Dan’s Weeknotes 2022–07–04
Hello friend. I hope you’re doing ok.
I’m writing these on a Monday because I ran out of steam at the end of last week. I wanted to keep in the rhythm though and not let them slip for a week.
All told last week was good, albeit very tiring. The main thing was going to an in-person conference for the first time in two and a bit years so I’ll focus on that.
I had some nice sandwiches in case you were wondering.
I was invited to run a workshop at the Charity Digital #BeMoreDigital conference. I also got asked by DataKind UK to be part of a panel discussion at the same event. The conference was in Hammersmith in West London (UK). In London terms Hammersmith is a long way from Walthamstow where I live, but thankfully I have normalised the journey from east to west and back by regularly going to band practice a couple of stops further on the District line.
The venue was the Novotel West, close to the tube station. I thought it was an excellent space for the conference which had around 350 attendees. I knew it was going to be a long day so I brought two flasks of hot drink with me. One coffee, and one tea. I am not sure why I did this because there was tea and coffee at the venue of course. Still, be prepared.
The last conference I went to was Service Design in Government in March 2020. Thinking back things were pretty strange then because it was the early part of the Covid-19 pandemic. It was actually a week before the WHO declared it a pandemic, even. And hey then things went from being strange to being dark. And now, I don’t know, my day-to-day experience is feeling just that bit out of step with a city that seems absolutely determined to be ‘back to normal’.
Also for the few years leading up to the pandemic I had often suffered from debilitating nerves and anxiety in crowds and doing things like public speaking. I got through these situations and had good times even but it was always exhausting. So I was apprehensive about this in-person conference.
I needn’t have worried. The thing I was most happy about was I felt very balanced throughout the day. For the workshop the technology was great and everything was set up including my slides when I got in the room. For the panel discussion it was relaxed and interesting and felt like a conversation.
Here’s the slides from my workshop. The maximum capacity for the workshops at the conference was 25 and I’m glad I didn’t have that many people¹ because the format wouldn’t have worked. The content was based on my blog post about data conversations. I set out some background, described the four types of forums we have, and the principles that inform this work. Then I gave an example of one of the forums — the 5 minute update. And then I split the room into small groups and they spent the rest of the session preparing and presenting their own 5 minute data updates. I shared 14 charts of real data from Citizens Advice with a link that anybody could open on their phone. I was particularly happy with how well that worked.
Everything went to time well, and the groups got really engaged in the exercise. The premise here is that it doesn’t require data specialist skill to talk about data in an engaging way. That’s the capability that I’d like to help build. I’ll be running this workshop again as I think it would go well with a group from Citizens Advice. The format would work as a remote workshop too. Hey reader, maybe you want me to run this workshop for you sometime I’d be happy to.
The panel discussion was with Dulcie from DataKind UK and Lauren from The Brilliant Club. The topic was ‘creating a data-informed culture’. I thought it was a really good session with great questions, framing, and moderation from Dulcie. Lauren had some brilliant insights. The one that stuck with me was how her organisation is including ability to work with data at a general level as part of peoples’ job descriptions — like one of those basic skills everybody should have. You can see how that would be transformative.
Also I was thinking on the relative number of data specialists in an organisation. At The Brilliant Club they have 6 for an organisation of 100 people. At Citizens Advice we have around 25 for over 800 people in the National organisation, not including the network of local Citizens Advice across England and Wales. I realise there will be economies of scale perhaps, but it did make me think about how we still feel spread pretty thin as a team. We’re working well, and making things better, but it can be frustrating not to be able to act more of the opportunities that we see because of our capacity.
At the end of the panel session there was a comment from Peter one of the conference’s chairs along the lines of
The only thing harder than digital transformation is data transformation
which feels right. Working on it though.
I went to a few session at the conference and the standout was a talk by Sadie Crabtree from Prostate Cancer UK. It was a really compelling run through the user-centred approach to developing and delivering a really impactful campaign. The numbers and the explanations of the numbers were amazing. The explanation of the various approaches taken were really engaging. I think the conference material is going to be released as a podcast and I recommend checking it out when it’s released.
So yeah. Great day, really appreciate being asked. I was absolutely exhausted at the end of it and the next day too mind you.
Rest of the week was fine. Work is rewarding at the moment.
Thanks for reading.
Footnotes
¹ I had 11 people. 10 to 15 would be the ideal range I think
