Weeknote 2025.50

At work

Monday brought a flurry of documents for me to review and approve. I often do my reviews in two stages, the first using a Copilot prompt to check for internal consistency, logical development of points, and covering the needs of our stakeholders. And then I read them myself to check for facts and nuance. Seven shortish documents cleared, two more low page count papers to go, and then some seriously long reports.

It is good to see more discussions and documents referring to our Digital, Data and AI strategy. It’s a terrible waste if a strategy just ticks a box and becomes shelf-ware.

There were lots of other things going on during Tuesday, however my mind kept returning to how we maintain our relationships with suppliers. There’s latent tension, we want more from what we’ve already bought, and they need to sell us more, particularly if our contacts have sales targets, however the tension is rarely explicit, and the team ensure excellent value for the Council through respectful interactions.

I listened to the Rest is Entertainment podcast on the train into work on Wednesday. A lot of conversation was around the OpenAI/Disney tie-up https://openai.com/index/disney-sora-agreement/. While Marina and Richard painted a pretty bleak future for Disney from the deal, they also highlighted the utterly transformative power of AI, so I was well primed for an exploratory call with a partner interested in working with us.

I get dozens of emails a week from potential partners promoting their technology and/or services; this one stood out as starting with the outcomes we want to achieve, not the widgets they want to sell, so I’m following up with a longer discussion in the new year.

An excellent pre-Christmas all staff meeting in the middle of Thursday with numerous short meetings before and after. Ironed out some queries on our budget, talked tactics and thought strategically about our next portfolio. The usual late-breaking questions which I deferred to my team as I’m on leave Friday.

At leisure

A fascinating walk along the Thames Path from Purfleet to Rainham, was excited to see a red kite. I later found they are no longer as rare as I thought, however was still pleased to see one riding the wind.

The Photography Society AGM on Monday. I’m not a great fan of AGMs however it’s only fair to support the committee who keep the club running. I was itching to volunteer for something, but I knew I couldn’t commit with sometimes unpredictable work commitments.

And off to the countryside for a family visit on Friday.

Track of the week

Dog Rose Arlo Parks https://open.spotify.com/track/3P8iOIbPbdC8PaLVj2vbyB?si=5355dbc25ffb429e