Weeknote 11/2026

Spring is really trying to get a foothold in the North East at the moment, but keeps being rebuffed by cold winds and squally rain showers.

I'm composing this on my laptop in the car as my daughter, Grace, referees a couple of football matches. We've agreed that I'll slowly withdraw from watching from the sidelines, and eventually just drop her off and pick her up. Independence training for teenagers. No football match for her yesterday as she's suffering from shin splints.

My son, Ben, was home last night inbetween lifeguarding shifts. We all had breakfast together this morning with my wife, Hannah, to celebrate Mother's Day. Flowers and cards poking gentle fun at the relationship between kids and their mums were involved. I'm going to visit my own mother later today 🙂

I've taken a migraine tablet and had a full pot of coffee this morning. I've known one was coming for the last 48 hours, but they're not as bad as these days – partly due to learning how to manage them, but also statins seem to have made a difference. (According to my GP, I don't need to be on them any more, but I've asked to stay on them for this reason.)

Writing

Here, I published:

DOUG.md

I suspect that, over time, many people will end up with some form of NAME.md that travels with them between tools. It will sit next to CVs and portfolios as part of how we present ourselves in digital work.

Open ThinkeringDoug Belshaw

When AI remembers everything and organisations forget how to choose

At the end of the day, organisational capacity is not a technology problem; it’s a leadership problem. It begins with the willingness to ask uncomfortable questions about how much of what your organisation does is truly its own.

Open ThinkeringDoug Belshaw

Badges that change shape to show skills development

Most digital credentials are frozen at the moment of issue, either you ‘have’ the badge or you do not. What happens when badges are just a view of recognition data?

Open ThinkeringDoug Belshaw

Meanwhile, over at Thought Shrapnel, I published:

Tree Hug

This made me laugh. Entitled Tree Hug by Bulgarian street artist Vanyu Krastev. Source: Street Art Utopia

Thought Shrapnel

Ending an archaic and undemocratic principle

I’ve always been against unearned privilege and the idea of a ‘natural’ hierarchy. It’s antithetical to who I am and stand for, and I’ve felt that way ever since I can remember. A good example of this in the class-stratified UK is the House of Lords. While it’s important to have a second chamber in a democracy, the idea of it being made up of heredity peers is absolutely ridiculous.

Thought Shrapnel

US Big Tech infrastructure as “legitimate targets”

More reason to divest yourself of US-based Big Tech platforms. (Join the first TechFreedom cohort!) Iranian state-linked media this week published a list of offices and infrastructure run by American companies with Israeli links whose technology has been used for military applications. According to Al Jazeera, the companies include Google, Microsoft, Palantir, IBM, Nvidia and Oracle. Many of these companies operate regional offices, cloud infrastructure or data-centre operations across the Gulf, including in the UAE.

Thought Shrapnel

How to Create a Freelancer Dashboard

Link to video I ran a 90-minute workshop this morning, which started life as a 1:1 session. Around 10 people ended up coming, mainly from a couple of Slack channels - hence the “Hey Slackers…” intro. Below is the email I sent afterwards with all of the links, etc. I’m posting it here for reference 😀 Thanks for joining this morning’s session, or for registering if you couldn’t make it.

Thought Shrapnel

The Fifth Horseman

Five years old, but still as relevant as ever. Source: Bill Bramhall

Thought Shrapnel

How to stop thinking

I am not someone who meditates, precisely for the reason outlined in this explanation from 2015 by Ajahn Brahm. His simple approach to show you that it is possible to stop your thoughts encroaching is compelling. Source: YouTube

Thought Shrapnel

How long before run-on sentences are preferred to em-dashes?

An insightful post from Max Read about stylistic preferences with regards to human vs AI text. Every relevant technology changes writing and, in turn, literate culture. In many contexts most people can (more or less) correctly differentiate between A.I.-generated output and its “authentic” counterpart–but cannot correctly attribute the output. What’s funny about this is: We actually really want to prefer human-authored writing! In open-label tests, where the excerpts are shown with attribution, people consistently express preference for whatever text is labeled human, even when the text is actually A.

