anticontent

Side-bloggin': Lately I've been really enjoying posting to my side blogs. A few photos and scrappy haikus here; interesting, lovely and useful links there. These projects feel more like blog-friendly activities for introverts. I can see me getting to a place where I just use this blog for these recently updates and the occasional bit of long-form. Let's see.

Escape to meat space: That said, I'm seeing a lot of people I admire talking increasingly about getting off social media and, as much as possible, the internet generally. I still see the appeal. A remote island. A few dogs. A bit of painting. No screens. Sounds brilliant. Pretty sure I'd hate it after a week and half.

About an injured climber: Content warning: this contains audio of an emergency services call, but it's nothing harrowing or I wouldn't share it. Also: this is essentially an advert. But all that aside, I thought this was a good Instagram post from Giles Rhys Jones. I didn't initially get where it was going, which was daft really because Giles is CMO at what3words. Powerful bit of storytelling with a real-world use case, told from the point of view of the users.

Running still: It's been a couple of months since I took up running again after a … ahem … winter break. Enjoying. I've given myself permission to just potter about this time around. Apparently that's the way to build stamina and, if you do that, the speed will follow. But I just like having a little jog along on a sunny morning in the countryside – preferably before the traffic. Aiming to do a park run in June. How's that for a modest goal? Aiming to do a run already pitched as accessible to all abilities. Still something I need to gee myself up for.

Makin' a poster: At work I've been thinking a lot about posters. Not the inspirational/aspirational kind, though those are great. Something in more useful territory. Think more your World Cup wall chart. Actually: that's good – things you have to fill in. That's not what I've been doing but I might try to run with that. No, lately I've pinched a National Audit Office table (Figure 2 in this PDF – plus associated web page) about things that make government transformation – and particularly the CDDO's strategic missions – challenging to achieve. Then adding some columns to it with stuff you can actually usefully do to get through, over or around those challenges. That's the aim: anyway – something useful. We'll do our best.

Blogging well at work: I've been here a couple of years now and it's about time I got assertive with the work blog. It's hard to blog about client deliveries because of client sensitives – that's the received wisdom anyway. But it's so easy to anonymise if you have to, that's not really an excuse. I bet 90% of the time you won't actually write anything unpublishable anyway. As I whinged on LinkedIn today, you often get push back on blog posts because an idea “isn't enough” for a post. I think I'm going to stop suggesting blog posts and just do update chats with people instead. Then write the blog post. Or, ask a random team member 5 or 6 questions, blog the answers and publish week notes, but from a different team each week. A a nod to Giles' Blog post formats for teams. It's brilliant, but must admit the first time I saw it I felt a bit “I wish” about it. But no – it's on me to try harder. It's hard to build a blogging culture where it doesn't exist. And just because a company has a regularly updated “blog” that by no means it has a blogging culture. We've made great progress, but much more to do.

May days: A lovely thing about living a bit more rurally is you're reminded of what a brilliant month May is. There is so much green everywhere. The cow parsley is 8-foot high. Baby ducks. Baby deer. Bees. Wasp queens starting their nests. The coming and going of various blossoms. Suddenly-warm weather. Yes: May is brilliant. Much better than, say, November or August.