5.16 — weeknotes — happy Pride month — PresConf! — MindOut — Weeknote#150!!!
A relatively quiet week this week as a number of colleagues have been on leave. But that has given me a bit of space in the diary to catch up on a number of things. Although still confusing with the additional Bank Holiday — I’ve really not know what day of the week it has been this week.
As I publish this I see that this is my 150th weeknote. I actually can’t believe that I have been doing these at Hounslow for nearly 4 years. Very pleased with that number! :-)
Had a number of check-ins this week with both people and projects. Spent a fair amount of time on Housing, getting the clarity that we need on a range of projects to move forwards — and we have a Housing Gets Digital Week next week with a series of events aimed specifically at Housing colleagues. The aim is to inform about a number of the transformation and digital programmes, skills in Office 365 and IT in general such as Cyber — going to be a great week and looking to roll it out to the rest of the organisation.
The technology really let me down in the week, and I think it really does know when to go wrong to cause the maximum disruption. All day Wednesady I was online and working OK. Of course my laptop chose the hour that I was due to present a digital update to the Borough Based Partnership on the Digital Workstream. It went all retro as well and I had a blue screen of death — I don’t think I have had one of them for years — and despite a number of reboots it was not coming back and connecting. Had to message the CEX and say what was happening to defer the item — a pain!!! Cue the irony that the Director of Digital couldn’t get the tech to work!!
Two weeks to go to President’s Conference — going to be an amazing couple of days with some great speakers and some great topics. We have some space as well for networking with colleagues which is always so useful at these events. Also a great location, apart from being ‘just down the road’ from me, Brighton is a great location for the event — able to get some fresh sea air to recharge those batteries.
June is Pride Month — so Happy Pride! Equality and diversity in the workplace is so important, especially in Digital where we are building services for our communities, it is essential that we don’t build in bias to anything that we develop. Mental Health is especially important for LGBTQ+ colleagues. My chosen charity for President’s Conference is Mind Out — https://mindout.org.uk/ — they provide Mental Health services for the LGBTQ+ community in Brighton and Nationally. Really pleased that they are joining us at conference and hoping that we raise a lot of money for them. We are also bringing a bit of rainbow with the entertainment as well — can’t wait!!!
Tune of the Week: Kylie Minogue — Padam Padam (Official Video)
Pics: Norwich at the weekend, which is a beautiful city! And so nice to see the garden coming alive, all I need to do now is sort the lawn out!!
