Weeknote #18: Scrambling
Last weekend, Cambridge United secured promotion in the most Cambridge way possible, scrambling a 0-0 draw and relying on other teams failing to win. Work felt a bit like this, trying to keep projects spinning with a lot resting on decisions outside our control. There was also a lot going on outside of work, including the dreaded maths exam, a brace fitting, hospital appointments and Scottish elections. I enjoyed hearing the boy debate policy with his friends before taking him to the polling station to vote for the first time. 🗳️
What happened this week?
I had a big slice of FOMO this week not making it to Camp Digital in Manchester. Adam Coulson has done a nice round up of highlights, featuring some much needed hope and catharsis - especially around the need to retain slack, the unused mental capacity required to recognise patterns and what really needs attention. Not being able to attend is probably a sign I need more of this.
There was lots of frustration and last-minute decisions around our virtual environment project aiming to migrate away from VMware licenses. Despite the best efforts of our IT Infrastructure team we've been backed into a corner by [big corporate entity] refusing to budge on huge price rises or deadlines. I do not enjoy situations like this, but again should probably cut myself some slack.
There are increasing signs that the AI backlash is growing with Gen-Z leading the charge. Some of this is technical (LLMs aren’t reliable) and some of it is political/economic (a lack of effective regulation). Also, from listening to my kids, "AI" seems to have become shorthand for lazy, generic content, or a certain machine-generated visual aesthetic. They value stuff where they can see who made it and how it was made (even if this tends to be people climbing up rocks or cycling downhill very fast).
It was great to catch-up with Janey MacRae-Tym, the Science Museum's new Chief Digital Officer, on Friday. We chatted about AI opportunities, different models for digital teams and the pain points of making the case for change and investment in cultural institutions.
The digital content team continue to commission fantastic story-led content. Their latest offering explores the use of archives in video games and features an illustration by tattoo artist Adam Allori. I was also pleased that a small pot of money was approved for the team to create an Alternate Reality Game (ARG), guiding people through the collections via clues, puzzles and a story-led mystery - exactly the type of thing an "innovation fund" should be used for.
Written by Sam Fern Estimated reading time 14 minutes
Interesting things
- Lots of love for Sir David Attenborough this week as he celebrates his hundredth birthday. I interviewed him during my time at the Royal Institution and he was as open and generous as you would expect - not always the case with eminent scientists. My number one Attenborough fact: he remains the only person to win BAFTAs in all possible television formats, including Black & White, Colour, HD, 4K and 3D.
- Historic Houses has launched a nice site, Work In A Castle, which provides info on job roles in the sector.
- This digital humanities project aims to provide a deep-dive into a specific archive via transcription NLP analysis, knowledge graphs and data visualisation. It's the approach libraries should be taking, but I also noted the size of the team required to do this well.
- I was fascinated by this traffic intervention at the "Bridge over the Atlantic". Formalising systems can often work against the natural workflows that have evolved over time between different users.
- I love the new brand for Royal Navy Museums, with a really strong moving flag logo (which may be a little harder to translate across other media)
- Silly internet things included Deep-sea sea pigs and this (unwanted?) intervention into a Kubrick classic.
Watching, listening, reading, doing
📺 Some cognitive dissonance as I watched a former colleague from the Royal Institution (Kristen) competing on the latest series of Masterchef.
🎧 I'm pleased the Origin Story podcast is back with some new episodes.
🏃 The Hackney Half is just a week away and I have resigned myself to inevitable defeat by my brother. Hoping this frees me up to enjoy pootling around the course.
