Weeknote #44: Pause
A meeting-light week, with some much needed space to catch up on projects, admin tasks and thinking. I was wiped out on Tuesday and made myself take a proper day off to recharge.
What happened this week?
A meeting with the Mozilla Data Collective exploring their platform for sharing open and "compensated" data sets. Interesting to see the pricing levels and varying licenses terms according to intended usage and customer type.
An advisory board meeting for our UKRI-funded project improving ATR-processes across digitised collections. I'm grateful for the time, wisdom and gentle scepticism of the panel.
A catch-up and cup of tea with Ian Russell, Chair of National Museums Scotland. We talked through the pressures facing the sector, the resilience of cultural organisations and different models for encouraging donations at entry points of free venues.
I've been reviewing and updating job descriptions for roles in the digital team. It's interesting to see how far things have shifted from 3-4 years ago, especially around cyber security and AI.
Interesting things
- Russell Davies on why a good careful human will always beat an AI for compelling and interesting work.
- The FutureScot AI challenge has moved to a public vote model.
- Dr Camilla Stewart on Ten things we’ve learned from running Art UK's digital infrastructure. A reminder that "good digital development is not cheap, it must evolve quickly to stay relevant and useful, which requires constant investment and innovation."
- How UK public servants are using AI at work – Another survey, with similar insights i.e. AI is mostly being used for simple tasks and trust remains the biggest barrier to adoption.
- Good to see agencies like Supercool surface how they are adopting and adapting to AI – including some false starts, ethical dilemmas, and wide-ranging views.
- Before the flood – A thoughtful piece on the need for system stewardship to counter AI agents "flooding" online processes for complaints, enquiries, scams and job applications.
- Lots of good stuff in Jack Strachan's piece on experimentation in the public sector, including how simple ideas for improvement need to move through layers of "organisational treacle", both horizontally and vertically:
"From the moment we define an experiment, we need to think about the questions those slower layers will ask. Who would own this? What would it cost to do properly? And what on earth is the governance process for a change like this? These aren’t questions you can answer yourself, but you can bring the people who might answer them close enough to see the experiment happen."
- Ross Ferguson has rebuilt his site listing public sector backlogs and roadmaps.
- A nice map thing for the #30DayMapChallenge from Tom Watson, visualising panoramic views from Dale Head.
Watching, listening, reading, doing
📖 After misplacing my copy for six months, I've restarted The Overstory by Richard Powers🌲
📺 I churned through multiple episodes of Six Feet Under on my sick day. Claire remains iconic, and the series is relentless in its refusal of redemptive narrative arcs (including the opening credits).
🎧 I'm sending a poorly friend a hand-picked song at the same time each day. It's been harder than expected to select tracks linking to our shared memories of places or moments.
🏃 I continue to embrace the middle-class Venn diagram of park run and padel.
