Weekly 2023.09

This is the weekly no. Nine of 2023. It is Friday the 10 March and this is the catch up episode because I was a little bit ill last week. So unfortunately Kobed got hold of me last week. I was quite bad and too bad to even think about making content. So I gave myself a break and thought, let's just do this when it's the right time to do it. So, yeah, catching up a little bit this week and I'm going to see how it goes. It did make me realize, though, it's hard to communicate if there's a change in plan through a podcast. I'm not going to put out an episode or another audio piece to suggest why or if there's going to be a missing episode. But it did make me realize there's something missing in this process for anything. One that is following along and trying to set expectations. So, admin for this week, I have published the podcast to a few more platforms now. Now, I've got plenty of content with a good couple of months worth of content in there. I know it's badly timed with last week, but it's now available on Amazon. Boomplay. iHeartRadio jigsaw listen notes a load of the other platforms that are less popular but are available and kind of promoted through podcast, which is my hosting provider. So hopefully that will be start coming through a bit more. Now, the reason I did it is I appreciate some platforms work better with audio devices and smart devices, so hopefully that will help in that sense. And the other bit about me I just want to call out is the new segues that I've introduced. So something I didn't talk about last time was the new audio visual segues in between each section. So I'd like to get some feedback on that if they help, if they're a bit in too much or not. Let me know what you think. I'm trying to use it to set the tone between section and add a bit of visual to the video content. But I'm open to suggestion if it's working or not. So work. It's been a pretty intense week, let's say. Obviously I was out sick last week, so it wasn't ideal and it meant I was a bit behind on a few things. We're actually in mid year review mode at the moment, so as part of our annual review cycles, we have a midyear checkpoint. And a part of that is obviously great to get some feedback from each other, from your teammates, from your peers, from your seniors, all that sort of stuff. And we all know feedback forms don't get many results. So something that I played around with last year and trying to get more teams doom was a concept of a thing called feedback. Now, this is effectively speed networking, but with direct feedback. Think of it as in, right, okay, I'm going to pair you up into groups as partners as pairs, go to a breakout room for eight minutes, talk about some feedback to each other. So it could be a piece of evidence or an example of something that's good for them and some suggestions, like an even better if. So using that focus time as a pair to talk about those things, then you rotate and do it again and rotate and do it again. Hence what? Speed networking mode. So this has worked quite well for some teams. Other teams haven't really got into it yet. And what I was trying to do for this round this year was to try and put some structure and formalization around it. I've realized through Speedback that a lot of people struggle to provide the constructive, negative, difficult feedback face to face. So we've created a form which is confidential. It's not anonymized because we want to know the source of any comments, but as a line manager, I can get that tangible feedback straight away and I can use it to take it into my review with that individual, or if possible, that the individuals speak directly in the second stage of the Speedback concept. So been playing around with that today, actually, with a few of our teams. Some teams jumped at the chance and taking it on really well. Other teams weren't comfortable with it at all. They were like, look, we do Speed networking feedback regularly anyway, I'd rather just use that content. Fine, as long as you're capturing that content, that's cool. And it has been quite an eye opener, actually, in the way every team has got a slightly different culture and awareness to how they share feedback and receive feedback. So I'm curious to know what other people do out there to kind of get good feedback from each other, from your engineers, from your peers, from your seniors. How do you get that feedback and what sort of models have worked well for you? I want to put a link in the show notes to my Speedback concept. It's on my blog. It's been there for about a year and I'd love to know people's thoughts on this and what works and what doesn't. So, side projects. I've been in the middle week this week on all the content. I've been a lot of content making, so I'm currently editing a make off work episode for next week and I've made a mix for the House Finesse podcast as well. So I'm really kind of getting into that mode at the moment. But what did call me out this week was the fact that I had a few references on LinkedIn to some side projects. Now, LinkedIn, I know it's contentious, not everyone enjoys it or sees value in it, and it is seen as that professional social network which is more about your career, about your profession and that side of things. So it's quite interesting to see that. I was getting tagged a couple of times on different side projects on LinkedIn through some of the people I've been working with and I thought, this is great. I love the fact these things are getting a spotlight and some fantastic engagement, but did maybe rethink. Do you share your side projects on your professional resume or your CV? Is it something that you're quite happy to talk about as a professional career or is it something that you try to separate from so you use a different social platform to talk about your side projects. I know from my experience, I've tend to focus all my side projects on Twitter. I'm mastered on now, but it's interesting to see that leak into LinkedIn now and where my professional experience is going. And I'm now starting to overlap all the side project stuff that I do now. For me it's quite good because actually I'm doing a lot of work around the podcasts and stuff. It's part of my day job now. So when I was getting referenced for other podcasts I do, it kind of gave it a bit more support. However, there was one about F on calendar that Andy Higgs posted. Now, I've got nothing to do with my work. It's not really got anything to do with my career actually, but it gave my persona another angle to some of the stuff that I do and it was quite interesting to see that coming through and all the engagements and stuff. So, yeah, again, I'm just curious what other people think works. Should you be sharing your side project activities on your LinkedIn profile or should you keep it to another audience? Again, curious to hear what other people think, get in contact and let me know. I will probably put some Tuts or LinkedIn posts out to actually complement this conversation because I feel like it would be a good way to engage with the audience and get some actual feedback. So, tech. Again, as I say, it's been a long couple of weeks. I've not been playing around with too much, but one thing that I did really love, actually, Pinecast, who is my podcasting hosting provider, have now enabled automatic transcriptions on my podcast. So it's not all that you asked to opt in and it's using a credit basis to actually process the transcriptions and share them. I've activated it on makelife work and these psychos weeklies. So from now on you should see transcriptions for all the episodes in supporting apps. Now this is part of the new podcast and 20 spec. Not all podcast apps are on this. Obviously, Apple podcast isn't supporting it yet. I think Spotify is starting to, but in their own way and it's automatic. So if you've an AI to kind of detect my voice and the conversation, there's going to be some funky nuances in there. But I love the fact that it's there now. This is true innovation for me and it's a fantastic way to kind of provide another angle to the content. It's a lot more diverse, so people that are unable to listen can actually consume the content. But I was just like, fantastic. This is wonderful to see podcaster actually now, pushing the envelope with transcriptions in podcasting and giving it a bit more clout because I feel like it's one of those emerging texts that need a bit more weight in behind. It entertainment then. So, as I say, been out sick for a long time. Actually. I spent a lot of time down, you know, just on the TV watching all sorts of rubbish. We binge watched season three of The Simpsons, actually. On one of the days of sick, I was off with my daughter and it was quite good fun. But the standout I must call out was a movie called Empire of Light on Disney. Plus, wonderful piece of film production from Sam Mendes. Olivia Coleman is one of the star actors in there, and I can't remember the other chap's name who's in it, but it was such a lovely story. It's kind of a romantic love story, but not the obvious one. And their performances were phenomenal. Plus the production quality was lovely. It was set in a coastal cinema, dated in the sort of very Art Deco. It was beautifully produced and some lovely kind of moments in there. Really enjoyed that story and I would recommend anyone watching that. So that is this week's weekly. As I say, it's been quite an intense week, getting back into the swing of things with work. Lots of feedback coming through in different ways. And as I said, I'd love to know how old the people are, getting feedback, providing feedback, what works, what's actually useful, and also find out a little bit more about how people share their side projects, professionally or not, as the case may be. That's enough for me this week. Please be sending your comments and feedback. I am available on Mastodon, you can get me on email or you can go to the website and I look forward to seeing you next week.