Weeknote 47/2025
I'm composing this while watching the second half of Leeds vs Aston Villa after a walk with my wife, Hannah. It's good to have Premier League football back on TV after the international break, especially as there was no game for my daughter yesterday.
This week began with Hannah and I spending a night away. We hadn't managed to do so for either our wedding anniversary in September, nor for her birthday in October.
In the event, we just stayed at a hotel in Newcastle and went to a very nice Thai restaurant.
I effectively had a 3.5 day working week as we didn't get back until Monday lunchtime, I had a tilt table test on Tuesday afternoon and, due to the snow and ice, I decided to pick up my daughter from day release at Sunderland College on Friday afternoon so that my parents didn't have to. (I was quite pleased that, while showing me the results of my test, the consultant said that my results were those of someone "disgustingly healthy" and so I haven't got POTS.)
My main focus for WAO was our work on Amnesty International UK's (AIUK) community platform project. At our recommendation, they've chosen Communiteq to host Discourse, which we can now tailor more closely with plugins and theme components. The timeline remains quite tight, but we should be OK.
We had our internal kickoff and client kickoff meetings for some work with a new client, INASP, who would like us to help them "untangle the spaghetti" of their digital platforms. Their ultimate goal is to come up with a brief for a new website for Rising Scholars, with the first step a workshop in a couple of weeks' time.
Other than that, we responded to a couple of briefs with either a proposal or an expression or interest, had an intitial chat around some (inbound) potential work, and suggested next steps for work with an existing client. It seems like things are picking up again after a very slow year.
I spent some time organising some thoughts around ambiguity, and publishing posts over at Thought Shrapnel. After some feedback last week, I finally tweaked and then hit publish on an updated version of my home page at dougbelshaw.com.
One of my highlights of the week was accompanying my daughter, Grace, to Park View Academy of Sport. Although she's a couple of years away from potentially joining, she was keen to go to the information evening to find out more. Essentially, it's a state school that, over the last eight years, has developed sporting academies alongside a Sixth Form. Not only do they get excellent academic results, but their sporting provision and results are also fantastic. She's excited at the prospect.
Next week, we've got a monthly co-op half day and I've organised another meetup for those of us who responded to the UNESCO AI and the Future of Education earlier this year. We'll be doing plenty on the AIUK project, some planning for the INASP workshop, and seeing what happens with the proposals and expressions of interest we've submitted.
On Friday, I'm due to go walking with Tom Watson, before driving towards Liverpool with Hannah and Grace to stay over before her team, Boro Rangers, plays Everton Academy next Saturday. It'll be the last game for a couple of players on the Boro team, as they've announced that they're leaving next month to join Sunderland Academy. It's a bit cheeky for academies to be able to poach players from a grassroots team that's actually playing in the same Junior Premier League that they're in. Anyway, we're going to frame it as a good opportunity for Grace as it should mean she gains even more game time.
Photo taken by me of part of our back garden