Category: introspection

What are you doing? 10 years of continuous partial attention

https://twitter.com/mattedgar/status/75309 Today, for me, marks a decade of 140 character updates, 10 years of paying continuous partial attention to hundreds of wonderful people around the world. So I downloaded my Twitter archive and munged it in an Excel pivot table. Here's what I learned... 2006-2008: what are you doing? Following just a handful of people, I … Continue reading What are you doing? 10 years of continuous partial attention →

In shared light: why making thing visible makes things better

“In Elizabethan amphitheatres, like the 1599 Globe Theatre, performances took place in ‘shared light’. Under such conditions, actors and audiences would be able to see each other... This attention to a key original playing condition of Shakespeare's theatre enables the actors to play 'with' rather than 'to' or 'at' audiences. Actors therefore develop their ability … Continue reading In shared light: why making thing visible makes things better →

“Evolution. What’s it like?” The three lives of the front-facing camera

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=CjwYdvwC8CE "Evolution. What's it like? So one day you're a single-celled amoeba and then, whoosh! A fish, a frog, a lizard, a monkey, and, before you know it, an actress. [On-screen caption: "Service limitations apply. See three.co.uk"] I mean, look at phones. One, you had your wires. Two, mobile phones. And three, Three video mobile. Now … Continue reading “Evolution. What’s it like?” The three lives of the front-facing camera →

The quick and the dead, or 6 things that change when your service goes live

Some of the organisations I work with are just starting out on this digital transformation thing. More and more of them, however, have been at it for quite some time. After 2, 3, even 4 years, a delivery process of discovery, alpha and beta is well embedded, in parts of the organisation at least. Now I'm seeing more … Continue reading The quick and the dead, or 6 things that change when your service goes live →

And yet it moves! Digital and self-organising teams with a little help from Galileo

This summer, after a lovely 2 week holiday in Tuscany, I returned to Leeds and straight into a classroom full of government senior leaders discussing agile and user-centred design. Their challenges set me thinking once more about the relationship between technology and social relations in the world of work. One well-known story from the Italy … Continue reading And yet it moves! Digital and self-organising teams with a little help from Galileo →

#DearestEngland, some signals so far

For the last three days I've been running an experiment - a minimal, digital-only intervention, just to test the waters and see if it’s worth investing further time and effort. It was planned whichever way the Referendum went, but the fact that the call for contributions went live around the time England awoke to the results has given … Continue reading #DearestEngland, some signals so far →

What will you write to the future of England?

In 2014 the lovely people at Snook issued a simple, open invitation to the people of Scotland: write to the country's future. In the words of the Dearest Scotland About page: Regardless of which way the referendum result went, we’ve been encouraging visions that focus down the line. What might Scotland look like in the future? … Continue reading What will you write to the future of England? →

10 things I learned on the Global GovJam HQ team

My colleague Kathryn Grace and I were surprised and honoured when Natasche, Adam and Markus asked us to be part of their HQ team for the Global GovJam 2016. 100 days later, I'm looking back on a wonderful experience. The jamming movement across the public sector has massive potential, and I have learned loads about making something … Continue reading 10 things I learned on the Global GovJam HQ team →

Annual Report Number Four: theory, practice + Jaffa cakes

It's the second-to-last day of April in the year 02016 and I'm just getting round to writing this annual report to myself on a fourth year of independent consulting. For the story so far, see: Annual Report Number 1: April 13, 2013 Annual Report Number 2: April 15, 2014 Annual Report Number 3: April 18, 2015 This one has taken a … Continue reading Annual Report Number Four: theory, practice + Jaffa cakes →

What does good learning look like?

As practitioners of people-centred service design and agile delivery, my Stick People partners and I have been privileged to design and deliver specialised learning programmes for public and private sector organisations. Recently we’ve been thinking about the things that make learning at work truly effective. To paraphrase the Agile Manifesto, we are uncovering better ways of … Continue reading What does good learning look like? →

Put down all behaviour hurtful to informality!

Among my favourite times working at Orange - and there were many - was the chance to lead the UK organisation's design and usability team, doing user-centred design across the mobile and broadband business units. At the start of the assignment I talked with heads of all the teams whose services we worked on, to understand what was going well … Continue reading Put down all behaviour hurtful to informality! →