23-05-25 - Delirium, DeliverCon, Dancing and Disappearing again

So…. It has been a while since I have done a weeknote. If in the 5 weeks before my hiatus you had grown attached and dependent on reading them, I can only apologise. Over the past couple of weeks, I have been on my own in covering my manager and being responsible for quite a wide and undefined remit; I will admit has been incredibly stressful. So, in the prioritisation of things to do, my week notes had to go.

To be honest, there is not much you have missed. There have been some incredibly interesting things happen but most of them are not suitable for an open forum. So in reality you have missed some really sparce week notes.

Despite this I will fill you in w/e 23/05/25:

On Wednesday 21st of May, DeliverCon 2025 was held in York. As always it was a joy to organise and run the event. It was not without flaws but in typical delivery manager fashion we adapted to change and from most of the attendees’ perspectives, everything ran smoothly. We have kicked off the organisers retro, I am hoping once we have concluded this we will publish in the open what we learnt and what action we are taking, In lieu of anything more, I share some of my favourite photos from the day:

Elodie, Hannah and myself kicking of DeliverCon in front of 100 Delivery Managers.

My partners in crime when it comes to organisation of DeliverCon.

Some of the wonderful delivery manager community at Defra, most of who were amazing in helping the day go smoothly, after volunteering to support.

Catching up with Jonny and taking our now obligatory photo we take at each DeliverCon.

Post event, pub chats with Jude, my old manager in i.AI, remembering the good times working together.

After all that on the Friday evening, I was on stage in Heaven for dancing as part of the KXSRFC Fundraising show. It was great experience but after 8 weeks of rehearsals, I am glad that I will never have to listen to “Signing in the Rain” or “Sound of the Underground” again :D Dancing in Heaven with my parents was not on my to-do list for 2025 but was lovely and equally mortifying experience.

I am the pink builder on the right.

Now with DeliverCon and the fundraising show done, I have a lot more brain space for some fun/silly projects. One I am really keen to resurrect is bullding a site to rank the various cafe and canteens within civil service offices as part of Tools for Civil Servants.

So now that is all done, I need to draft my handover note before disappearing for three weeks on some what I consider some well-deserved leave. See back for week note on W/C 16/06/2025

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