Weekly 2023.10

This is the 10th weekly of 2023. It is Friday, the 17 March and this is another dose of my weekly activities, highlights and observations. So admin. I've been looking at the metrics over the last nine episodes of this just to understand where the engagements are, where the actual consumption is and obviously what I'm doing at the moment is scattergunning. I'm trying out all sorts of different formats. I'm doing video, audio, text, emails, all the channels. I am noticing YouTube seems to be engaging better, so that's interesting to see. It wasn't something I went out to achieve, it wasn't like I was thinking I want it to be a YouTube win, but I was trying different formats, of course, my podcasting background, but I was familiar with video in a way and I realize now that it's clearly where people are going to get this content at least. So I'm thinking of shifting the focus to make it more video first and podcast secondary. I'm not neglecting podcasting because it's got some listeners out there and I have got the Make Life Work podcast, which this kind of overlaps with anyway. So I might look at how potentially merging the two channels into one and the newsletter is just sort of ticking over. I'm not going to neglect it either, but I'm going to think of maybe a monthly summary rather than doing a weekly update every time. So I want to work out how to optimize this. I don't want to put a lot of effort into something that's just not being observed or used at all or even useful for anyone, but I don't want to kind of waste time, if that makes sense. But again, I would appreciate any feedback from anyone who is consuming this content, video, audio or text. Please let me know which one you prefer and maybe some suggestions on how I can improve those areas as well. So work it's been a pretty good week. Quite intense, quite busy at points. We had a massive internal launch this week of a big project that's been going on for nearly 18 months or so and it's all around like establishing our tech brand. So I can't give too much away because it is still early days and it's for internal reasons so far, it will be going public soon. But it was quite a momentous moment this week because we did an internal announcement to a lot of the leadership at first on Wednesday and then to the whole of the engineering crew on Thursday. So big audiences, quite intimidating, quite nerve wracking at points because this was quite a significant announcement. But again, reflection wise, it was a good point and something that I did take away into my mid year, which I also had today, my mid year review. I think I mentioned last week we have our six monthly sort of reviews to complement the annual reviews and mine this morning with my line manager and just reflecting on the past six months. There were some areas of improvement, let's say. I'm not going to go into the detail, but to see sort of things like this week, getting a big announcement out in an uncomfortable environment was definitely something I should give myself a pat on the back for. And I know a lot of people shy away from public speaking. It's something that's quite intimidating for many, especially in tech scene. So, yeah, my manager was very sort of supportive in that sense. The other thing that we did reflect on this morning as well was the Petals concept. The fact that's gaining so much traction around the organization and the fact that I want to shift my focus to that framework for the next six months because I feel like it needs a bit of tidying up around. The edges. A bit of more structure, a bit of some case studies, maybe, to kind of demonstrate what works and how to use the framework. So, yeah, Petals is, again, something I really want to kind of iterate on refine and kind of document in a way. And I want to see how I can replicate content out into the public as well as what we're doing internally, side projects. So this week was all about make life work. I released an episode on Tuesday with Ian Lurie and his story is really quite interesting. So if you've not listened to it yet, I will put a link in the show notes. Please do have a listen. He went from CEO to individual contributor. So quite a shift in kind of lifestyle, quite a shift in career opportunities. And he was very honest, very sort of down to earth about what it actually entails. So I would recommend that episode. And I also caught up with old friends andy Clark and Dan Davis on Tuesday. Sushi Kelly had to drop out for personal reasons, but we carried on regardless and had, again, a very frank conversation about how hard things have got over the last couple of years, how they've tried to get through the pandemic and find a better work life balance. But it was really quite eye opening, just and really down to earth. It was a lovely conversation. It was very honest, very natural, and I don't want to give too much away. We go in out in a couple of weeks time. I need to do some productions to work on it next week, but that's planned to go out in about in a week's time from the minute this is released. So keep your eye out for that tech. Right? So, again, I've not been buying much lately or playing with too much, but what I did do this week was move my smart speakers around the house. So we have got one of each, actually. We've got the Google, we got the Alexa, and we have got the HomePod Siri all scattered around the house. And I realized actually, they're not in the best places. So here's some examples. Right, my HomePod is in the kitchen and it's on a windowsill just next to the kitchen sink. So I can use it while I'm just doing the washing up or housework in the kitchen and cooking and stuff like that. What I've done is moved it higher up so it's actually got better acoustics. It still picks up my voice fine, but actually by putting it higher up, I found that the music comes across better and it spread across the kitchen area a lot better. Nicer as well. I also bought the alexa. It's only like a small little plug, but put that back in the kitchen because that was useful for timers. And I did find actually, when the timers go off on HomePod, my wife couldn't stop them. Something to do. I don't know why I can't recognize her voice. Very strange. So I've put Alexa back in the kitchen, which does recognize her voice, and that makes it a lot easier when we're both sharing those cooking responsibilities. And I've found the old Google Nest, so I've moved that into the office and that allows me to do a bit more control over the other smart devices around the house and even turn things on and off from here. Much more conveniently because this is where I spend most of my time. It's nice to have it there and I can even just turn the radio on with a voice command quite quickly. So, yeah, just playing around with the smart tech again. I know this is something my old mate Adrian is quite into with home automation. I'm just curious what other people do with their smart devices, how you use them around the house and what are the sort of use cases that you have for them. Entertainment. Last one. We got back into Luther on BBC this week. I know he's got a feature length new film on Netflix, but I forgot how much I enjoyed the original series. I think I watched a couple of series when it came out early in, I think it's 2010, 2011. And his character is brilliant, he's very charismatic, he's quite engaging. I know he's a bit of a rogue, but quite a lovable character and I've really enjoyed getting back into that. So, season one, Luther is available on BBCI Player and I've been getting back into that. So I highly recommend giving it a go if you're into your sort of crime dramas. He's a good actor, that guy, and easy to like, easy to hate as well in some ways without giving it all away. But yeah, I'll give that a good rating, basically. So, there we go. Wrap up for the week. It's been a good week, quite productive, a lot of recognition, a lot of praise, and some really useful sort of insights and reflections as well. So, yeah, good week. Please give me your feedback and reviews on the types of content that you are enjoying or not. Maybe some suggestions on how to make it better and I'll go from there. Have a good week.