Evaluating and consulting

A page from my notebook – I’ve been using a little portable thermal printer to make stickers

Goal progress

• I developed a research plan for a website evaluation I’m doing for a client. They have clear objectives and KPIs for their website, which made the process of setting up a research framework and evaluation plan clear and straightforward. I’m looking forward to this piece of work. It’s a change of pace — some peaceful, methodical evaluation is very different to the other, very consultative, work I have on at the moment. I’m also getting to collaborate with my former Brilliant Noise colleague Beth Granter. I’m so happy to work with Beth again — she’s one of a kind and has already brought so much expertise to the project.
• I’ve planned and facilitated a lot of workshops. I’ve mentioned in weeknotes before that I’m currently working with two clients on group coaching-based strategy programmes. Both client teams are fantastic to work with. They ask great questions, are thoughtful, motivated, and they’re giving me lots of energy and motivation. I’m starting to feel borderline guilty about how much I’m getting out of the process myself.
• Finally, I spent quite a lot of time on contracts, invoicing, and project management for some new work coming over the next few months. It’s dull but necessary — there’s no work without this stuff. It’s also significant because the reason there’s so much of this is because business is — fingers crossed — going well right now. I have a good amount of work booked in and signed off that’ll tide me over until the middle of the summer. It’s a relief after how tough last year was, but this time of year is often busy.

Blockers

This is a blocker that I’ve solved. Having some money in the bank meant I felt able to invest in a new (to me) laptop. The one I had was about 5 years old and was starting to get slow. I’d love to make it last longer for sustainability reasons. But with being super-busy, having a slow machine that sometimes crashes felt like a risk. I also got a cheap refurbished iPad to test as a tool for when I’m working out of the office. I hate carrying a heavy laptop plus a notebook everywhere, so I’m hoping the iPad can be the one thing I take everywhere. I’m especially interested in how I can make this work as for note-taking and sketching. I started these weeknotes in handwriting on the Notability app and now I’m finishing them in Google Docs. The handwriting recognition was okay, not great, but not terrible.

Coming this week

• Lots of workshop planning
• A kickoff meeting
• Getting stuck into evaluating

Source

• Technofeudalism: What Killed Capitalism, Yanis Varoufakis*: I’ve been chipping away at this for a while, and am now finding myself wanting to blame everything on technofeudalism. It’s the new late-stage capitalism.
• The Last Showgirl: I really enjoyed this. Pamela Anderson brings so much nuance to her role, and Jamie Lee Curtis and Billie Lourd are both great, too.
• I went to the Folklore exhibition in Newhaven
• Spring is really doing it for me this year. There are wildflowers everywhere, the sun’s out, and I even saw some mad March hares on an early morning dog walk.

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