Weeknote 16 of 2024

Feeling a bit cold and grey today (both the weather and me) - so I turned the heat on in our house and I'm going to try to lean into coziness.

What happened

After a few weeks of onboarding, I've started digging into project work. There's some patient-related design work I will be focusing on (I don't think I can elaborate but it has to do with accessing health info) - and I'm also looking at our internal corporate services pipelines.
I started on a coaching program with a kick off on Monday. It's a small cohort and so far it's been a very lovely and supportive experience.
I did my first full day in-office since switching Ministries. It was fine?
I attended some interesting meetings - one with lots of senior execs I was meeting for the first time. it gave me some great insight into the organizations challenges and priorities in the health sector.
I did a few coffee chats with people external to government looking to learn more about public sector design.
My colleague Marlieke kicked off our first cross-government design leaders group which is exciting. I was grateful to be included. I also explored and started some conversations about x-gov learning opportunities
I found out I've been accepted to speak at FWD50, although only virtually which means I won't get to travel to Ottawa :( BUT still happy to be able to share and collaborate with this fantastic community and event.
My daughter started selling girl guide cookies for the first time, she was really excited to go door to door which is my nightmare but ok. My kids also wanted to raise money for their Terry Fox run so they ran a lemonade stand which was so adorable and wonderful of them.

What went well

I said it last week as well but I've been loving connecting with my small Service Design team in the health sector. We have standups every morning and I really look forward to our chats.
I've been feeling more productive and optimistic over the last couple of weeks. I'm not sure if there's any specific thing I can tie that to. But it's been noticeable and welcomed.
My kids have been struggling with mornings since school started so I used my design skills to create visual charts for them. It's been helping!

What was challenging

Gearing up for project work has been exciting but one tricky part is moving at the pace of stakeholders. It feels like a lot of waiting for decisions to be made, while dealing with the uncertainty of what's to come and knowing that once things get going, it could all unfold very quickly. How to be prepared to move fast when you're not quite sure what to be prepared for?
Despite an overall sense of optimism, there's one area where I'm not feeling great: I have a lot of anxiety about our upcoming provincial election. I don't know if I am allowed to talk about it publicly but it's been weighing heavily on my mind. I know I can't control the outcome but I still feel fear over it.

Things I read for work:

This week I read a lot of SDinGov in gov recaps from people like Audree, Vicky and many others sharing on LinkedIn and Bluesky.

Also interesting to see the new of a new digital government panel & vision in the UK, and read some great recommendations from people I admire in this space:

A future vision for digital gov — Laura Yarrow

I recently saw the Bluesky post from Jenni Tennison asking for suggestions for the new digital centre and the vision for digital public services. That was swiftly followed by the excellent blog from Martha Lane Fox about working in the open , and now I can’t resist throwing my hat in the ring

Laura YarrowLaura Yarrow

Also came across these articles:

Reading, watching, listening

I finished two books since my last week: A Tale for the Time Being by Ruth Ozeki and The Death of Vivek Oji by Akwaeke Emezi. Both lovely and beautiful reads but also haunting and both had some upsetting parts.
Watching - Mad Men re-runs, plus a lot of doom scrolling.
Is everyone pretending to understand inflation (or just me)? from Search Engine helped me understand inflation and economic policy a bit better. I also discovered a new kids podcast - The Big Life - that my daughter and I are enjoying listening to together.

What happened

What went well

What was challenging

Things I read for work:

Reading, watching, listening

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