Thought Shrapnel

ROOTS: Return Old Online Things to your own Site

Whatever you call it, having everything in space you control has always made sense. Why am I doing all this? Because I got inspired by the concept of POSSE: “Publish on your own, syndicate elsewhere.” For me, ROOTS is the logical first step toward that: “Return Old Online Things to your own Site” (yes, I made this up). Why? If I do decide to delete my X account or if Blogger gets quietly discontinued, then I don’t care: it’s all on my site already.

Thought Shrapnel

Reading & Listening

I finished Ian Rankin's Exit Music yesterday and started re-reading The Castle by Franz Kafka. It doesn't sound like it would be an enjoyable read, but it's so atmospheric:

The Castle [...] is the last novel by Franz Kafka, first published in 1926. In it, a protagonist known only as "K." arrives in a village and struggles to gain access to the mysterious authorities who govern it from a castle supposedly owned by Graf Westwest.

Kafka died before he could finish the work and the novel was posthumously published against his wishes. Dark and at times surreal, The Castle is often understood to be about alienation, unresponsive bureaucracy, the frustration of trying to conduct business with non-transparent, seemingly arbitrary controlling systems, and the futile pursuit of an unobtainable goal.

I'm still (slowly) re-reading and highlighting Nassim Nicholas Taleb's Antifragile. I didn't listen to podcasts this week but instead listened to a lot of new (to me) music. I'm particularly enjoying Bad Bunny's back catalogue, although my Duolingo Level 50 Spanish skills aren't much use for understanding what he's on about 😅

I do love my music, and have been a heavy Spotify user since 2009 when I sold pretty much my entire CD collection. This year, though, I've realised that, while not technically Big Tech, it's still something that is worth divesting from. So I've been curating my MP3 collecting using the excellent Plex. In particular, Plexamp is a work of art.

Working

Laura was back this week, and INASP accepted WAO's tweaks to the contract, so we started work on that project. More on that after the kick-off meeting tomorrow. We did a minimal amount on the Amnesty International UK community platform project as the Pilot is still running, and our remaining days are to evaluate that and suggest next steps.

We Are Open Co-op is closing and as part of that we've asked former member Bryan Mathers of Visual Thinkery to provide some “closing thinkery” to accompany the assets we're creating to archive our resources. All four founding members had a good chat on Thursday with some great reminiscences about the highs and lows over the last decade 🙂

I met with Nate and Tila separately about the Digital Badges Proof of Concept project. We're working as openly as possible, so you can see the kanban board to see what's involved. I'm actively looking for ways in which this PoC can lead to wider adoption in Scotland, and then the rest of the UK.

When I'm not working on client projects, blogging, or researching/reading, I'm creating new software with Claude Code. I've now got landing pages for all three projects I've developed in the last six weeks: CalAnywhere, TaskDial, and Groundwork.

A 1:1 session ended up as a 90-minute workshop for ~10 people on how to create a freelancer dashboard on Friday. Other people couldn't make it, so I created a short 'what you missed' video:

I've also set up TechFreedom to accept payment from those who want to attend the first cohort, but haven't deployed the changes to the website, as Tom and I are sorting that out early next week.

Other than that, I had interesting chats with Don Presant and Serge Ravet which led directly to my post about badges which change shape to show skills development. I also had a first-round interview for a Product Management role at Ghost, which may or may not go anywhere.

If you'd like to have a chat before I take a couple of weeks off at the end of month, find time here ☕

Personal

I'm very slowly increasing my exercise frequency so as not to exacerbate my recently-diagnosed overtraining syndrome. My body seems to be able to handle exercising every other day for 20 minutes at a time, so that's what I'm doing.

I'm spending a lot of time in front of a computer at the moment, but that's not unusual for this time of the year as there's more work to be done, and my creative juices are flowing.

All work and no play makes Doug a potentially dull conversational partner, though, so I will report that I enjoyed watching the F1 movie with Hannah and Grace, and that I've been looking at a cheeky short trip while I'm on holiday for a couple of weeks soon.

Next week

I'll be working on the three projects mentioned above, getting a new idea off the ground (teaser screenshots), and helping Ben think through what he wants to do next year. He's been talking about a working holiday in Australia, so if you've got any experience/opinions related to that, let me know!