First weeknote, ever.
Blogging was such a big part of my career but it was infrequent and difficult.
Time for regular reflection. Better aligned direction in more micro chunks. Will these be regular? Maybe. Maybe not.
What did I do?
Monday I did board duties for Loch Lomond and Trossachs National Park so I was in HQ for the day. I got most interested in The new Visitor Levy (Scotland) Bill which enables local authorities to charge a fee (a levy) when people stay overnight in the area.
It doesn’t mean they will, it doesn’t dictate how much, and it doesn’t quite dictate exactly what the money raised is spent on but, it can now be done.
The National Park is split by four different councils, therefore it could mean we have four different ways of doing it. We are a consultee in the process and I voiced optimism that it’s a vehicle for us to consider a joined visitor experience, and a touchpoint for education on climate and responsible tourism, whilst raising concerns about ensuring inclusive access. Other important duties were done like annual report reviewing, risk and audits, budgets and finance.
Had a great chat with digital and comms about websites, information architecture (IA) and service mapping. Some really nice coherence in seeing how services and defining them will help us identify our website IA and vice versa. Good to encourage some gut level service mapping guided by lots of data/evidence and known knowns from content audits, user research and general experience in the job.
Feels very much like Dan Hill’s MacGuffin moment where a new website can act as a vehicle for rethinking meeting needs, what we offer, defining our services and building approaches in overall service improvement. The focus is the website, but it’s actually a way to ask questions about everything we do and how strategic intent becomes services.
In some service areas, we don’t know yet or need to re-think what our services are, and so, we’ve some hunches but discoveries will help us clarify ‘what’ we offer based on user needs and our strategic intent. But these are longer parts of the work.
Some of the other service design and service areas is ‘how’ we offer it. We’re clear on these services and their offer because they are either statutory / policy or just bloody obvious. But we’ll tweak them and refine outcomes based on tighter discoveries of needs.
Got excited nattering on how to publish PDFs online and taking a web-first publish approach. Offered up a half day hack day to play around with ideas on how we might do this and take inspiration from good web/content publishing we’ve seen.
Hospital visits and temporary Edinburgh living
Much of the last few weeks have been regular hospital visits for a very close relative. Close calls and all that, but miraculously on the mend. Now moving into the scheduling care/occupational therapy/imminent but still long awaiting, hospital release phase. I dedicated having my mornings free to visit and take care of ‘life stuff’ for them.
I did order a new washing machine from Currys. And it was a masterclass in good service design. We decided together on which one he wanted, I argued up a tumble dryer (I know, not energy efficient, but helpful in a small flat!). Ordered Tuesday, at point of sale asked if we wanted installed and the old one taken away. Chose delivery day, 7am to 8pm slot (slog rite?) and punched in those credit card details. Day before delivery, confirmation it will be morning (thank you, now I can plan my day). Morning of, Friday, phoned by the outsourced delivery team who said they’d be with me for 8am. Boom.
Service outcome met: Got my relative a washing machine
User needs met: Speedy delivery, Sort out old one, Understand when it’s getting delivered, warranty in pack
Good services are hard to spot, because they do the hard work for you.
Did other stuff, like extra keys cut, choosing an alarm system. Pressing doctors for relative style updates. All in all, a few weeks ago, I thought we might be packing up a house. Instead we’re preparing it for re-entry.
Relief, many emotions, had a good cry on my bike cycling through Inverleith Park to Wanna by Jamie XX from the new In Waves album. Cathartic, needed that out.
Design and Projects
Back on tools helping develop a large scale imagination and sampling/participatory song writing experience for Brian Eno’s Earth Percent Charity. Created some low fidelity mock ups and user flows to move conversations forward on how it might work. Useful clarity. Workshop on Sunday in Sheffield. the last of our in-person experiments. More on this soon, in the meantime, Stuart Candy’s blog from when we kicked off. Dream project and all that. Facilitated Eno.
Ran a Getting Into Service Design event. Had Lou Downe, Stephen McCarthy and Sophia Kakembo online giving talks. They were all really good, really useful and we’ll figure out the best way to publish talk recordings. We had over 200+ questions submitted ahead of the event so we’re going to do something with that. Definitely something people need help with from portfolios, to what skills to develop, to applying for jobs to telling the story of their work. Want to help more where we can. Without sounding too sales sales sales, The School of Good Services newsletter is here, we’ll publish whatever we do with it there.
Film
Submitted a proposal to FIFDH in Geneva next year for Don’t Say Gay. Proper human rights and impact film festival. Getting selected means lots of support on thinking through impact strategy for you film. Writing it felt good, and I was proud of the entry. Mostly because I’ve picked up lots of interesting partners through the development of the film that can help drive impact.
OMG. Sinking in Don’t Say Gay was selected for the BFI London Film Festival works in progress pitch day. 9 films picked, and we’re one of them. We got good press in places like Screen Daily and Variety. Feels like a real moment. We get in front of sales agents, festival organisers, distributors and others. People recognising the urgency of what the film can say about LGBTQ+ rights. Hard work paying off and all that. Week ahead is rehearsing answers to two questions in under 5 minutes, and making sure to pack in what I need to say.
Working on films is often like betting on several horses at the same time, you have several projects on the go at once. So, Lou and I have been working on a short Queer Folk Horror. When I say working on, we’ve been developing it, the stories and the characters through a couple of years of conversation. Finally shifted the first draft this week to Harry Faint, who runs Film Ankoth and set up a South West Queer Writer’s programme that we’re on. Been promising this to him for months so it was nice to get a very sketchy draft down for review.
Reflections
Talked to a good old friend about autoethonography and making/arts-based research as a form of therapeutic processing and connecting personal experiences to broader social, cultural, and political contexts. When she asked me about all the queer film stuff I’ve been doing in the last few years, I realised I’d been making in order to process the grief of not growing up comfortable or out as an LGBTQ+ person and all those ‘missed experiences’. Thanks Section 28 (documentary incoming).
Working on not being too hard on myself. Life happened the last month and it was unplanned. We paused the Dead Ends Podcast until this month. Good decision.
Life
Read:
(Listened) to Alvin and Heidi Toffler’s Future Shock again. They define the term as a certain psychological state of individuals and entire societies, and a personal perception of “too much change in too short a period of time”. I wonder if we’re hitting a future malaise. Interesting musing on these books being of the 60s/70s and what the futurists would make of it all now. It being AI.
The Battle of Primrose Park: Playing for Emancipatory Bleed in Fortune & Felicity (Thanks KA and Leah Lockhart for this hookup)
Moved:
5.5k, which was a first run back in a long time. Along the firth of forth, beautiful.
Cycled around Edinburgh many times. Joy, forgot the entire old railway network of cycle paths. Didn’t appreciate this when I lived here.
Listened:
In Waves, Jamie XX. Classic, short, crisp. Good Zane Lowe interview.
Spores, East Forest. Music made on mushrooms, transcendent style typing.
