6.26 — weeknotes -volunteering — sensory tech conference — DigiGov

Yet another jam packed and fun filled week.

We try and do different things with my management team meetings throughout the year. We spend enough time talking about very sensible and serious things… We wanted to do something different, so Wednesday morning we turned up to Lamptons Park for a morning of volunteering.! There were twenty of us and we split into two groups, first group did litter picking for an hour and the other group cut brambles at the back of the park and then we swapped over!

Now unfortunately I was only able to do an hour of the litter picking but really really enjoyed doing it. The team do a really good job at caring for the park anyway and when you looked across the park when we started it didn’t look like there were was any litter but as you go around the edges of the park and by places where people were sitting there was actually a fair amount and we managed to make a massive difference.

The reason I had to leave was because I was attending the Sensory Technology event at Hounslow House. It was for people in the borough with a visual impairment or hard of hearing/deaf to learn about the technology that is available to support them.

There were a range of partners: Royal National Institute of Blind People (RNIB), the Middlesex Association for the Blind (MAB) and Royal Association for Deaf people (RAD). Including speakers from Microsoft, Ability Net and Sky. Several stalls from various charities and organisations as well the digital inclusion team. Great session! A resident came up to me after to thank us for doing events like this — she had learned so much and could really see the council was trying to make a difference. I learnt lots too!

Earlier in the week I was lucky enough to be on a panel talking about data-driven collaboration and how we can have better strategic partnerships through enhanced data sharing. Was a great panel with Eddie from Loti, Nadira from Socitm and Orsola from the Open Data Institute. We only had 40 minutes but a range of topics were discussed and questions from the floor as well. I thought it was a really good session and lots to think about.

We also had a bit of a social with other directors on Thursday night we went to Flight club in Victoria after work — not done it before but was such good fun and it helped that I won.

Some weeks it’s really difficult to remember to get pictures or have pictures that are vaguely interesting however this week is the exact opposite so trying to put in as many pictures as I can and try not to do too many

Tune of the week (THIS IS AMAZING!!) : NS Boulevard — Seasons Of Love (Official Lyric Video)