2020 11 27 — Weeknotes

2.45 — so proud of the team and the council for the digital festival

Today sees the final day in the Digital Festival Hounslow! What a month of events this has been… But before I get into that, some other things from me about this week.

Over the past week or so I have been helping health colleagues in Hounslow with the procurement process for a new service for online GP appointments. I haven’t done a huge amount in health directly before so this was a new experience for me, but one in which I really enjoyed. It is like trying to learn a new language, all the various elements of the health system and then the technology lens on the top.

Tuesday afternoon I attended 4 supplier presentations over a 4.5 hour Teams meeting. The lead for this project was amazing, managing 10 partners and 4 suppliers all virtually and all to time — I was super impressed!

Also this week we have been doing a lot of work around aligning some processes across the organisation for service design and project and programme management. Rather than having multiple approaches and teams moving things forwards we are aligning our ways of doing things under the # One Hounslow approach. This will ensure that we are moving things on, together, across the council and the place of Hounslow. Another reason I was so pleased to be involved in the work with health colleagues this week.

On a personal note this week has been a right pain — what should have been a game changer with new carpets has turned into a bit of a nightmare with the carpet fitters going through a heating water pipe!! So a day so far without heating and hot water… And it happened ten mins before I was due to host a webinar with Socitm and Cisco — so my apologies to them to letting them down!! All good fun!

So finally, the festival. What an amazing experience. 62 events; 7 sessions from local businesses; 16 with national partners; 2 sessions specifically for councillors; 80 speakers; 55 hours of online content and nearly 3,000 requesting to take part! Wow, just wow!

I am so proud of the team pulling this together and I think we have contributed a significant amount back into the council and also into the community. There were technical sessions, practical sessions, thought provoking sessions, wellbeing sessions and a genuine opportunity through the sports day sessions for teams to have some fun and get together for non work purposes — so important at this time. Some of the videos that have been created are nothing short of genius!! Including this one from Alison that she created on behalf of the team! Winter Legolympics 2020 — short track

I am very grateful for colleagues and partners who have taken the time out to run sessions for us. The feedback has been amazing and there has been some real lightbulb moments for colleagues around digital ethics, wellness and our culture. It was a real team effort across the council to make the sessions run, with regular stand-ups prior to the event together with show and tells so really embedding the new ways of working into the council. Particular thanks to Comms, OD and Learning and Development colleagues as well as Digital and IT.

Some highlights for me, actually there are too many and I have genuinely learnt lots personally as well:

• The digital inclusion sessions with councillors — some great insights into what really matters and some amazing ideas coming out that we will weave into what we have already done.
• CV and linked in session with Microsoft — some real practical advice to the community especially at this time of economic crisis.
• Laughter yoga (with the councillors) — we had about 15 councillors stay for the session which I still haven’t worked out was some sort of career craziness — but there was some great feedback. Still one of the silliest, bonkers, odd and hilarious things I have ever done..
• The digital ethics and then the managing report teams from Socitm were great and the team really had some lightbulb moments here.
• The daily mindfulness sessions were a great way of starting the day up — with just a quick 30 min session to take some time to relax and be in the moment.
• Chimni providing information about digital homes.
• The Amazon session on the work done around their AWS and Alexa services
• The launch of the Hounslow Innovation Network and the Digital Ambassadors will ensure that this work continues….

Actually got a bit emotional this morning as one of the videos submitted for the virtual sports day was a member of my management team and his daughter going a bit crazy with the dance moves in the ‘Move It, Move It!’ challenge. It was great to see them fully throwing himself into the silliness of it.

Ready for December to be a little bit quieter…. Oh….

Tune of the week: As the new Steps Album launches today, it has to be another Steps song… Steps — Something In Your Eyes (Official Music Video)