Thinking beyond the Tiger: what do you want your team to take away?

A reference guide to different children’s books that can help you tell stories of your work.Since January 2020 I’ve been developing a workshop that I first delivered at #UKGovCamp about telling stories using the well known children’s book The Tiger Who Came to Tea.You can find out all about it here, as well as how to …

All the jobs I failed to get

Disclaimer: not *all* the jobsGif: From Flight of the Concords. The look at the camera and say “Why, Be more constructive with your feedback. Please.”Terence recently wrote a great blog post about all of the jobs he had failed to get, you’ll find that here:Unlike Terence, who presents a finite list of failures to us in …

A Trello reading list for learning, and for accountability

In this post I’ll talk about how this library for my professional development has become a powerful tool in holding myself accountable in both my personal and professional life.This blog post will cover:Why I started using Trello to track my readingObjectivesMy board and themesHow it’s changed…Black Lives MatterAnalysis and what I’ve learnedWhat next?Let me know …

We love wallpaper!

The inimitable Terence Eden recently wrote that “Post-it’s aren’t agile – they’re wallpaper” so I started thinking (A LOT) about wallpaper…First up, read Terence’s brilliant post here:IntroLook, it’s pretty difficult to argue against the sustainability of post-it’s or their accessibility because those are fixed arguments and if we agree that we believe in protecting the …

Telling the story of your project… using The Tiger Who Came to Tea.

A post-it note in the book The Tiger Who Came to Tea, the post it reads “Inciting Incident, compels the hero (that’s us) to action that leads to change”As digital people working in government, we’re often called upon to talk about our work, but sometimes we get bogged down in detail or stifled by structure, and …

Learning stuff is a side effect of life

This new year there was a trend of people sharing pictures of themselves 10 years ago on Instagram, and taking stock of their achievements on Twitter and LinkedIn. But a more interesting question might be, “Who was I ten years ago?”2020 lands on 2019 and smashes it, there are fireworks and it says Happy New Year.I’m not …

Who am I? Weeknotes for professional and personal development

The title slide for the presentationA presentation given at Ada’s List Conference in London on 9 November 2019.Today I’m going to cover:Who am I?What are weeknotes?What I’ve gainedHow to get startedA quick few points about me:I worked in very small (less than 50) small customer publishing agencies making magazines that you might get through your door …

Apolitical Crash Course in Network-Building for Public Servants

The title slide from our crash courseOn Thursday 17 October, myself and Nour delivered a crash course for Apolitical about finding your people and building communities within government.We did this after Miki Stricker-Talbot from the City of Edmonton and UNICORNS network in Canada suggested that we join up to deliver something and share what we’ve learned …

My Work Wellbeing Wall

Building a tool to keep the impostor at bay and my wellbeing in check.I recently read a post by Kit about her Mental Health MOT, and it was good to see someone who, when they needed it, was able to call on some of what they’d read and help themselves to feel a bit calmer with …