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By Tom Watson —

Weeknote 44

TechFreedom, 20% beefs, the grant application is dead, is everything a skill, catching up with people, getting turned down for things and some actual paid work things...

What I did

Well it's been a busy and interesting week. I seem to be saying the busy part a lot at the moment, something for me to notice. But honestly quite a lot of that is probably self inflicted! I had a few things that had been bubbling around in my head which I felt compelled to either write about or umm build about, which meant I probably ended up cramming the paid part of my work into a much shorter time period. I suppose that's the thing with all this. I enjoy writing, and making things that provoke conversation, maybe shift things, improve things. But for the most part I don't get paid for all this stuff. Every free tool, free resource, free idea. All part of the game I suppose, but I did briefly consider trying to rebrand myself as a 'think, do tank' this week.

I wrote two posts this week. One of which I thought was pretty good, maybe a way to rethink how we approach things, how we consider and design...and it was mostly crickets. The other post though got some serious attention and discussion going! Doug shared me a post about 20% beefs the other week, basically about how taking contrarian views, or just plain old kicking off beefs on the internet gets traction. My post The Grant Application Is Dead. What Comes Next? maybe is a bit of that, not with that intention, but it does challenge existing entrenched thinking.

The reaction has been interesting. Some, who's very business models are reliant on the very model I was challenging obviously hated it. Some viewed it as purely a technical discussion and to me didn't consider or just couldn't see the underlying shift I was proposing in power, ideas as central entities, and the periodic nature of grants. I do wonder if this a failure of the writer to get this across, or just that people read what they want to read sometimes.

For the most part however people were positive or at least interested in the idea, and it got people talking, and at least considering alternatives. I also learned about a lot of cool and interesting things and found lots of cool and interesting people. I loved reading about the Murmurations protocol and ActivityPods thanks to new connection Sam. Broadly I think there is something here to explore further, and it feels like there are people who would want to do this. I had done more work in thinking through some of the technical aspects of the idea while writing it, and maybe I'll share them, but really it would be great to ACTUALLY do something about it.

The other post I wrote was called Is This Just a Skill? which was me writing about SKILL.md files, whats the difference between a product and a skill, and giving an example of the Theory of Change tool which I built and killed and turned into a skill instead.

Probably just don't release posts of a Friday. Or maybe it's just not beefy enough...

What else did I do this week?

Lots of work on the Digitial Inclusion airtable base for T4GSW - which involved building custom extensions for actual maps in airtable, and creating an automated system for checking url's and flagging records for review. It's been a time pressured project, not without challenges, but I think we've pulled off something good. The team working on the Digital Inclusion taxonomy have done a great job and I think we've got something that could be useful beyond the South West.

Ran an in person session with Refugee Futures in stockton using my 10 minute theory of change exercise. People really connected with it, it as in their thinking about impact and what they do. They are a lovely team, and some were celebrating a birthday so asked me to stay for lunch which was great!

Met up with Michelle who's joined the freelance world again. It was nice to catch up, hear about her work and the ChEW Festival she's helping to plan - 'Evaluation in the next era: technology, uncertainty, and the role of evaluation in a just society'. Sounds interesting. She's looking for excellent speakers.

Me and Doug caught up with John about TechFreedom. Please join is joining the cohort obviously, but beyond that, it's great that he and SCVO are thinking about this. And so is Ross. Something good north of the border. Hopefully some collaborations to work on.

Caught up with Liz and team on the Resilience work. Reflecting on a good residential last week, and thinking about collective resilience in the next couple of months.

Found out on Friday I had been rejected from a stakeholder forum I'd put myself forward for. It was on responsible AI. I'm not surprised. I very rarely put myself forward for things, mainly because who wants another white, middle aged (ish) dude on something. But I very occassionally do. 5 times in the last 3 years. I haven't made it to interview once. Although maybe there is still a chance, as I'm still awaiting a decision from a National Lottery Community Fund one from 18 months ago...fingers crossed eh...

Had a bit of a back and forth with Mailgun who had somehow blacklisted me, for sending a few newsletters, to people who had subscribed. But didn't tell me this. It was only when looking at the logs in the digital ocean deployment of this blog did I find it. I had to answer questions like "what's the nature of this business?" - "woah that's a big question at the moment, well you see I was considering rebranding myself as a think do tank...."

Aside from that I also built a free and open source Tech Stack mapping tool. It's a bit janky at the minute, and on a temp domain, but I'll be developing it more. I'd tell you more about it, but I've already kept you long enough this week.

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