Week 54 – 15/09/19

The highlight of the week was last Thursday when the ProductTank Sheffield event I had been involved in organising with Rob and Tom finally happened. It went really well. Around 40 people turned up, including both our speakers which was a massive bonus. Naomi Turner from MOJ Digital was fantastic on the challenge of designing whole services for prisons, prisoners and their staff. How broad and complete do you go? Do you solve only what you can? Such an emotive and fascinating subject. Dan Merriman of the Raspberry Pi Foundation told a tale of a day off from work but his frame of mind constantly being stuck in a product mindset which has pros and cons. More good ways of thinking.

We were very relieved when all went well. We got a very diverse audience which we were so happy about (as we are three white middle aged white men organising another conference but we got lots of great feedback including this which made us all feel very proud.

We can’t wait to do the next one. November hopefully. Wanna come and speak?

Week 3 at Qualsys and more is starting to fall into place. Where I want to focus and the things that I think need fixing first, which feels a little arrogant to say but what did they hire me for if it is was not to make things better? There is a tight deadline for delivery of a first build of the new software. I am not sure that everything that needs doing is fully known and certainly not well enough defined and maybe designed but then again it might just be that I can’t get a feel for all the work as I have no experience of ‘how things work round here’ quite yet. I will be starting to get more involved next week and trying to be a little more ‘leadery’. We will see how that goes. I don’t want to get in the way but I don’t want what feel like obvious things to be missed or half baked. Pretty sure it will all be fine as everyone there is very talented and knowledgeable.

I finished an excellent, and very different kind from my usual fodder, book called Educate by Tara Westover. A memoir about her life growing up in rural Idaho, being home schooled, forbidden to see doctors or take any medicines other than ‘God’s herbs’ and how her life shaped her and how she fought to be free. I did not even realise it was a true story when I begin reading it but I was so relieved when it turned out to be true as it made it all the more amazing. The parts where the author finally start to realise who she was and who she could be and that she did not have to be trapped by the psychological torment of her family had me hooked and I read the last quarter of the book in a late night 3 hour sitting.

I watched the absolutely batshit John Wick 3. Ludicrous ultra violence that all felt a little slow motion but then again Keanu is in his 50s now and it should be a little slower. Will definitely watch Episode 4 when it comes out in two years time and Keanu is even nearer to his 60s. Still trying to fix everything but slightly slower.

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