Product Owner and Delivery Manager Work is done by teams. Teams build products and services. Good teams are varied, complex, intelligent and experienced formed of people with diverse backgrounds and roles. People have relationships and relationships are both challenging and rewarding. Building stuff is work, building relationships is work. Both are not mutually exclusive. Things don’t necessarily work straight out... More
1000km of runs Every run has a name, it’s just a matter of finding it on the way. Some runs deserve good names, some not so much. Names help you remember and remembering is good. 1000km Followed by my feet Closing in on the prize Hard rain Tommy and the pantomime horse Slow hearts Caught between a lost... More
In any valley I have seen them, and noted in so doing a whole world of things very memorable. John Leland A film to capture place, time and landscape. A sense of what a place is, was and might be. Day-to-day looking and seeing. The corners of seeing flatly. Close to people but not hiding from people. At... More
When I’m running I’m not always writing but I am planning and thinking and considering and sometimes that complexity ends up being writing. Things can take shape, nothing just jumps to a page. The synchronisation of movement and meaning of words collects itself along the way. ‘What is the motive?’ ‘What is the outcome?’ It’s not always about... More
Messaging Throughout what they call parenting, there are many staging posts when you lose a little bit more of your children. Most feel incremental and merely conjure a rather short-lived affectionate sentimentality easily archived for some mythical reminisce in the autumn of years. But some junctures arrive as roughly hewn shocks to the family routine. They... More
The ratio of relayed experience “In boiling everything down to digital signals, we lose the colour and flavour and turmoil of competing values” Siva Vaidhyanathan As we struggle with a knawing social and engagement fatigue and pine for cultural refreshment and maybe a view from some higher ground, we consider the reality that we might just be hitting an ending... More
It’s different The thought, planning and decoration took many months. There were so many things to consider, so many great ideas to incorporate. The ruddy mixture of excitement and potential kept them awake while they poured themselves into their work building their emperor’s new clothes. There wasn’t the slightest doubt, nor any occasional pause. Just their march... More
The passenger “It seems to me I spend my life in stations. Going, coming, standing, waiting” Dirk Bogarde CHAPTER 1 As soon as he got off the train and walked down the platform all he could think about was getting back on the train and finding his seat by the window. He continued to walk straight and... More
Heroes When our web time began we began to develop new kinds of relationships, we came across new kinds of people. People we would not normally meet in the street, at work, through family and friends. It was an exciting time. We *met* people in streets we’d never visited and people we had no previous connections... More
Manage Oh managers “You are ideally suited to a career in middle management explaining things to some people and persuading other people to do things.” @hondanhon Good managers are hard to distinguish. They don’t immediately stand out. They have to be learnt. There has to be a distinction of managers who are good at building dynamic... More