays to hardware delivery having huge impacts on key IT projects. The team are managing to find workarounds and temporary solutions, but it's going to eat away at already limited annual budgets.

These are worrying times for cyber security with the launch of Claude Mythos raising the threat level up a notch (or ten), with profound impacts on information security and the wider Internet. The solutions for organisations will inevitably be more costly detection and protection set-ups.

As we enter the season of appraisals and forward job planning one of the more challenging elements of my role is providing a balance between clear objectives and setting achievable goals within our known constraints. Ash Man's recent thought-piece on Three Ways of Showing Intent neatly summarised the gap between what organisations announce, what their structures signal, and what their behaviour actually proves. For me, this is the key trap to avoid:

We stated that something was our utmost priority but we had no ability to reallocate resources or materially change how we approached that work, and we also remained stuck in reactive patterns - often redirecting people's focus at the last minute to handle immediate pressures.

The Creative Content Exchange plot programme has been making rapid progress over the last few weeks. In many ways it's been fascinating to see a project work to accelerated deadlines and just BUILD A THING. There are lots of questions to answer around pricing structures, licensing models and legal frameworks but spinning up a pilot platform is one tactic to surface the challenges all at once.

I've been drawing up a staff survey on AI uptake across the Library. We can see usage of CoPilot Chat across teams (issued as standard with Microsoft E3 licenses) and there are some heavy users for tasks like drafting emails or reports. I'm now keen to see if people are using other things or have an appetite to do more. However, with 78 Microsoft products named "Copilot" rolling things out across an organisation isn't as simple as it should be. I'm hoping to convinve other cultural orgs to run the same survey to provide some benchmarking across the sector.

Interesting things

• The Earth and the Moon hanging out.
• Some lessons from launching the Times and Sunday Times websites. TL;DR, People do not like change.
• The Playbook for Universal Deisgn is a great collection of creative workshop activities. And it looks nice too.
• A good piece about when AI tools are useful, and when they're not. "AI excels at compressing time [...] The danger comes when speed begins to replace scrutiny."
• On a similar theme Richard Pope (of Platformland fame) has set out sensible argument to stop searching for AI 'use-cases' and to start designing AI into services:

The principles of what makes a well-designed service remain the same as in the pre-AI digital era. AI should be treated as a design material rather than as a product in its own right. The goal of introducing AI into services should not be to create new “AI services”, but to make services work better for users.

Stop searching for AI ‘use-cases’. Design AI into services.

It’s not a very popular opinion, but I think the clamour in organisations for AI “use cases” is flawed. Not because of the technology per se, but because the search for purely or majority AI services, which is what this implies, misses a greater opportunity. I’ve had a

PlatformlandRichard Pope

• "Every person is their own sysadmin now". I enjoyed this ramble from Dan Hon on gaining convenience at the expense of agency as we navigate our daily digital lives.
• The Webbys shortlist was announced. These seem less important than they used to be, which might signal how my role has shifted away from on-the-ground deisgn and content work. Good to see the National Gallery of Art in Washington nominated in the Cultural Institutions category. Nick Sharp has transformed their approach to digital since crossing the Atlantic back in 2020.
• Congrats to Mia Ridge on her appointment as Head of the Museum Data Service. The musuem sector needs to be more Library.

Finally, some nice little things via Ben Templeton's newsletter:

• A deep-dive into the mess that is Apple's Tahoe icons (warning: you can't unsee the bad design patterns)
• An useful energy cost comparison tool
• A very addictive colour-matching game (and Sound)

Also, I liked this picture of a bird (an Australian Blue Fairy Wren). Not AI.

Watching, listening, reading, doing

📺 I enjoyed watching the final round of the Masters with pals, the perfect slow end to a long, lazy weekend (with a pleasing result).

🎞️ The boy has been watching Sound of Metal starring Riz Ahmed bewteen revision sessions. Now on the list.

🎧 One of the best things about catching up with old friends is receiving multiple music recommendations. Jill Scott is now on heavy rotation. Also, the Massive Attack and Tom Waits collaboration we've all been waiting for.

🏃 Running is happening, just not as far or fast as it should be.