Weeknotes 13

A bit late because I was finishing a project report this weekend, and it was easier to have a single focus on that until it was done.

At work:

• Evaluation project: focusing on finishing the report write-up. So much data to make sense of! So many pieces of paper, pages of notes, and temporary documents. It’s been quite a job picking a way through all the info, but, it’s finally shaped up.
• Social care engagement project: made a little easy read intro for some of the groups I’m hoping to meet, and scheduling dates for different engagements with different groups. For my easy read intro I used the photo of me and my emotional support knitted chicken watching TV.
• Strategic service review workshop: read ALL the background documents. There were many, and they were consequent, and that took ages. Had a planning meeting with the team. I just need to write up my session plan and make my materials now, which I’ll do closer to the workshop date so it’s fresh in my mind.
• Interactive EDI workshop: this will be at a whole organisation away day for a charity (70-odd people) and I’ve proposed a radical but interesting structure, which the commissioning team (luckily!) really like. Met the team to review and finetune my session, and now I just need to fold and build 70-odd cardboard bricks! (All will be revealed in due course.)

Deliverables this week:

• Evaluation project report: had managed to type up lots of notes in dribs and drabs around other tasks and meetings, but I needed a clear run at it for it to all come together so I worked on it this weekend, from Friday lunchtime to Monday lunchtime. It was a task and a half, making sense of ALL THE THINGS, but it’s come together nicely imo. There’s a logical flow through the report, it all hangs together, and also it demonstrates what a good project this was. (I was always in love with this project – I just wasn’t in love with having to wrangle a report out of all the random bits and pieces we’d ended up with.)
• Mentoring sessions with local health board leaders ongoing. This week I did a session where I literally said to the client, “holy shit, that’s amazing work, I hope you’re really proud of yourself, you should be!” because I am a sweary fucker. (I cheerlead not with pompoms but with swears.)

Development this week:

• The New Idea: sat in a cafe for a couple of hours this week, waiting for my car to have new tyres fitted. Drafted the website copy. Bit of finetuning, then will send to my colleague to review. This week I also set up the website infrastructure and new email addresses, which is exciting and a first tangible sign of this existing soon – and so the tech bit is done. Now to agree the content and upload it to the site.
• Strategic planning day: I’m vice-chair of Data Orchard, and I’m doing a day of supporting the co-CEOs think through future planning, and company (as well as personal) developments. I pulled together a framework to guide us through the day.
• Reading: none this week because my entire weekend (except for a scheduled trip to the tip) was focused on the evaluation report. No room in my brain (and no time) for anything else. Also hence why these weeknotes are happening on Monday afternoon.
• Blogging: I have some draft ideas but I haven’t written any new stuff for a while. Making a note here to get back to it.

At home:

• I re-waterproofed my bike jacket, which had water seepage in the rain last week!
• The cat’s still not well. His tummy was settling and then it was not again, so we’re going back to the V.E.T.S. in the coming week. In the meantime I am handfeeding him several times a day because he’s off his food, and worrying about him wasting away to a shadow.
• The car has had new rear tyres fitted. While I was waiting I drank a Cardiff Fog, which apparently is like a London Fog which I did not know about either, but is essentially Earl Grey tea with steamed / frothed milk, some kind of syrup sweetener, and mine had cinnnamon sugar on the top. Deeeeelicious.

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