Weeknotes #9: Tunnel vision
I always struggle with this opening line, so maybe it's not needed?
What happened this week?
After catching up with folk returning from annual leave, the week was deliberately focussed on the end of the financial year and setting new budgets - a process that can often feel like identifying the least painful compromise.
It was good to get an update on our (slow but steady) migration of cloud hosted services into the Scottish Cloud environment.
On Wednesday I chaired the quarterly AI Steering Group which included presentations from our "test and learn" pilots and this year's Digital Fellow, Dr Joe Nockels, from the University of Sheffield. The group also considered how to gauge staff usage of AI tools. There's a need to build confidence and identify the shared processes that would benefit from a centralised, licensed set up (whilst also guarding against the proliferation of AI workslop). I'm yet to hear about other organisations that have rolled out CoPilot or Claude in a way that benefits the majority of staff, rather than just those who have already incorporated AI tools into their work.
I reported into the Responsible Stewardship Board. Cyber Security was once again a focus, but the group considered a rnage of issues impacting our care of the national collections including pest control, emergency planning and security procedures for the most valuable items.
On Thursday I had a meeting with Jude McCorry at Cyber and Fraud Centre Scotland to renew our corporate membership and explore options for staff training, vulnerability scanning and possible retainers with cyber response companies. Choices here will inevitably be driven by the available budget and where we think we can make the most impact.
Friday was a planned day off to ensure I'm not losing annual leave allocation, something I always seem to struggle with. A long, slow run in the sunshine turned into a relaxed-pace half marathon. Is Edinburgh the only route where you can run passed an extinct volcano, the seaside, a parliament, a palace and multiple ancient monuments?
Interesting things
- Southwark Council were announced as finalists in the AI Impact Awards 2026 for their PDF-to-HTML importer which supports faster publishing and accessible content by default. Looks useful.
- I enjoyed this piece from Ash Mann on the lessons of learning Swedish for digital work including: keep asking questions, recognise that everyone brings their own context and describe things in simple terms. A useful reminder that "many digital initiatives fail socially before they fail technically".
- What do you do when your website is slow?: A deep-dive on resetting your web cache by Simon Loffler, Creative Technologist at ACMI.
- A great line from Keza MacDonald's new book about Mario: “Whenever you press a button, something fun should happen.” - the only nine words you need in game design (h/t Ben Templeton).
- 13 ways to spend end-of-year content budget: a nice post from Louise Cohen of One Further recognising the reality of working to annual budgets in the culture sector.
More AI thinking
On Tuesday I attended a lunchtime lecture at the Library by Professor R David Lankes entitled 'AI lecture: Death, AI and Librarianship'. As scepticism becomes the default stance for approaching any information, Lankes called on libraries to continue an optimistic vision of giving communities power and agency. Uplifting stuff, but the growing crisis of trust, authenticity and humanness was everywhere I looked this week (despite some pitching a maturing and coming of age).
- This line stood out from Gary Marcus' latest newsletter: "LLMs are an epistemic nightmare... manufacturing certainty, where there should be doubt".
- Velocity is the new authority: when a system rewards whoever speaks first, quality (and a lot more) is at risk.
- In 2026, We Are Friction Maxing: Kathryn Jezer-Morton identifies a growing reaction to tech companies' attempts to eliminate all the inconveniences of life, which is essentially dehumanising.
- Ed Elson sensibly asks Does Anyone Want This?.
- "Now is a time for learning and experiments" - some thoughts by Jason Kitcat.
Watching, listening, reading, doing
🎞️ The Secret Agent ⭐⭐⭐⭐✨ Captivating filmmaking that resisted the urge to fall into the recognisable tropes of a single genre.
🎞️ Persepolis ⭐⭐⭐⭐ An excellent animation of the graphic novel and useful background for what the kids are seeing on the news.
🎧 Lots of recommendations from the boy, including Loyle Carner and Cameron Winter. I am slowly being educated in what is "good".
🏃Parkrun didn't happen after my Friday adventure.
