04-25-25 - Quickfire Round

So in an effort not to fall short and publish this week’s notes… next week again, I am going to try and keep it short this week, and I have some evening plans that I am looking forward too that gives me a pressing deadline to write too!

Highs

• Away day with Policy Design Lab, spending time on their purpose and structure, I enjoyed facilitating the day, but in a weird sense for me I enjoyed thoroughly planning it. Normally I have a rough plan for a workshop and then make the rest up on the spot, but after some really great facilitation training I took recently, they sold me on the value of planning. So I thought I would give it a go.
• Leading on from above, the agenda and plan I had so lovingly created, when off track about hour in to day… and that was fine, I adapted and changed stuff on the go to support some really great conversations taking place and it went quite smoothly and team enjoyed it, so wins all around!

Lows

• Heading into the day of workshops I had planned, only to find out no access to flipchart paper… leading to mad spraw to alter plans.
• For the majority of next month, I am a one man band in my team, which is going to be interesting and ever so slightly stressful but we pull through.

Small Wins

• I spent 5 minutes updating my default search engine to Ecosia, which now means roughly with every 50 searches I make a tree will be planted. It gets its search results from Google and Bing so I have not noticed any difference in the quality of search results and on the surface appears more private (Will need to dig in on that one).

Reading

• I learnt about the origins of Polcy Lab thought Becky Millers Blog - Suck it and see: design is the answer, but what is the question?

Song of the week

• 2025 5