3.33 — weeknotes — Hounslow Community Awards — awesome!
We have seen the importance of technology this week and the reliance that we have on it — WhatsApp, Facebook and Instagram being down on Monday evening. Six hours is a long time! It does make you think about your own business continuity, the importance of proper change control and the ability to roll back when changes are being made. According to the press the downtime cost the company $79 million!
Also made me think that I probably spend too much on time on my phone, only when I wasn’t able to check social media (mainly WhatsApp) does make you realise just how much you use them. Definitely a note to self to try and use less!!!
Planning has started for this year’s Digital Festival — I know a number of you reading would have been involved in last year’s event. Throughout the month of November we hold a series of online events for both staff and the community. We are doing it this year with colleagues from Organisational Development with a real focus on learning and development. We want to share some of the things we are doing, want everyone to learn something new and have a chance to come together to make a difference to the community. All very exciting — watch this space but if anyone wants to be involved would be great to have a chat.
Wednesday was another day back in Hounslow House, we are only going back to buildings for a purpose and this one was a great purpose. The inaugural One Hounslow Community Awards, what a great evening. I’ve never seen the 6th floor looking so good, I think the amazing autumnal sunset helped a little bit as well. It was great to have the council come together with the community to celebrate some awe inspiring achievements over the last 12 months. There were a number of awards and then the overall winner, the One Hounslow spirit award which was voted on the evening from all the winners of the categories — you can find out more here: https://www.hounslow.gov.uk/OneHounslow-Awards
Without sounding too clichéd, it really does remind me why I work in the public sector. Amazing…
Also on Wednesday I attended a Round Table hosted by Unboxed: Upskilling in-house local authority teams and building capabilities. It was a really useful discussion and such a pertinent point — it is so important to ensure that we have the skills right in our teams and be thinking of the skills we need next as well. Great discussion, lots of similar challenges — lots to take away and think about!
On Thursday evening, attended another of the UK Authority debates, this time on: Is it time to step up from multi-agency to truly integrated cross-sector working? As usual, a really interesting cross section of Public Sector. This is an area that I am really interested in since joining Hounslow, the work we have been doing as part of the Integrated Care Partnership has been really interesting, especially during a pandemic. It shows that having the willingness to work together and do things differently across the ‘place’ is really important. Getting the data right and the power in joining it up was a theme that came up and is very relevant for us. We are doing a fair amount at the moment in thinking about how we can maximise the data we have already, the pandemic has shown the power of data, that is for sure. Again lots to think about, but an underlying view that it is bloody hard to do, but worth it when you are able to move things forwards.
Tune of the Week: (love this song and when looking there was also a 1 HOUR version of this song — I dont love it that much!) — SHOUSE — Love Tonight (also didn’t realise that this song has been around since 2017!)
