Week notes for 2022 week 08.

Monday 21 February to Sunday 27 February 2022. 

This week's been much better than last week, which is great. My health's getting back to normal, including the amount of sleep I'm getting, which makes a huge difference. 

Monday

Started the week be catching up with Arfah and Imran on our potential community work / business. Arfah was on top form and led the meeting, creating a backlog of things to work on this week. She also tweeted her excitement which got some lovely responses. 

One of the things we're considering is running a training course for commuity managers. It's interesting to be back in the training course design mindset, especially after the fun I had doing the train the trainer course with the Open Data Institute. I had a lot of fun creating and running the Ministry of Magic open data exercis, which is till being used apparently 🧙‍♀️ 

Last week I booked a review to discuss my various medications, and today I turned up for the inperson appointment with the pharmacist. This was followed up with a phonecall with the Doctor in the afternoon where I decided to go private. I changed my mind later in the week after seeing prices and timescales, and asked the surgery to revert me to an NHS referal, which they kindly did.

My delivery manager job was mainly meetings, with our weekly product + delivery Manager catch-up, followed by Jen & I having our daily handover. Several 1-2-1s with team members in the afternoon, checking in to make sure their okay and see if they need anything.

Tuesday

Janet was away in Birmingham at the National Farmers Union conference, so I cycled into the office for the day. It was end of sprint, so lots of ceremonies to handle. I work a full day on Tuesday and Jen was on leave, so I covered all the sessions and ended up rattling thru several of them. Good to spend a whole day with the team 🙂

I ran Gov DMs in the Ether in the afternoon (DMs = delivery managers) which is a lean coffee that Sarah Rees and I star ted after attending Agile in the Ether run by Emily Webber. Had a good sized turnout and filled thehour with discussion.  

Last meeting of the day was with an Ministry of Justice colleague who's organising a new starter that's joining our team next week. We both joined the videoconference only to instantly realise we were both in the same office, so I had what must of been my first face to face, office based meeting in ages. She's done a brilliant job of bringing together everything the new starter needs 👍🏻

Wednesday

One of the things I've started this year is a meetup for community managers. It fits into the same time slot I used for the One Team Gov breakfast, which went on to help grow that community into a multi continent thing. One of the people who's been coming to community manager meetup is Mark Darlington who's a community manager in the Ministry of Defence (MOD). 

Mark kindly leant me some of his time on Wednesday to talk about the meetup, the MOD and what it's like working there. We had a good chat and I made ome notes whilst Mark showed showed some slides he'll present about his work at the next meetup. 

At work I attended the Delivery Manager communinty of practice (CoP) where Lianne ran thru suggested changes to who does what. I part myself down for the health check workgroup and to look at how we run the CoP itself.

Later in the day was the Jobshare network meetup. Only 3 people came so it was half it's normal length, but still had an interesting discussion about how to handover work between jobshares.

There was a Deliver Con 2022 organisers meetup after that, where we changed the date of the event, update the ticketting and let everyone know where to signup.

Last thing of the day was the Content Hub team standup. Cause of all the ceremonies on a Tuesday, it doesn't make sense to have a standup the following morning. So instead, we run the proceeding standup late in the afternoon. It also means I get chance to run one a week, as I normally work 1230 to 1700.

Thursday

The front wheel on my bike is damaged, so I attempted to get public transport to therapy in East London. Gave up when I realised I was going to be late and came home to do it remotely. 

Thursdays are our team's meeting free day, so I had some focus time to work on objectives and some cards.

Friday

Jen and I had a full hour handover today and worked on some stuff. Did some coaching practice with Jeff and had natters with team members Jon and Tom, separately. Good way to end the day and week.