Monthnote: September 2024
I spent most of September out on the road for work. Coming back from a weeks family holiday in Greece at the end of August I was straight back into a very busy schedule.
On my second day back, I was in Glasgow with Lee Dunn and team for the The Scottish Digital Academy’s Leading in a Digital World programme, something I’ve been involved with since March 2022. It’s always great spending time with this team and the Scottish digital leaders they bring together as part of each cohort.
The next week I had four conference days in row with many great conversations in Manchester and Edinburgh. This started with a keynote talk for the UCISA UX in Education conference, speaking alongside the brilliant Tash Willcocks from our team. I then headed to Edinburgh the following day to join more of the TPXimpact team at the Service Design in Government conference (SDinGov) where we were attending and running an exhibition stand as sponsors.
I had a great few days at SDinGov. It was good as always catching up in person with designers, researchers and digital leaders from across the public sector. The TPXimpact team also presented with two fantastic talks to wrap up the conference – Jaskiran Kang spoke about more integrated and full stack approaches to service design, and Mica Moore presented with Lynne Roberts from Defra, speaking about designing user centred governance processes. Both were really great sessions.
I headed home with a head full of ideas. I was also proud to finally make it to the top of Arthur’s Seat for the sunset on the Wednesday evening – I’ve been meaning to do this every year at SDinGov since it moved to Edinburgh.
My final trip of the month was to Wales, with a visit first to Swansea for the launch of the new Leading Modern Public Services programme with the Centre for Digital Public Services (CDPS). This was the first cohort of this new digital leaders programme and is based on a similar format to our digital leaders programme with Scottish Government. CDPS have since shared a blog post about the first 2 days of the programme written by Tash. As I said at the time, the sticker and merch game was strong from CDPS and Welsh Government.
I finished off my Wales trip with a first visit to our TPXimpact Cardiff hub the following day. There are some great views from the office, almost as good as those from my hotel room the night before (probably the highest floor I’ve stayed on in a Premier Inn). Cardiff served up some bonus autumn sunshine for most of the trip as well. Less positively, the journey and train home back to Cumbria was an 8 plus hour epic that went wrong in almost every conceivable way.
What I’ve been reading
I started reading Some of Us just Fall: On Nature and Not Getting Better by Polly Atkinson – this is a beautifully written memoir based in the Lakes. I’m increasingly interested in the relationship between our health and the natural world
Having been at SDinGov it was nice to briefly speak to Richard Pope and I also read Platformland this month – mostly on my many train journeys. I think Richard has done a really good job with the book and it’s a valuable asset for people working in the public sector. I’ve made lots of notes and it probably needs me to write a full post to share more thoughts at some point. It gave me many ideas and lots of food for thought.
Walking
As well as my walk up Arthurs Seat, September capped off a very busy spring and summer back out walking the Lake District fells, including trips to Hartsop, Derwentwater and Borrowdale.
I managed to fit in one last big circular walk from Brothers Water just as the summer weather was still holding. This took in High Hartsop Dodd, Little Hart Crag, Red Screes (which I was revisiting) and Middle Dodd.
The following week, and in worsening weather, I did a much shorter walk that revisited Walla Crag and completed Bleaberry Fell for the first time. I almost got blown off the top of this one!
After my busiest week this month – just back from Edinburgh – I had a lovely walk to Dock Tarn, Great Crag and Grange Fell from Rosthwaite. It really did feel like nature wrapped its arms around me on this walk with some beautiful autumn sunshine out on the fells.
All of which has taken me to 101 of 214 Wainwrights completed.
Elsewhere
I’m increasing using Bluesky for sharing thoughts and ideas and have taken the decision over the summer to completely stop using X (formally Twitter). It’s been great reconnecting with people on Bluesky. I’ll hopefully see you there.
This is my blog where I’ve been writing for 20 years. You can follow all of my posts by subscribing to this RSS feed. You can also find me on Bluesky and LinkedIn.